ABSTRACT
In the Spring of 1943, the marriage between an African doctor and midwife perturbed and perplexed the colonial administration of French West Africa. The marriage of these civil servants, who registered it according to “Catholic custom” pushed the boundaries acceptable marriage practices for African subjects by too closely resembling European marriage. This chapter explores the regulation of marriage by the French colonial state and its implications for citizenship in 1940s West Africa. Drawing on the correspondence around the marriage, the jurisprudence on metropolitan and French colonial marriage, and the life trajectories of the couple, this chapter argues that marriages of African Catholics upset the colonial order by challenging the arbitrary and racialized distinction between metropolitan French citizen and African subject.
