French colonial forces

[Bryanbowdell]

I am really enjoying the detail in this thread. 

What sort of uniforms would the colonial gendarmes have worn?  And what about the French "sepoys" in their Indian colonies?

[Arthur]

Ah well, Patrice beat me to it  

Can't recall ever seeing the word cachou being used as a nickname for a piece of clothing. Looking at MAA 461, it says on page 43 'being issued with this collarless 'paletot' in a khaki shade known as cachou, as used by the Tirailleurs Sénégalais that the navy had raised in West Africa'. So cachou definitely refers to the colour here, rather than the garment.  

Incidentally this is another reason why the tirailleurs's jacket was called a paletot : though they were not naval troops in the strictest sense, they were attached to the Ministry of Navy until 1900 and used naval terminology. Their French officers wore naval infantry uniforms while the native African C.O's had zouave jackets with straight white trousers in the early 1890's, and standard naval infantry tunics later.  

[former user]

THX
so misreading and naval jargon.

What exactly is cachou as a colour?

Edit: if I enter the word into google image search, a blonde lady in need of clothing shows up.... I definitely need some french lessons...

ah, finally
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cachou_%28couleur%29
now this doesn't look much like khaki of any kind.....
again puzzled and in need of explanation
or maybe a book title please?

[Patrice]

a blonde lady in need of clothing shows up....

So what do you complain about?
Yes "cachou" also means old-fashioned sweets … and an actress choose it for name.

What exactly is cachou as a colour?(…)now this doesn't look much like khaki of any kind...

Arthur is certainly more specialist than myself. This cloth colour was obtained by mixing it with something else. I would say it's blue-brownish… however, once the French army is accustomed to a name, the exact meaning can change.

 ...the modern French army green is still called "kaki" (or more officially "vert kaki") although it is not khaki at all… and is also called "vert caca d'oie", and "kaki dehors, caca dedans", look for translation if you dare.  

[former user]

my french is not that bad  
must have been a french staff member who invented GW vomit green 

if we come to pants now, I was wondering what colour the "fawn" for officers pants could have been.
the wiki colour code gives everything from pale reddish to yellowish brown

[Arthur]

What exactly is cachou as a colour?

The brown shown in the wikipedia entry is way too dark. I'm no cachou expert, but the wiki blurb states that there are several varieties of cachou, including one extracted from the acacia tree and used to stain wooden furniture dark brown. I suspect that's the one shown there.

The military shade was much lighter and is frankly a bit of a mystery to me as I have seen it interpreted in different ways. It is sometimes rendered as a rosy/orangey hue of light khaki like this :



Or this (last pouch on the right marked 9e ART) :



Then again the M1886 naval infantry helmet shown below also has a cachou cover and the hue is much duller with a distinct yellow tinge (due to fading, perhaps ?) :



To muddy the waters a bit further, here's another M1886 sun helmet with a later khaki cover. Call me colour-blind if you will, but the difference with the cachou cover shown above is less than startling :



Bottom line : at the risk of sounding very un-academic, I wouldn't get too hung up about the exact shade of cachou, especially as garments were probably prone to quick fading due to frequent washing and permanent exposition to sunlight.  

[former user]

academia is a bout curiosity  (IMHO)

but THX for the clarification, it does indeed make more sense to me now, if we assume that the first cachou was achieved when the dyed the white fatigues and covers, producing the typical reddish khaki drill of the french colonial uniforms. we have the M1891 cover for the M1886 mellon or the dyed M1890.
The colour is formalized with the M1901 colonial uniform (apart from the experiments with the bleu ciel in Madagascar).
Then comes December 1914 with khaki-moutarde and the lighter version for tropical issue, with the helmet now dyed similarly.
But the colour might still be called cachou, because - tradition.... After all, they still wore the anchor badge.

Does this make sense?

[Patrice]

Yes I think.

I haven't seen "cachou" associated with woollen cloth (Arthur please correct me if I'm wrong?), it's always "en toile cachou". In French "toile" means it's cotton or linen or hemp (in this case, cotton). Traditional dyes used for wool don't hold well to these materials, so modern dyes had to be invented. It's not surprising if the name could design different shades as experiments progressed.

What sort of uniforms would the colonial gendarmes have worn?

You wouldn't see many gendarmes around, except as military police. I suppose they wore a white uniform (they certainly did in the interwar) with dark collar patches. I'm not sure if they also wore kaki in the field.

[former user]

"cachou" associated with woollen cloth , it's always "en toile cachou". In French "toile" means it's cotton or linen or hemp (in this case, cotton).

I would agree here, the only heavy woolen cloth to be expected where toile was used would have been the blue greatcoats and the dress uniform. No point of dyeing these cachou. Plus, I read the senegalese troops in 1914 in France had problems before receiving woolen cold-weather uniforms, so I expect they did not have any.

Plus, chemical dyes began to be used since the invention of artificial Alizarin in the late 19th century. If the small assumption I have put up is true, the original cachou field-dye should have been replaced by artificial dyes as soon as it was officially issued, whether 1891 with the helmet cover or 1901 with the colonial uniform, from then on very different shades should be expected as seen in the picture with the equipment.

However, upon returning to the original questions asked in the thread (apologies), the primary issue for the troupes coloniales (be it marsouins or tirailleurs)  would have been blue, augmented with white fatigues or local replacements adapted to the situation, with occasional experiments (like the jeans blue serge in Madagascar or the green painted helmet in Tonkin) or occasionally white navy tropical issues.

actually pretty much the same as with other colonial armies, comes to mind.

[Arthur]

academia is about curiosity  (IMHO)

It's also sometimes about nit-picking : I should know, being an academic by trade 

Back to the gendarmerie, it's a complex subject and one that isn't terribly well covered. The terminology can sometimes  be a bit confusing as well since not all gendarmes in French colonial Africa were necessarily white metropolitan gendarmes as we usually understand it. Bear also in mind that the Gendarmerie d'Afrique didn't serve in Sub-Saharan Africa but only in Algeria (it has been established in 1835 using French metropolitan personnel, with a native auxiliary corps added in 1860). The French gendarmes wore uniforms similar to those worn in metropolitan France with a few concessions made to the Algerian climate, such as the casquette d'Afrique, while the native gendarmes wore turkish-style (i.e zouave) uniforms. below are a rendition of a French gendarme in the 1840's and native gendarmes from the 1860's/70's in full dress.




These, however, would not be seen in French Western and Equatorial Africa, which relied on their own gendarmerie. There isn't much on the subject for the 19th century (French and African historians have understandably focused more on the 20th century and analysed the role of the police as an instrument of colonial rule), but I have been able to dig up what follows, using Patrick Papa Dramé's L'impérialisme colonial français en Afrique : enjeux et impacts de la défense de l'AOF 1918-1940 as my source.

The existence of the Senegalese gendarmerie actually pre-dates that of the tirailleurs sénégalais : the first two units of native gendarmes were created in 1843 in Saint-Louis du Sénégal and in Gorée, their primary function being to fight off raiding parties of Mauritanian marauders. Since they needed to be highly mobile, they were designed as a mounted quick reaction force and were usually known as Senegalese spahis. They received most of their initial training from North African spahis, who probably provided the inspiration for the red uniforms as well. The corps became an official gendarmerie force in 1854, although it was disbanded in 1890 and then re-raised in 1899. The Senegalese spahis originally weren't so much law enforcement as an auxiliary military force and their numbers were further expanded between 1919 and 1940, when they became a more conventional mounted police force.

They wore red uniforms with bulky turkish-style trousers, their headgear being either a white sun helmet or a red fez (probably worn in undress) :

 



Re the presence of French metropolitan gendarmes in Sub-Saharan Africa, I couldn't find much on the subject. They were certainly present as a police force : the gendarmerie du Sénégal was created in 1899 and native auxiliaries were meant to "make relations between the gendarmerie and the native population easier", which implies the presence of white French personnel. I haven't been able to find much about their uniforms, though I suspect they probably wore variations on colonial naval dress since the metropolitan uniform was totally unsuited to the African climate.     

[former user]

always worth waiting for Your posts @Arthur

Thx for things never heard of before!

is there a book where one can read all that interesting stuff?

[Arthur]

None that I am aware of, unfortunately.

The information I am posting here is pieced together from a variety of sources. Most of the uniform info (though not all of it) was culled from a series of articles by Louis Delpérier (a noted authority on the French second empire and third republic) and published some 25 to 30 years ago in Uniformes. These pieces were models of research work, being quite thorough and relying exclusively on primary sources. These Uniformes back issues are now long out of print, unfortunately, though the magazine still exists. I also drew quite a bit from a selection of history books, some of which are available via Google - it's amazing how much info can turn up via a well-aimed google search.

[Bryanbowdell]

What about French sailors, would they have made the same contributions to colonial campaigns that the Royal Navy made ie: the naval brigades

What sort of rifles would have been used by the native and auxiliary troops?  And what sort of automatic weapons and artillery pieces would have been used in the colonies?

Cheers

[former user]

the development of new weapons ocurred at a very fast pace in the 2nd half of the 19th C, therefore You have to know which campaign You want to refer to
here is an incomplete overview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Groundbreaking_French_weapons_of_the_19th_century
but a useful start
only thing I can tell is that the Lebel was used for the first time in Madagascar 1995 by colonial troops, and before it should have been the Grass or Chassepot before, also with native troops converted breechloaders by the Tabatiere system can be expected instead.
Models do not always distinguish this very well (or it is hard to do in 28mm): it would be anyway difficult to tell percussion and Tabatiere apart, same goes for Chassepot and Gras. Only the Lebel is distinctive with the two part wooden stock.

I personally would start the other way round with the models and then check out where and when You can use them. Otherwise it can get very theoretical and pointless - unless You want to sculpt them of course.

[Bryanbowdell]

I'm looking at doing a pretty generic French colonial force, so converted breech loaders will probably do the trick.

I am trying to decide on whether or not to get a gatling gun etc