Abstract: The study of excerpts from five reading books intended for African allophone children between the end of the nineteenth and the first third of the twentieth century makes it possible to delineate the history of these fascinating objects located in a system of historicity that has disappeared. While these texts were initially intended to be read to learn a non-native language (French) and to anchor or transmit exogenous or already hybridized values, they give rise to multiple interpretations. These textbooks thus offer keys to grasping the complexity of the processes that construct the relationship between civilization, language, and culture. Indeed, they were able to serve both colonial propaganda and the pedagogical ideals of the teachers to promote a form of assimilation or integration.

Résumé : L’étude d’extraits de cinq livrets de lecture destinés aux enfants africains allophones entre la fin du dix-neuvième et le premier tiers du vingtième siècle permet de délinéariser l’histoire de ces objets fascinants, inscrits dans un régime d’historicité disparu. Par cette opération historiographique, alors qu’ils sont initialement destinés à être lus pour apprendre une langue non maternelle (le français), pour ancrer ou transmettre des valeurs exogènes ou déjà hybrides, ils donnent lieu à de multiples interprétations. Ces livrets de lecture offrent ainsi des clés pour saisir la complexité des gestes qui construisent le rapport entre civilisation, langue et culture. Ils ont pu en effet servir à la fois à la propagande coloniale et aux idéaux pédagogiques des enseignants, promouvoir une forme d’assimilation ou d’intégration.

Keywords: History of the dissemination of French. Reading books in French for allophones. Memory-history. Colonization. Acculturation.

Mots-clés: Histoire de la diffusion du français. Livres de lecture français pour allophones. Mémoire-histoire. Colonisation. Acculturation.

Introduction

In the twenty-first century, looking at the French-language reading books for foreigners that were published and used between the end of the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth centuries (the “twilight zone” that Hobsbawn identified as the age of empire) constitutes a fascinating or even exotic trip as much as it does a real epistemological adventure. Admittedly, the risk of hyperconstructivism, which “fills” the holes of history, is high in these situations involving temporal intersections.