Title: The French North African Crisis: Colonial Breakdown and Anglo-French Relations, 1945-62
Abstract: The French North African Crisis: Colonial Breakdown and Anglo-French Relations, 1945-62. By Martin Thomas. New York: St. Martin's Press, and London: Macmillan Press, 2000. Pp. xv, 287. £45.00. A half-century after the beginning of the French-Algerian war, an observer might question the value of publishing yet another book on the eight-year struggle that ended in Algerian independence in 1962. Yet Martin Thomas's book offers a convincing rationale for continuing research and reflection on the French-Algerian war. For one thing, recently declassified archives allow for a more textured narrative of the decisions and dynamics of the conflict. In addition, the book underscores indirectly what many analysts of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq have pointed out: the tragic dynamics of insurgency and counterinsurgency in Algeria between 1954 and 1962, in which a technologically superior military force won the battles and ended up losing the war, should be pondered as a potential scenario by twenty-first-century imperial powers. But even without the powerful resonance between Algeria in the late 1950s and Iraq in the early twenty-first century, Thomas's book makes illuminating reading for a student of twentieth-century global history. The French North African Crisis complements nicely Irwin W. Wall's recent France, the United States, and the Algerian War. Whereas Wall focuses on the American connection to France and the Algerian war, Thomas focuses on the British connection within a broader North African context. Both scholars masterfully make use of recently declassified archives to paint a richly complex and convincing portrait of the making and shaping of British, American, and French policies regarding North Africa within a multifaceted and changing postwar global order. The clarity of the Thomas book, in both organization and narrative, is outstanding, all the more impressive in light of the continual twists and turns in French political life as regimes came and went with bewildering speed. Thomas's book combines meticulous archival research and detailed documentation with up-to-date familiarity with secondary literature in European languages. Between the incisive introduction and conclusion are seven chapters organized chronologically: (1) the postwar attempt to re-impose French imperial power from 1945 to 1949, (2) British and American responses to growing demands for Moroccan and Tunisian independence, (3) British responses to the first phase of the Algerian war from 1954 to 1958, (4) the Algerian war placed within the context of the Suez Crisis of 1956 and its aftermath, (5) the impact of the Algerian war on France's international role up to 1958, (6) the Algerian war within the context of the Cold War, and (7) the interplay between De Gaulle's France, Britain, and the Algerian war from 1958 until independence in 1962. The central focus is on British perceptions of and reactions to French decolonization in North Africa. A superficial acquaintance with twentieth-century global history might lead one to assume a similarity in outlook by two European powers in imperial decline, resulting in a natural British empathy for France in coping with its Algerian dilemma. …
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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