Cloth, Clothing, and Colonial Power

Clothing and textiles played prominent roles in France’s colonial endeavors in West Africa, serving as economic products, symbols of “primitive” cultures, and as sources of anxiety for officials who sought to control markets and enforce dynamics of power that required affirmation of French technological and cultural superiority over the colonized populations. These concerns came together in the very public contexts of international expositions, the periodic government-sponsored events that celebrated national identity and that were held in numerous European countries (and elsewhere) during their peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This exploration of cloth and colonialism focuses on the 1931 and 1937 expositions in Paris, where Afrique Occidentale Française was prominently featured in the colonial sections, and elsewhere at the events and in France’s broader cultural imaginary.