{"id":534,"date":"2015-02-23T10:58:47","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T10:58:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/?p=534"},"modified":"2015-02-23T10:58:47","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T10:58:47","slug":"helene-de-gobineaus-noblesse-dafrique","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/?p=534","title":{"rendered":"H\u00e9l\u00e8ne de Gobineau\u2019s Noblesse d\u2019Afrique"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.port.ac.uk\/centre-for-european-and-international-studies-research\/members\/professor-margaret-majumdar.html\">Prof Margaret Majumdar<\/a>,\u00a0Professor of Francophone Studies, University of Portsmouth<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>December 2014\u2019s edition of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.monde-diplomatique.fr\/2014\/12\/MOBE\/51040\"><em>Le Monde diplomatique <\/em><\/a>discusses the newly republished edition of H\u00e9l\u00e8ne de Gobineau\u2019s <em>Noblesse d\u2019Afrique<\/em> by Pr\u00e9sence africaine (Paris, 2014), along with other works relating to the role of African colonial troops in the two world wars.<\/p>\n<p>Originally published in Paris in 1946 by Fasquelle \u00e9diteurs, this book relates the experiences and stories of African soldiers during the Second World War. These were told to H\u00e9l\u00e8ne de Gobineau during her time as a volunteer in prisoner-of-war camps and hospitals where she came into contact with captured African soldiers, many of whom would die of disease, especially tuberculosis. They are remarkable for the stories of individual courage in the fight to preserve a basic human dignity, while not devoid of humour and everyday concerns.<\/p>\n<p>H\u00e9l\u00e8ne de Gobineau (1903-1958) studied ethnology at the Mus\u00e9e de l\u2019Homme in Paris and was married to the grandson of Arthur de Gobineau, author of <em>Essai sur l\u2019in\u00e9galit\u00e9 des races humaines<\/em>. She clearly did not share the latter\u2019s views on racial inequality and praised the strength and humanity of the African soldiers who took part in the Second World War, as well as their desire for equality and justice. Her book documents the discriminatory treatment meted out by the Nazis, as well as the contradictions besetting the French colonial military authorities in their attitudes towards the African troops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prof Margaret Majumdar,\u00a0Professor of Francophone Studies, University of Portsmouth December 2014\u2019s edition of Le Monde diplomatique discusses the newly republished edition of H\u00e9l\u00e8ne de Gobineau\u2019s Noblesse d\u2019Afrique by Pr\u00e9sence africaine (Paris, 2014), along with other works relating to the role &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/?p=534\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":536,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions\/536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}