The goumiers in the Second World War: history and colonial representation

The participation of many thousands of troops recruited in France’s overseas colonies, including many Moroccan infantrymen, known as ‘goumiers’, has been overlooked by historians and left out of accounts of significant battles of the Second World War. Yet Moroccan soldiers took part in some of the fiercest combat in the Mediterranean region, in Tunisia, in Sicily and Corsica, in the liberation of Marseille, and went on to liberate Paris and provide manpower for the invasion of Germany at great cost. Tracing the trajectory of the goumier units in the later years of the war, this essay recovers many details of their suppressed history, situating the memory of their exploits, along with the recollection of some of their less heroic deeds, within new frameworks of interpretation informed by the idea of empire, the historiography of race, and narratives of colonial exploitation.