French colonial forces

[Patrice]

Yes it can be confusing that the "Infanterie de Marine" and "Artillerie de Marine" are colonial troops, not sailors. Their job was to fight overseas but they had nothing to do with sailoring.

An interesting example: When the French Navy decided to build a gunboat in Bamako to explore the river Niger, the officer in charge was a Navy officer (not a Marine), with French sailors and "laptots" (Senegalese sailors of the French Navy).

One of these Navy officers wrote a book and you can see the plan of a Niger gunboat at the end of his book on Gallica (the French National Library website):
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k104258n/f38.image.r=marine%20au%20niger%20caron.langEN

[former user]

excellent link, THX

Without wanting to hijack the thread, who knows of miniatures that can depict senegalese troops, mounted,walking or floating?

[gringo]

great thread..............

regards
Ged
www.gringo40s.com
www.gringo40s.blogspot.com
and 28mm ranges

[Galloping Major]

great thread..............

regards
Ged

certainly is 

[former user]

@Arthur, please one question about the black and white pic with the single senegalais:
it appears that the pants are darker than the tunic. the musette bag is darker too. The cut of the tunic is the same as in the coloured pic from my post before, and he has no sash

what colour could the light tunic be, white?

[yancey5]

Great topic, plenty of gaming opportunities between natives, British and Germans since neither harbored any trust for  the others.  Thanks for the photos!

[Arthur]

The main period I am looking at will be the 1870's.  I would also love to see pics of troops/police wearing zoauve style uniforms.

Ask and ye shall receive... 



The photo was probably taken in the early 1890's, possibly at the start of the Dahomey campaign. From left to right are a Senegalese tirailleur in full dress (not worn on campaign, see below), a Hausa tirailleur, a Dahomey civil guard and a Senegalese volunteer. The zouave-style trousers (then called pantalons turcs or pantalons orientaux in French) are either grey-white or grey, save for the Dahomey guard's which are red. Apart from the tirailleur in full dress, all wear the collarless single-breasted blue paletot which was the standard campaign dress for these units.    

The photograph below is one rare illustration of what tirailleurs actually wore in the field in the 1880s, i.e the M1868 dark blue paletot and grey or grey-white zouave trousers. The men were also issued with a khaki linen jacket cut along the same pattern as the paletot. After 1890, the oriental-style trousers were replaced with tighter and shorter breeches. This pic was taken in 1883 and shows soldiers of the Borgnis-Desbordes expedition in Niger. The men are still armed with 1866 Chassepot rifles : 



Generally speaking, the 1870's saw the French African colonial empire still in its infancy : the big thrust came during the 1880's under the influence of Léon Gambetta and Jules Ferry, so the French did not start raising additional native forces until the late 1880's. 

I was also wondering if you had any info on locally raised native troops/tribesmen and whether the French used any private commercial companies to administer her colonies such as the British South Africa Company.

There was a wide variety of native auxiliaries in the French colonial empire. Some, such as the gardes de cercles raised in the late 1890's were little more than glorified local constables while others such as the gardes indigènes effectively functioned as auxiliary tirailleurs. No private companies were involved in the French colonial scamble after 1880 : instead, the French created a pyramidal colonial structure run by metropolitan civil servants (often military men at first, then administrateurs coloniaux sent to Africa by the French colonial ministry).   

[Arthur]

@Arthur, please one question about the black and white pic with the single senegalais:
it appears that the pants are darker than the tunic. the musette bag is darker too. The cut of the tunic is the same as in the coloured pic from my post before, and he has no sash

what colour could the light tunic be, white?

The tirailleur in this picture wears the 1898 regulations uniform  (the photo is believed to have been taken around 1905) :



According to the 1898 regulations, Senegalese tirailleurs were supposed to be issued with a dark blue cloth paletot and a lighter flannel one also in blue. In effect, it seems that the 1889 khaki version of the paletot continued to be worn and a new khaki model was introduced in 1905 as a result, the latter being probably the one our tirailleur is wearing. It looks whitish in the pic but it was actually a light shade of khaki, the exact hue varying according to the degree of fading.

His breeches may be the 1898 blue canvas model : according to the 1898 regulations, tirailleurs were issued with dark blue full dress cloth breeches piped yellow, as well as two pairs of undress canvas breeches, one in white and one in blue. Alternatively, these trousers could also just be in a much darker shade of khaki than the jacket since the blue canvas breeches should only have been worn with the blue flannel paletot. It's hard to tell with any degree of certainty as some colours photograph oddly in old black and white pics. No idea about the musette's colour, but it was probably brownish canvas.  

The red sash does not appear to have been systematically worn outside of parades and ceremonial occasions. Here's another pic taken in 1910 and depicting a Senegalese tirailleur with his wife and child. Note the khaki breeches :

[Bryanbowdell]

Arthur,
thanks again, the info you have provided has given me some great ideas for a french colonial force.
Thanks

[smirnoff]

Brilliant Arthur, all this information in one place at last!

[Vonkluge]

Thank you sir.

I've been working on some Tonkin-ish forces. I'm using Scruby 25mm figures for IndoChina and converting their dervish into generic "Chinese" soldiers/pirates.

Works in progress.

Dam proud to see you using these "Scruby" figures!!! good on you! I'm sure "Jack" will be watching from the great wargaming table in the sky your efforts! I dropped by his old store in Cambia last year, nothing like it was 30 years ago..

[former user]

Thank You for the information

here again I learn the hard way how difficult research is if I don't know the language properly
Maybe You can clarify a bit more:

I always had understood that paletot is the double breasted short navy coat derived from a greatcoat (which paletot is supposed to mean). Now You name paletot what Osprey MAA 461 names cachou...
I understand that the primary research was in french and the latter word is a nickname, so translation misunderstandings have probably ocurred, but still I am very confused....
I am not asking this for the purpose of nitpicking, but to clarify my language limitation. I understood that french military jargon does not follow the normal way always  (bleue cerise etc), but still I would like to know if "paletot" is simply all jackets issued by the navy administration regardless of cut??

the other thing is about the pantalons orientaux which I know as seroual - from Your explanations I understand that these pants after 1890 were exempted from field wear and worn only for full dress/parade. Is this the case only for tirailleurs?

because there are pictures of zouaves in situations with "field" character, where not only a slightly wider pantalon is worn, but also the very wide seroual, here examples:


also here: http://www.histoire-image.org/pleincadre/index.php?i=1002&id_sel=1812

in 1915??
all with the doubt of picture posing and propaganda, but still

[Patrice]

what Osprey MAA 461 names cachou...

"Cachou" is not a garnment it is a cloth colour, and the plant with which the colour is made ("catechu" in English ?)

[former user]

I understood it is meant to be a nickname, and maybe a wrong translation....

[Arthur]

Ah, the wonderful world of C19th French military terminology...  

Yes, it is easily confusing if you're not a French native speaker - and sometimes it is even if you are. I'll take it part by part for the sake of clarity :

I always had understood that paletot is the double breasted short navy coat derived from a greatcoat (which paletot is supposed to mean). Now You name paletot what Osprey MAA 461 names cachou...
I understand that the primary research was in french and the latter word is a nickname, so translation misunderstandings have probably ocurred, but still I am very confused....

This is a simple one : a paletot is a garment, cachou is a colour. As you know, the paletot originated in the naval troops, being the distinctive double-breasted tunic of the naval infantry. When the tirailleurs' trademark jacket was introduced in 1868, it was called a paletot because it was made of the same dark blue cloth (molleton) as the naval infantry's paletot and looked a bit like it (although it was cut differently, being collarless and single-breasted). Cachou is the somewhat quaint name given to one of the shades of khaki the French experimented with in the 1880's and 1890's. Learning from the British colonial experience, the French army tried to come up with its own brand of khaki with varying degrees of success, before settling on kaki in the early years of the 20th century. Cachou was a relatively light shade of khaki and some illustrations show a slightly rosy tinge to it, though that may not reflect what the uniforms looked like in the field.  

the other thing is about the pantalons orientaux which I know as seroual - from Your explanations I understand that these pants after 1890 were exempted from field wear and worn only for full dress/parade. Is this the case only for tirailleurs?

That is correct : the tirailleurs gradually replaced the turkish/oriental trousers with the tighter breeches shown above during the 1890's, but the zouaves proudly retained their distinctive serouels until WW1.