Les juristes d’outre-mer entre orientalisme et anthropologie. « Étrangers assimilés aux indigènes » et « métis » dans le façonnage de l’ordre colonial (xixe-xxe siècles)

Abstract

Since the second half of the 19th century, lawyers and jurists who specialize in Co-lonial Law seem intent on integrating more extra-juristic knowledge emanating from the social and natural sciences into their discourse and their practice. This attitude manifests itself even more pronouncedly when adjudicating on the relations between French people and indigenous people, especially in cases that deal with hybrids and with cases at the margin, cases that define the bounds of applicability. As specialists in overseas law, did the jurists use this added knowledge in their quotidian practice? What was the structure of the discourse between these jurists and other scientists? Can we trace the effect of these structures on their work? This article deals with these issues by investigating the use of the category of foreigners who go native and the category of metis by the lawyers of the Third Republic in France. We explore the means by which knowledge acquired from Orientalists and physical anthropologists is embedded into the scaffold and design of their work.

Keywords

• race
• anthropologie
• orientalisme
• métis
• Troisième République
• étrangers assimilés aux indigènes