What made France into an imperialist nation, ruler of a global empire with millions of dependent subjects overseas? Historians have sought answers to this question in the nation?s political situation at home and abroad, its socioeconomic circumstances, and its international ambitions. But all these motivating factors depended on other, less tangible forces, namely, the prevailing attitudes of the day and their influence among those charged with acquiring or administering a colonial empire. The French Colonial Mind explores these mindsets to illuminate the nature of French imperialism. ø The first of two linked volumes, Mental Maps of Empire and Colonial Encountersøbrings together fifteen leading scholars of French colonial history to investigate the origins and outcomes of imperialist ideas among France?s most influential ?empire-makers.? Considering French colonial experiences in Africa and Southeast Asia, the authors identify the processes that made Frenchmen and women into ardent imperialists. By focusing on attitudes, presumptions, and prejudices, these essays connect the derivation of ideas about empire, colonized peoples, and concepts of civilization with the forms and practices of French imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors to The French Colonial Mind place the formation and the derivation of colonialist thinking at the heart of this history of imperialism.

Violence was prominent in France?s conquest of a colonial empire, and the use of force was integral to its control and regulation of colonial territories. What, if anything, made such violence distinctly colonial? And how did its practitioners justify or explain it? These are issues at the heart of The French Colonial Mind: Violence, Military Encounters, and Colonialism. The second of two linked volumes, this book brings together prominent scholars of French colonial history to explore the many ways in which brutality and killing became central to the French experience and management of empire. Sometimes concealed or denied, at other times highly publicized and even celebrated, French violence was so widespread that it was in some ways constitutive of colonial identity. Yet such violence was also destructive: destabilizing for its practitioners and lethal or otherwise devastating for its victims. The manifestations of violence in the minds and actions of imperialists are investigated here in essays that move from the conquest of Algeria in the 1830s to the disintegration of France?s empire after World War II. The authors engage a broad spectrum of topics, ranging from the violence of first colonial encounters to conflicts of decolonization. Each considers not only the forms and extent of colonial violence but also its dire effects on perpetrators and victims. Together, their essays provide the clearest picture yet of the workings of violence in French imperialist thought.

This book recovers the lost history of colonial Algeria’s communist movement. Meticulously researched – and the only English-language book on the Parti Communiste Algérien – it explores communism’s complex relationship with Algerian nationalism. During international crises, such as the Popular Front and Second World War years, the PCA remained close to its French counterpart, but as the national liberation struggle intensified, the PCA’s concern with political and social justice attracted growing numbers of Muslims. When the Front de Libération Nationale launched armed struggle in November 1954, the PCA maintained its organisational autonomy – despite FLN pressure. They participated fully in the national liberation war, facing the French state’s wrath. Independence saw two conflicting socialist visions, with the PCA’s incorporated political pluralism and class struggle on the one hand, and the FLN demand for a one-party socialist state on the other. The PCA’s pluralist vision was shattered when it was banned by the one-party state in November 1962. This book is of particular interest to students and scholars of Algerian history, French colonial history and communist history.

This is a pioneering, multi-empire account of the relationship between the politics of imperial repression and the economic structures of European colonies between the two World Wars. Ranging across colonial Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, Martin Thomas explores the structure of local police forces, their involvement in colonial labour control and the containment of uprisings and dissent. His work sheds new light on broader trends in the direction and intent of colonial state repression. It shows that the management of colonial economies, particularly in crisis conditions, took precedence over individual imperial powers' particular methods of rule in determining the forms and functions of colonial police actions. The politics of colonial labour thus became central to police work, with the depression years marking a watershed not only in local economic conditions but also in the breakdown of the European colonial order more generally.

The concept of mental maps is used in several disciplines including geography, psychology, history, linguistics, economics, anthropology, political science, and computer game design. However, until now, there has been little communication between these disciplines and methodological schools involved in mental mapping. Mental Maps: Geographical and Historical Perspectives addresses this situation by bringing together scholars from some of the related fields. Ute Schneider examines the development of German geographer Heinrich Schiffers’ mental maps, using his books on Africa from the 1930s to the 1970s. Efrat Ben-Ze’ev and Chloé Yvroux investigate conceptions of Israel and Palestine, particularly the West Bank, held by French and Israeli students. By superimposing large numbers of sketch maps, Clarisse Didelon-Loiseau, Sophie de Ruffray, and Nicolas Lambert identify "soft" and "hard" macro-regions on the mental maps of geography students across the world. Janne Holmén investigates whether the Baltic and the Mediterranean Seas are seen as links or divisions between the countries that line their shores, according to the mental maps of high school seniors. Similarly, Dario Musolino maps regional preferences of Italian entrepreneurs. Finally, Lars-Erik Edlund offers an essayistic account of mental mapping, based on memories of maps in his own family. This edited volume book uses printed maps, survey data and hand drawn maps as sources, contributing to the study of human perception of space from the perspectives of different disciplines. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Cultural Geography.

'The empires of the future would be the empires of the mind' declared Churchill in 1943, envisaging universal empires living in peaceful harmony. Robert Gildea exposes instead the brutal realities of decolonisation and neo-colonialism which have shaped the postwar world. Even after the rush of French and British decolonisation in the 1960s, the strings of economic and military power too often remained in the hands of the former colonial powers. The more empire appears to have declined and fallen, the more a fantasy of empire has been conjured up as a model for projecting power onto the world stage and legitimised colonialist intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. This aggression, along with the imposition of colonial hierarchies in metropolitan society, has excluded, alienated and even radicalised immigrant populations. Meanwhile, nostalgia for empire has bedevilled relations with Europe and played a large part in explaining Brexit.

Looking at decolonization in the conditional tense, this volume teases out the complex and uncertain ends of British and French empire in Africa during the period of ‘late colonial shift’ after 1945. Rather than view decolonization as an inevitable process, the contributors together explore the crucial historical moments in which change was negotiated, compromises were made, and debates were staged. Three core themes guide the analysis: development, contingency and entanglement. The chapters consider the ways in which decolonization was governed and moderated by concerns about development and profit. A complementary focus on contingency allows deeper consideration of how colonial powers planned for ‘colonial futures’, and how divergent voices greeted the end of empire. Thinking about entanglements likewise stresses both the connections that existed between the British and French empires in Africa, and those that endured beyond the formal transfer of power. Praise for Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa '…this ambitious volume represents a significant step forward for the field. As is often the case with rich and stimulating work, the volume gestures towards more themes than I have space to properly address in this review. These include shifting terrains of temporality, spatial Scales, and state sovereignty, which together raise important questions about the relationship between decolonization and globalization. By bringing all of these crucial issues into the same frame,Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa is sure to inspire new thought-provoking research.' - H-France vol. 17, issue 205