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In the twenty years between the end of the First World War and the start of the Second, the French empire reached its greatest physical extent. At the end of the First World War, the priority of the French political community was to consolidate and expand the French empire for, inter alia, industrial mobilisation and global competition for strategic resources. The book revisits debates over 'associationism' and 'assimilationism' in French colonial administration in Morocco and Indochina, and discusses the Jonnart Law in Algeria and the role of tribal elites in the West African colonies. On the economy front, the empire was tied to France's monetary system, and most colonies were reliant on the French market. The book highlights three generic socio-economic issues that affected all strata of colonial society: taxation and labour supply, and urban development with regard to North Africa. Women in the inter-war empire were systematically marginalised, and gender was as important as colour and creed in determining the educational opportunities open to children in the empire. With imperialist geographical societies and missionary groups promoting France's colonial connection, cinema films and the popular press brought popular imperialism into the mass media age. The book discusses the four rebellions that shook the French empire during the inter-war years: the Rif War of Morocco, the Syrian revolt, the Yen Bay mutiny in Indochina, and the Kongo Wara. It also traces the origins of decolonisation in the rise of colonial nationalism and anti-colonial movements.
Air policing was used in many colonial possessions, but its most effective incidence occurred in the crescent of territory from north-eastern Africa, through South-West Arabia, to North West Frontier of India. This book talks about air policing and its role in offering a cheaper means of 'pacification' in the inter-war years. It illuminates the potentialities and limitations of the new aerial technology, and makes important contributions to the history of colonial resistance and its suppression. Air policing was employed in the campaign against Mohammed bin Abdulla Hassan and his Dervish following in Somaliland in early 1920. The book discusses the relationships between air control and the survival of Royal Air Force in Iraq and between air power and indirect imperialism in the Hashemite kingdoms. It discusses Hugh Trenchard's plans to substitute air for naval or coastal forces, and assesses the extent to which barriers of climate and geography continued to limit the exercise of air power. Indigenous responses include being terrified at the mere sight of aircraft to the successful adaptation to air power, which was hardly foreseen by either the opponents or the supporters of air policing. The book examines the ethical debates which were a continuous undercurrent to the stream of argument about repressive air power methods from a political and operational perspective. It compares air policing as practised by other European powers by highlighting the Rif war in Morocco, the Druze revolt in Syria, and Italy's war of reconquest in Libya.
Four distinct rebellions shook the French empire between the wars. The Rif war in northern Morocco and the Syrian revolt originating in the autonomous state of the Jabal Druze were major uprisings that had some claim to be national rebellions. They were suppressed only by the deployment of overwhelming French military firepower. The Yen Bay mutiny in
of the Ruhr in Germany and the Rif War in Morocco. In 1923 French troops occupied the Ruhr, following Germany’s failure to pay war reparations. The issue polarised French opinion, and the PCF campaigned heavily against the occupation. The PCF also opposed the Rif War, which began in 1919 when Spain attempted to conquer the Riffians. In July 1921 Abd el-Krim defeated the Spanish army in Morocco and in
techniques of colonial control. The first section of the chapter takes the Rif war in Morocco and the Druze revolt in Syria as its main examples. The second section deals with the Italian Empire in Africa, its chief concerns being the war of reconquest in Libya and the invasion of Abyssinia. Air power in Morocco and Syria Spanish imperialism in Morocco had a
, until Moroccan soil has been fully liberated’. 24 It seemed at last as though the PCF was fully embracing the Comintern’s anti-colonial agenda but, in reality, much of the PCF hierarchy was reluctant to lend the campaign its full support. Senghor threw himself wholeheartedly into the campaign against the Rif War, appearing at countless rallies alongside French Communists, particularly Doriot and Paul Vaillant-Couturier, the latter of whom he may have known through the pacifist Association Républicaine des Anciens
This volume aims to disclose the political, social and cultural factors that influenced the sanitary measures against epidemics developed in the Mediterranean during the long nineteenth century. The contributions to the book provide new interdisciplinary insights to the booming field of ‘quarantine studies’ through a systematic use of the analytic categories of space, identity and power. The ultimate goal is to show the multidimensional nature of quarantine, the intimate links that sanitary administrations and institutions had with the territorial organization of states, international trade, the construction of national, colonial, religious and professional identities or the configuration of political regimes. The circum-Mediterranean geographical spread of the case studies contained in this volume illuminates the similarities and differences around and across this sea, on the southern and northern shores, in Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Italian, English and French-speaking domains. At the same time, it is highly interested in engaging in the global English-speaking community, offering a wide range of terms, sources, bibliography, interpretative tools and views produced and elaborated in various Mediterranean countries. The historical approach will be useful to recognize the secular tensions that still lie behind present-day issues such as the return of epidemics or the global flows of migrants and refugees.
issues. It must be remembered, however, that only in times of acute imperial crisis, in 1924–25, in 1930–31, in 1936–37, and again in 1939, did these debates figure large in metropolitan political culture. On one such occasion, during 1925–26, the conjunction of the Rif war in northern Morocco and a major rebellion in French Syria put colonial counter-insurgency on the front pages of the
of Abd el-Krim in the Rif War, the Great Syrian Revolt and even during the Marseilles dock strike of 1938.110 Indeed, Senegalese troops had already been used to repress agitation against conscription in South Constantine from November 1916 to January 1917. For local Algerians, 1916–17 became known as the ‘years of the blacks’.111 The French authorities felt more confident using colonial troops in the repression of mutinies, exploiting ethnic divisions between French and colonial troops. The Commander of the France sent a message to the Admiral to ready a company of
French to remove these areas from pre-existing Islamic sharia codes that had placed them under the sultan and ulama administration. Controlling the ‘tribes’ would also help the French check the rise of Moroccan nationalism and pan-Arabism in the wake of the Rif War. Naively, Mohammed V signed the dahir , triggering an outcry from nationalists opposed to this French attempt to administer these territories independently of the protectorate and, more importantly, the Moroccan nation and central government they were imagining. Nationalist leaders such as Mohammed Allal