Paper short abstract:

Until 1927, no legislation stated how the penal execution of Africans should be carried out in FWA. Yet, in practice, colonial administrators used the firing squad. This paper examines how this method became customary and then law, at the crossroad of material, political and cultural considerations.

Paper long abstract:

For the French, the firing squad fulfilled a specific set of requirements that made it the desired method for legal, public and exemplary executions.

Firstly, execution by shooting was thought to sharply differ from precolonial methods that, in the minds of Europeans, qualified as torture (drowning, poison). The reluctance to inflict pain was crucial to the concept of civilised killing. The clinical pretence of the guillotine, like the firepower of the rifle, made it a technically superior, modern and civilised way of killing.

Secondly, the actors involved in the ritual of the execution – the person sentenced to death, the African riflemen (tirailleurs), and colonial administrators – recreated a visual and material interpretation of the colonial social order as intended by the colonizers. The relation of power between citizens and subject, colonizers and colonized, which overlapped a racial division, was obvious to all. Executioners or executed, Africans were made to obey the orders (riflemen) and the laws (executed) of the colonizers.

Thirdly, colonial officials deemed it the most respectful method of killing according to their understanding of African cultures. For instance, decapitation was understood to be too insulting to Muslims. Moreover, administrators were careful to organize the burial according to the religion of the executed, a sharp contrast with the mutilation and exposition of body parts used during the conquest.

As we lay out colonial understandings of “civilized” killing, we will contrast those with local reactions to executions, using minutes of executions and newspaper articles.