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THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA IN THE IMPERIAL AND POST-COLONIAL HISTORIOGRAPHY OF FRANCE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2007
Abstract
The imperial and post-colonial history of France has inspired an ever-growing body of literature in the last decade. Moving well beyond traditional political and economic narratives, these histories present a rich portrait of the policies, peoples, and perceptions that shaped the colonial and post-colonial experience in France and overseas. This article looks at how Arab communities and nations figure within the historiography on the period since the First World War. The first of three sections examines works devoted to culture and imperialism that span the twentieth century, with special emphasis on the differences between the scholarship emerging from French and Anglo-Saxon milieus. The second section looks at how recent histories have used the interwar years as a unit of analysis for understanding French colonialism in the Middle East and North Africa. Algeria, as the cornerstone of the empire and the theatre of the bloodiest colonial war for independence, forms the basis of the third section, which considers new conceptions of nationalism and decolonization.
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References
1 See for example: Emmanuelle Sibeud, Une science impériale pour l'Afrique? La construction des savoirs africanistes en France, 1878–1930 (Paris, 2002); J. P. Daughton, An empire divided: religion, republicanism, and the making of French colonialism, 1880–1914 (Oxford, 2006); Pascal Blanchard and Sandrine Lemaire, eds., Culture coloniale: la France conquise par son empire, 1871–1931 (Paris, 2004).
2 Gregory Mann, Native sons: West African veterans and France in the twentieth century (Durham, NC, 2006); Daughton, Empire divided. For classic works see: Christopher M. Andrew and A. S. Kanya-Forstner, France overseas: the Great War and the climax of French imperial expansion (London, 1981); Jean Mayer et al., Histoire de la France coloniale, i: Des origines à 1914 (Paris, 1991); Jacques Thobie et al., Histoire de la France coloniale, ii: 1914–1990 (Paris, 1990).
3 André Nouschi, Les armes retournées: colonisation et decolonisation françaises: essai (Paris, 2005); J. F. V. Keiger, France and the world since 1870 (London, 2001).
4 Sibeud, Science impériale; Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture coloniale; Pascal Blanchard and Sandrine Lemaire, eds., Culture impériale: 1931–1961: les colonies au cœur de la république (Paris, 2004).
5 Todd Shepard, The invention of decolonization: the Algerian War and the remaking of France (Ithaca, NY, 2006), p. 4.
6 Arabic sources are largely absent from this discussion because, to my knowledge, there is not yet a significant body of Arabic literature that engages with these debates. For Syria the closest we find to a discussion of culture and imperialism is Abdul Karim Rafeq's study of the Syrian University under the French mandate. Abdul Karim Rafeq, Tārīkh al-Jāmi ‘ah al-Sūrīyah: al-bidāyah wa-al-numūw, 1901–1946: awwal jāmi ‘ah ḥukūmīyah fī al-waṭan al- ‘Arabī: bi-munāsabat al- ‘īd al-mi'awiī al-dhahabī li-Kullīyat al-Ṭibb wa-al- ‘īd al-tis ‘īnī li-Kullīyat al-Ḥuqūq (The history of the Syrian University: beginning and growth, 1901–1946: the first government university in the Arab homeland, on the occasion of the centenary of the Medical Faculty and the ninetieth anniversary of the Law Faculty) (Damascus, 2004). I am less familiar with North African historiography in Arabic, but the bibliography of James McDougall's recent work on Algeria suggests that the situation for North Africa is similar. James McDougall, History and the culture of nationalism in Algeria (Cambridge, 2006).
7 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, NY, 1978); Edward Said, Culture and imperialism (New York, NY, 1993).
8 Martin Evans, Introduction to Empire and culture: the French experience, 1830–1940 (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 1–25; Kathryn Robson and Jennifer Yee, Introduction to France and ‘Indochina’: cultural representations (Lanham, MD, 2005), pp. 2–3.
9 Tony Chafer and Amanda Sackur, Promoting the colonial idea: propaganda and visions of empire in France (Basingstoke, 2002), p. 3. MacKenzie's work which inspired this one is: John M. MacKenzie, Propaganda and empire: the manipulation of British public opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester, 1984). He deals with Said's Orientalism in Orientalism: history, theory and the arts (Manchester, 1995). For more complete reviews of Chafer and Sackur than can be provided here, see: Todd Shepard, H-France Review, 2.114 (Nov. 2002), http://h-france.net/vol2reviews/shepard.html (23 June 2007); and Jennings, Eric, ‘Review article: visions and representations of French empire’, Journal of Modern History, 77 (Jan. 2005), pp. 701–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Robert Aldrich, ‘Abroad and home: colonial Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., in France’, Modern and Contemporary France, 14 (May 2006), pp. 235–42.
10 Tyler Stovall and Georges Van den Abbeele, French civilization and its discontents: nationalism, colonialism, race (Oxford, 2003), pp. 1–16; Jennings, ‘Visions and representations’, p. 720.
11 Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, and Françoise Vergès, La république coloniale: essai sur une utopie (Paris, 2006), p. 7. For similar contentions see: Nicolas Bancel, ‘L'histoire difficile: esquisse d'une historiographie du fait colonial et postcolonial’, in Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel, and Sandrine Lemaire, eds., La fracture coloniale: la société française au prisme de l'héritage colonial (Paris, 2005), p. 85; Pascal Blanchard and Sandrine Lemaire, Introduction, to Pascal Blanchard and Sandrine Lemaire, eds., Culture post-coloniale: traces et mémoires colonials en France (Paris, 2006), pp. 7, 9, 10.
12 Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture coloniale; Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture impériale.
13 Blanchard and Lemaire, Introduction, to Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture coloniale, p. 8. This is the main point of Blanchard, Bancel, and Vergès, République coloniale, p. 34.
14 Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, Introduction, to Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, p. 13.
15 The exception to this is Jean-Marc Moura, ‘Les influences et permanences coloniales dans le domaine littéraire’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture post-coloniale, pp. 166–75.
16 Blanchard and Lemaire, Introduction, to Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture post-coloniale, p. 9; Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, Introduction, to Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, p. 23; Blanchard and Lemaire, Introduction, to Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture coloniale, p. 8.
17 Stovall and Abbeele, French civilization, Part 3.
18 Eric Deroo, ‘Mourir: l'appel à l'empire’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture coloniale, pp. 109, 112–14.
19 Alain Ruscio, ‘Littérature, chansons et colonies’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture coloniale, pp. 67–80; Olivier Barlet and Pascal Blanchard, ‘Rêver: l'impossible tentation du cinema colonial’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture coloniale, pp. 119–36; Nicolas Bancel and Pascal Blanchard, ‘Civiliser: l'invention de l'indigène’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture coloniale, pp. 149–62.
20 Paul A. Silverstein, Algeria in France: transpolitics, race, and nation (Bloomington, IN, 2004).
21 Philippe Dewitte, ‘L'immigration: l’émergence en métropole d'une élite africaine’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture impériale, pp. 201–12; Daniel Hémery, ‘Décoloniser la France: le “syndrome indochinois”’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture impériale, pp. 175–200.
22 Pascal Blanchard et al., ‘L'immigration: l'installation en métropole des populations du Maghreb’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture impériale, pp. 213–24.
23 Jean-Luc Einaudi, ‘Le crime: violence coloniale en métropole’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture impériale, pp. 225–36.
24 Blanchard and Lemaire, Introduction, to Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture impériale, pp. 9, 27–9.
25 Dominique Vidal, ‘De l'histoire coloniale aux banlieues’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture post-coloniale, p. 176. Similar contentions can be found in Blanchard and Lemaire, Introduction, to Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture post-coloniale, p. 16; Suzanne Citron, ‘L'impossible revision de l'histoire de France’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture post-coloniale, pp. 45–52; Pierre Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire (vols. i–iii, Paris, 1984–92). The exception is Charles-Robert Ageron, ‘L'exposition coloniale de 1931’, in Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire, i (Paris, 1984), pp. 561–94.
26 Marcel Dorigny, ‘Aux origins: l'indépendance d'Haïti et son occultation’, in Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, p. 45.
27 Benjamin Stora, ‘Quand une mémoire (de guerre) peut en cacher une autre (coloniale)’, in Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, p. 58.
28 Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, and Sandrine Lemaire, ‘Les enseignements de l’étude conduite à Toulouse sur la mémoire coloniale’, in Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, pp. 248–50; and ‘Annexe 2: sythèse des principaux resultats de l’étude de Toulouse’, in Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, p. 271.
29 Bancel, ‘L'histoire difficile’, pp. 88–9; Bancel, Blanchard, and Vergès, République coloniale, p. 21.
30 Bancel, ‘L'histoire difficile’, p. 85; Blanchard and Lemaire, Introduction, to Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture post-coloniale, p. 11.
31 Bancel, ‘L'histoire difficile’, pp. 86, 88.
32 Bancel, Blanchard, and Lemaire, ‘Enseignements de l’étude conduite à Toulouse’, pp. 253–4.
33 Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, Introduction, to Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, p. 14.
34 Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, Introduction, to Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, pp. 16–18.
35 Robert Aldrich, ‘Le musée colonial impossible’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture post-coloniale, pp. 91–4; Sarah Frohning Deleporte, Trois musées, une question, une République’, in Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, pp. 105–11; Herman Lebovics, Bringing the empire back home: France in the global age (London, 2004), ch. 5, passim.
36 Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, Introduction, to Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, pp. 16–17; Aldrich, ‘Musée’, pp. 97–8; Lebovics, Bringing the empire, pp. 171–7.
37 Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, Introduction, to Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, p. 18; Sandrine Lemaire, ‘Colonisation et immigration: des “points aveugles” de l'histoire à l’école?’, in Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, pp. 94, 96–9; Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, Introduction, to Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, pp. 17–18; Vidal, ‘De l'histoire coloniale’, p. 184; Sandrine Lemaire, ‘Histoire nationale et histoire coloniale: deux histories parallèles’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture post-coloniale, pp. 53–68; Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, ‘Sur la rehabilitation du passé colonial de la France’, in Blanchard, Bancel, and Lemaire, eds., Fracture, pp. 121–8.
38 Vincent Geisser, ‘L'intégration républicaine: réflexion sur une problématique post-coloniale’, in Blanchard and Lemaire, eds., Culture post-coloniale, pp. 162–3.
39 Martin Thomas, The French empire between the wars: imperialism, politics and society (Manchester, 2005); Gary Wilder, The French imperial nation-state: negritude and colonial humanism between the two world wars (Chicago, 2005).
40 Jacques Cantier and Eric Jennings, eds., L'empire colonial sous Vichy (Paris, 2004); Nadine Méouchy and Peter Sluglett, eds., The British and French mandates in comparative perspectives (Leiden, 2004).
41 Thomas, French empire, pp. 137–45, ch. 5, passim. An exception to this is Gwendolyn Wright's work on urban design, which compares Morocco, Madagascar, and Indochina. Gwendolyn Wright, The politics of design in French colonial urbanism (Chicago, IL, 1991). Thomas does use primary research in his discussion of education in Tunisia.
42 Thomas, French empire, pp. 21–2, 27–8.
43 Ibid., pp. 62–7, 38, 40–5.
44 Ibid., ch. 7, passim.
45 Ibid., pp. 297–305.
46 Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial citizens: republican rights, paternal privilege and gender in Syria and Lebanon (New York, 2000); Nadine Méouchy, ed., France, Syrie et Liban, 1918–1946: les ambiguïtés et les dynamiques de la relation mandataire (Damascus, 2002).
47 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, pp. 2–3; Méouchy, Introduction to France, Syrie et Liban, pp. 17–33.
48 See, for example, Prosser Gifford and William Roger Louis, eds., France and Britain in Africa: imperial rivalry and colonial rule (New Haven, CT, 1971).
49 D. K. Fieldhouse, Western imperialism in the Middle East, 1914–1958 (Oxford, 2006).
50 Rashid Khalidi, Concluding Remarks to Meouchy and Sluglett, eds., Mandates, p. 695.
51 Ibid., p. 700.
52 On the Middle East see: Dueck, Jennifer M., ‘Educational conquest: schools as a sphere of politics in French mandate Syria, 1936–1946’, French History, 20 (2006), pp. 442–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Dominique Trimbur, ‘L'action culturelle française en Palestine dans l'entre-deux-guerres’, in Alain Dubosclard et al., eds., Entre rayonnement et réciprocité: contributions à l'histoire de la diplomatie culturelle (Paris, 2002), pp. 41–72. On North and South America see: Gilles Matthieu, Une ambition sud-américaine: politique culturelle de la France, 1914–1940 (Paris, 1991), and Robert R. Young, Marketing Marianne: French propaganda in America, 1900–1940 (New Brunswick, NY, 2004).
53 Cantier and Jennings, Introduction, to Cantier and Jennings, eds., L'empire colonial sous Vichy, p. 7.
54 Eric Jennings, ‘La politique coloniale de Vichy’, in Cantier and Jennings, eds., L'empire colonial sous Vichy, pp. 14–15.
55 Jacques Cantier, ‘Un enjeu essential: Vichy et les jeunes dans l'empire français’, in Cantier and Jennings, eds., L'empire colonial sous Vichy, pp. 97–9. The same lacuna is evident in a 2003 work on youth movements in the empire, notwithstanding the fact that these enterprises gained considerable prominence in Syrian and Lebanese politics as of the 1930s. Nicholas Bancel, Daniel Denis, and Youssef Fates, De l'Indochine à l'Algérie: la jeunesse en mouvements des deux côtés du miroir colonial, 1940–1962 (Paris, 2003). On the scout movement in the Levant see Dueck, Jennifer M., ‘A Muslim jamboree: scouting and youth culture in Lebanon under the French mandate’, French Historical Studies, 30 (2007), pp. 485–516CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 Daughton, Empire divided.
57 Serge La Barbera, ‘L’église d'Afrique face au nouveau régime’, in Cantier and Jennings, eds., L'empire colonial sous Vichy, pp. 287–304.
58 Colette Zytnicki, ‘La politique anti-sémite du regime de Vichy dans les colonies’, in Cantier and Jennings, eds., L'empire colonial sous Vichy, pp. 155, 171–5.
59 Jennings, ‘Politique coloniale’, pp. 25–7.
60 Laurent Grison, ‘Le service des œuvres françaises à l'étranger et les juifs sous Vichy’, in Alain Dubosclard et al., eds., Entre rayonnement et réciprocité: contributions à l'histoire de la diplomatie culturelle (Paris, 2002), pp. 73–84.
61 McDougall, Culture of nationalism, p. 2.
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