This paper examines the racialization of “the Gauls” in French colonial Vietnam and in the ancient Roman world. I explore two contesting uses
of the Gauls from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, one which
universalizes the Gauls as a paradigm of assimilation, and the other which
racializes them to limit integration and to maintain the colonial hierarchy.
Alongside the modern source materials, I analyze representations of the Gauls
in Cicero’s speeches (Pro Fonteio and De provinciis consularibus) and Caesar’s
Commentarii de Bello Gallico as case studies of Roman racializing rhetoric. This
paper demonstrates that parallel readings of racialization in modern and ancient contexts help us better understand not only how race is made and remade,
but also how we can work towards countering this sinister process.
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