“The Forgotten of This Tribute”: Settler Soldiers, Colonial Categories and the Centenary of the First World War

This article uses the Centenary of the First World War to explore how colonial categories have been mobilized in memory projects. Focusing on “settler soldiers” from French Algeria, it argues that the Centenary continues a longstanding practice of attaching over-simplified singular identities to these men. Using untapped sources, it exposes the gap between these externally assigned labels and the more pluralistic and malleable identifications possessed and used by settler soldiers themselves. Restoring and historicizing the complex identifications of these settler soldiers sheds new light on how the history and memory of the French empire interweaves with that of the First World War, and the ongoing evolution of this relationship.