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To: lqclamar
1. The muslim northern French Equatorial colonies were Vichy controlled for the first half of the war and contributed far less to the allied side than non-Vichy colonies.

False. Chad, which had that largest proportion of Muslims, was the very first colony to support de Gaulle. Also, Chad and Cameroon were the most populous colonies and also had the highest concentration of Muslims in French Equatorial Africa.

2. The bulk of the FFL came from the De Gaulle controlled colonies of Cameroon, Gabon, Chad, Middle Congo, and Ubangu-Chari.

You would have to prove that. If you can make this claim, you must know the number of troops from Equatorial Africa and West Africa.

That's nice and all, yet you've still failed to give country by country numbers. Surely if you know the source, you also know the numbers they are referring to. Do you not?

Echenberg does not give numbers for each colony but did give the colony-by-colony breakdown of West Africa's contributions to the French army, which he claims are representative. He is a respected historian and I trust his judgement. If you don't, you know what files to consult in the Senegalese archives.

It says little about actual numbers and NOTHING about muslim numbers.

It gives the breakdown of troops recruited by colony. Using the CIA Factbook's religious demography that you accept, we can calculate the percentage of Muslims:

Upper Volta 22.01% of recruits x 50% Muslim == 11.005% Muslim recruits

French Sudan 20.49% x 90% == 18.441%

Senegal 16.52% x 94% == 15.5288%

Guinea 15.77% x 80% == 12.616

Côte d'Ivoire 14.30% x 35% == 5.005

Dahomey 8.4% x 20% == 1.68%

Niger 1.84% x 80% == 1.472%

Mauritania 0.67% x 100% == 0.67%

Giving a figure of 66.4178% Muslim recruits.

Second, please describe what these units did, what their jobs were (were they a legion of soldiers of a legion of cooks?), where they were assigned, and what battles they fought in.

Approx. 65,000 West African troops defended France against the German invasion. West African troops also fought Nazis in North Africa during Germany's 1939-1940 offensive. They served in the FFL contingent in the Italian campaign of 1944 and were gradually replaced with European troops (de Gaulle's choice to prevent the capital from being liberated by soldiers from the African colonies, thus protecting France's "national prestige") as the FFL moved towards Paris and absorbed Resistance fighters.

366 posted on 01/25/2007 4:45:27 AM PST by zimdog
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To: zimdog
False. Chad, which had that largest proportion of Muslims, was the very first colony to support de Gaulle. Also, Chad and Cameroon were the most populous colonies and also had the highest concentration of Muslims in French Equatorial Africa.

The only falsehood is your misrepresentation of my argument. I pointed out that Chad was 50% muslim and acknowledged them as a De Gaulle colony (and the only muslim De Gaulle colony, BTW) before you even posted so much as a single statistic. Cameroon's muslim population was 15.8% in 1995. That's hardly a high "concentration." Only Chad had significant numbers of mahometans among the De Gaulle colonies.

You would have to prove that.

The De Gaulle colonies are documented historical fact. I am simply pointing out that there was only one muslim colony among them. Echenberg does not give numbers for each colony but did give the colony-by-colony breakdown of West Africa's contributions to the French army, which he claims are representative.

All of that is nice, except that it draws mainly from colonies that were latecomers to the French war effort. Meanwhile the French Christians of the De Gaulle colonies had already been fighting for 3 years.

381 posted on 01/25/2007 9:53:54 AM PST by lqclamar
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