The super-soldier French style. Force Noire'.
Before the latter-day Chinese and their desire to genetically modify and create the super-soldier there was the French General Mangin.
"The black troops . . . have precisely those qualities that are demanded in the long struggles in modern war: rusticity, endurance, tenacity, the instinct for combat, the absence of nervousness, and an incomparable power of shock. Their arrival on the battlefield would have a considerable moral effect on the adversary." - - Mangin.
ACCORDING TO GENERAL MANGIN THE FRENCH COLONIAL AFRICAN TROOP FOR A VARIETY OF REASONS POTENTIALLY THE BEST IN THE WORLD.
Rusticity = able to live rough and do well for an extended period.
Further:
"Mangin asserted that Africans were endowed with a series of natural attributes that made them outstanding soldiers, including: (1) an ability to live in harsher climates than other races; (2) the capacity (owing to centuries of portage and migration) to carry heavy loads great distances; (3) a nervous system that was less developed than that of ‘whites’, which gave them greater resistance to pain and hence more willingness to shed blood in battle; (4) the patriarchal nature of African societies, which endowed them with a sense of discipline and hierarchy that was readily transferable to military life; and, finally, (5) the ‘selectionist’ argument that Africans were naturally suited to be excellent soldiers, since Africa had for centuries been a ‘vast battlefield’."
Mangin being heavily influenced by the British experience during the time of the Raj in India. Certain tribes and ethnicities in India considered martial races and recruited for the British Indian army. Martial race personnel thought by the British to make for a better combat troop.
Force noire' to a degree came to fruition but not exactly as General Mangin had hoped? Black African Senegalese troops did fight on the Western Front during WW1 but as far as I know their performance not so superior to anyone else.
coolbert.
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