French Reporters, Real and Fictional Transmitters of the Colonial Ideology (1890-1900) (original) (raw)

Colonial reportage crucially raises the issue of the reporter's political engagement. An envoy of his homeland, the reporter must inform his readership about the state of the colonies, but often does so by putting forward information that is not neutral, structured according to a commonly admitted axiology liable to federate a gathering and to participate in the construction of the national identity. This article interrogates the way in which the figure of the reporter takes charge of the dissemination of the colonial ideology in the 1890s and 1900s, a period still marked by the conquests in Africa and the need to establish and stabilize the French colonial empire in the 1890s. I focus on two major reporters, Pierre Mille (1864-1941) and Félix Dubois (1862-1945, and examine their reports on the African colonies serialized in the general press. These examples will be compared to that of their fictional equivalent, the reporter of the geographical novel, as found at the same time in the novels of Jules Verne, Paul d'Ivoi, and Léo Dex. Comparing reportages and novels makes it possible to highlight views and representations that are common to both genres. In so doing, it will be possible to show that reportages and novels featured witnesses committed to the colonial project while colonial culture was still in the making. These two types of stories share an educational perspective and contribute to building narrative axes that participate in the dissemination of a republican colonial ideology, of which the reporter, real or fictional, stands as a prime ambassador.