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Between 1940 and 1945 the French empire divided against itself. This book presents the events in the French empire in the 1940s, and traces the period of wartime French imperial division, setting it within the wider international politics of the Second World War. It discusses the collapse of France's metropolitan forces during the second week of June 1940, which became a calamity for the French empire. The final breakdown of the Anglo-French alliance during the latter half of 1940 was played out on the African continent, in heavily defended French imperial territory of vital strategic importance to Allied communications. The Vichy empire lost ground to that of the Charles de Gaulle's Free French, something which has often been attributed to the attraction of the Gaullist mystique and the spirit of resistance in the colonies. Indo-China was bound to be considered a special case by the Vichy regime and the Free French movement. Between late 1940 and 1945, the French administration in Indo-China was forced by circumstances to plough a distinctive furrow in order to survive intact. The book discusses the St Pierre and Miquelon affair, and the invasion of Madagascar, and deals with the issue of nationalism in North Africa, before and after the Operation Torch. The contradiction between the French commitment to constitutional reform and the few colonial subjects actually affected by it was echoed in the wartime treatment of France's colonial forces.
. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth 1 Fanon’s comment not only signifies the bond of solidarity between the Algerian struggle for independence and the Vietnamese success against the same French colonial forces, but also signals that transnational dimension which has been integral to decolonising
, 16 October 2006. 222 Post-migrant discourses 4 See ‘Les propositions du “contrat social et citoyen” ’, Nouvel Observateur, http://tempsreel.nouvelob.com, 28 February 2007; accessed 27 March 2007. 5 See Gemie (2006); I am grateful to Sharif Gemie for sharing this unpublished paper on the MIR with me. 6 ‘Nous sommes les indigènes de la République! . . .’ Appel pour les Assises de l’anti-colonialisme colonial. The choice of date for the Assises was deliberate – it marks the end of the Second World War but also the date of a massacre by the French colonial forces of
Split or independent Ragusa? The opulence of Ottoman Sarajevo? Would Yugoslavia's diplomatic and military assistance to the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale fighting French colonial forces retrospectively exempt the region from complicity in such a legacy? Or did the structures of knowledge, power and not-needing-to-know that have constituted ‘global white ignorance’ (Mills 2015 ) since the beginning of Atlantic slavery and the colonisation of the Americas permeate the Yugoslav region – and the rest of state socialist Europe – as they did the rest of the globe
Tassigny’s First French Army, which included Armée d’Afrique and Gaullist units, proved critical in dissipating intra-service tensions between erstwhile Vichyites, Giraudists and Free Frenchmen. 87 Although some personal rivalries persisted, the amalgamated French colonial forces in Italy and southern France in 1943–44 represented a tentative reconciliation between once divided
marines played a leading role in colonial conquest. But in July 1900 the navy formally handed over responsibility to the War Ministry for standing French colonial forces: the troupes coloniales, more often designated La Coloniale. 112 It seemed logical for the War Ministry to administer professional colonial regiments (Coloniale blanche) and colonial infantry (tirailleurs
intellectual over the man of action. The American Scouts also included a number of Filipinos who had only recently been fighting against the American occupation of their country. Even more remarkable was Mahomed Ben Nasser, a former spahi in the French colonial forces in North Africa, surely the only Arab to gain citizenship of the Transvaal. After quarrelling with his French