Role Of France Research Articles

Ferdinand Oyono'sFlüchtige Spur Tundi Onduaand Germany's Cameroon

Almost anyone who reads ferdinand oyono'sune vie de boy(1956) in any language will conclude that the novel focuses on French colonialism. But is it only about colonialism by the French? An analysis of the many German resonances throughout the text—as well as an engagement with the German translation ofUne vie de boy—suggests that it is about much more. Oyono'sUne vie de boyenables the reader to reflect on Europan colonialism more broadly beyond the role of France. The novel offers a lens onto Germany's colonial history because Cameroon was a former colonial “protectorate” of the German empire. This historical context, therefore, placesUne vie de boyin both national and transnational contexts. While my reading addresses possible connections or similarities between French and German colonialism, the publication in German itself adds an important layer to the understanding ofUne vie de boyin Germany. In consideration of the political activism of the novel's German publisher, Johann (Hans) Fladung (1898-1982), the publication of Oyono's novel can be read as a criticism of German historiography in the 1950s, which frequently avoided Germany's colonial history, a history that has been linked with the crimes of the Holocaust (Zimmerer).

French Africa policy: Sarkozy's legacy, and prospects for a Hollande Presidency

This article assesses the record of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Sub-Saharan Africa. It finds that significant reforms were made to France's role on the continent, most notably in the re-structuring, and reducing, of France's military presence. However expectations of less military intervention were met, as the French armed forces have been active in three very different crises — in Côte d'Ivoire, Chad and the West African Sahel. Equally, Sarkozy did not make a clear break with past practices of support for undemocratic leaders, nor did he put an end to the exceptional status of Africa in French diplomacy. The article goes on to consider African perspectives on France's role, both popular resentment and elite level strategies. Finally, it provides a preliminary assessment of French policy in the first 100 days of Francois Hollande's presidency.

The Europeanization of France's foreign policy towards the Middle East conflict – from leadership to EU-accommodation

France's prominent role in Europe's policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict represents an interesting case study for the evolving research on Europeanization. While France's involvement in the CFSP is frequently described as a case of national projection through the EU, this view needs qualification. Proposing a novel conceptual categorization of different member state approaches to European foreign policy cooperation, this article shows that France's involvement in Europe's Middle East policy has gone through different phases. Guided by de Gaulle's politique arabe, France assumed a ‘leadership’ role in Europe's common foreign policy, leaving a strong mark on its collective diplomacy. Since the 1990s, however, a number of complementary changes have weakened France's capacity for leadership, challenging well-established French foreign policy positions. France's response to the mounting constraints of EU-level cooperation has oscillated between ‘re-nationalization’ and efforts to ‘facilitate’ a common European approach, displaying a considerable degree of pragmatism and tactical adaptation.

Qui s'excuse s'accuse… An Analysis of French Justifications for Intervening in Côte d'Ivoire

The official French justifications for the 2011 intervention in Côte d'Ivoire fall into three categories: existence of a Security Council mandate; protection of French nationals and others; and France's respect for democracy. The respect for democracy justification was dropped when ex-president Gbagbo was arrested. The French role in the arrest itself was categorically denied by French officials, while Operation Licorne's strict respect for Security Council mandates and the imminent need for protection of various categories of persons were underlined. Democracy and human rights remerged in the President Sarkozy's concluding policy-oriented speech in order to justify France's honourable role in reinforcing these principles in Africa.

A War of Words over an Image of War

During the Algerian War, films and published photographs documenting brutalities committed by French forces were exceedingly rare, due to censorship and strict controls on journalistic access to the military. However, a dramatic exception to this state of affairs came at an early moment in the war, after a Fox Movietone cameraman captured footage of a French gendarme as he summarily executed an Algerian with a bullet in the back. When the journal L'Express printed frames from the film in December 1955, a scandal ensued that implicated the sitting government in Paris and stoked French anti-Americanism. This article explores the reasons for the scandal, its anatomy, and its longer-term implications for French representations of the violence of the Algerian conflict. It argues that widespread French assumptions about the appropriateness of France's role in Algeria ultimately served to neutralize the story told by the images, even as they were recognized as incontrovertible evidence of atrocity.

The View from Paris: ‘Latinity’, ‘Anglo-Saxonism’, and the Americas, as discussed in the Revue des Races Latines, 1857–64

This article analyses the construction of concepts of ‘Latinity’ and ‘Anglo-Saxonism’ in the context of French debates on the Americas in the 1850s and 1860s. It argues that this imperialist narrative, developed against the backdrop of the French intervention in Mexico and the US Civil War, is pertinent to an understanding of the cultural system of representation of empire more generally. Paying particular attention to the Revue des Races Latines (1857–64), which promoted the idea of the Americas as the central battlefield of a more global struggle between Latin and Anglo-Saxon ‘races’ especially forcefully, it contends that the supposedly transnational concept of ‘Latinity’ came to define nationalist aims and to underpin imperialist visions about France's role in the world.

The role of France in the Rwandan genocide – By Daniela Kroslak

The role of France in the Rwandan genocide – By Daniela Kroslak

INTRODUCTION: France's ‘return’ to NATO: implications for transatlantic relations

The paper looks at France's return to NATO, looking at the impact of its ongoing reintegration in the alliance's military structure from a strategic, a political and an operational perspective. We address three main questions: (1) How will France's reintegration affect other NATO countries? This question will be answered from the perspectives of Canada, the UK, Germany and the United States; (2) How will France cope with the transition? French experts will assess the French debate on NATO, the operational dimension of France's reintegration of the command structure and France's role in transatlantic relations; (3) How will the decision affect the future prospects for allied action? This question will be addressed by looking at the nuclear dimension of NATO, burden-sharing, NATO's transformation and the impact of France's reintegration on European defence.

‘Bid’ for Altalena: France's Covert Action in the 1948 War in Palestine

Based on documents recently discovered in French archives, the article sheds new light on the role of France, especially of its Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, in providing arms and ammunition to the Etzel – the pre-state underground Zionist movement in Israel. The ship Altalena, which was sunk by the newly-formed Israel Defence Forces in the midst of the 1948 War of Independence, remains a centre of historiographical and political controversy in Israel. France's role in this affair is examined in the wider context of its clandestine intelligence, military and diplomatic assistance to Israel, as well as its rivalry with Britain in the Middle East. The article argues that Bidault's decision was intended to undermine Britain's secret support during the war in Palestine for King Abdallah of Jordan's occupation of Jerusalem. Documents, including a report of a committee of inquiry of the French Ministry of Defence into the Altalena affair, are annexed.

Policing the Post-Colonial Order: Surveillance and the African Immigrant Community in France, 1960-1979

By the early 1960s, an increasing number of Africans migrated to France from their former colonies in West Africa. Most were men hoping to gain employment in several different industries. Their settlement in Paris and other cities signaled the start of "post-colonial" African immigration to France. While scholars have analyzed several facets of this migration, they often overlook the ways in which France's role as a colonial power in West Africa impacted the reception of these immigrants after 1960, where surveillance played a critical role. Colonial regimes policed and monitored the activities of indigenous populations and anyone else they deemed problematic. The desire to understand newly arriving immigrant groups and suspicion of foreign-born populations intersected with the state's capacity to monitor certain groups in order to regulate and control them. While not physically violent, these surveillance practices reflected the role that symbolic violence played in the French government's approach to this post-colonial immigrant population.

The Role of France in the Rwandan Genocide, by Kroslak Daniela

The Role of France in the Rwandan Genocide, by Kroslak Daniela

From Louis Feuillade to Johnny To: Olivier Assayas on the future of French Cinema

From Louis Feuillade to Johnny To:Olivier Assayas on the future of French Cinema Louise Shea Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas, 1996) centres on an aging French director's remake of Louis Feuillade's crime serial Les Vampires (1915). Matters are complicated, however, when the director, René Vidal (Jean Pierre Léaud), decides to cast a Hong Kong actress, Maggie Cheung, in the role of France's great silent star, Musidora. What began as a fairly straightforward project, the revival of a silent-era classic, turns into a complex reflection on the origins of French cinema and its future in an increasingly globalized world. Two questions demand attention: Why Feuillade? and, Why Hong Kong? In a film about the status of France's national cinema in the 1990s, why make Feuillade's crime serial stand for the quintessential French film of the silent era? And why look to Hong Kong to renew French cinema? Critics have by and large overlooked the first question, and responded to the second by focusing on the figure of Maggie Cheung, analyzing her as the fetishised, oriental other or as a symbol of France's failed encounter with the world. I hope to complicate the question by asking not, "Why Maggie Cheung?" but, "Why Hong Kong cinema?" and more specifically, "Which Hong Kong cinema?" I show that although Irma Vep explicitly associates Hong Kong cinema with Johnny To's 1993 cult action film, Tong fond sam hop/The Heroic Trio, it wilfully misreads Johnny To's fantasy film by filtering it through the lens of the more classical wu xia pian (swordplay) films of King Hu, thereby transforming the popular Heroic Trio into an art film. I argue that by cross-breeding Feuillade with Johnny To/ King Hu, Assayas creates an alternative to Hollywood's own attempt to cross Hong Kong and European cinema, a hybrid represented in Irma Vep by the action film Hard Target (1993), Hong Kong director John Woo's first Hollywood film, starring Jean Claude Van Damme. [End Page 121] Why Feuillade? The filming of Irma Vep coincided with the centennial celebration of the birth of cinema, and in such a context, one can readily see how Feuillade might stand for the (distinctly French) splendor of early filmmaking. Grace An identifies his work with "the glorious past of French cinema," (An 2000, 299) while Dale Hudson associates the remake with "a larger project of reasserting national patrimony" (Hudson 2006, 220). Yet the choice of Feuillade as the representative of French cinema strikes me as more than a little odd. Feuillade enjoyed a brief moment of glory under the Surrealists, but his vast cinematic production (over 800 films) had been largely forgotten by the early 1930s. It was not until the 1950s, when Henri Langlois and the Cinémathèque française restored a number of his prints and promoted his legacy, that he once again gained the attention of spectators and critics alike.1 In other words, Feuillade, as we shall see, is not so much an icon of early French cinema as a complex and disputed sign, whose status within the canon of French film was neither immediate nor uncontested. Given this history, wouldn't the Lumière brothers or Méliès have provided a more apt subject for a celebration of the Frenchness of cinema? Why Feuillade? There are, I would argue, two related answers to this question. Both concern the disputed history of Feuillade's integration into the canon of great French directors, and revolve around two debates that lay at the heart of France's early attempts at defining a national cinema, debates that find deep resonance in Assayas' work. The first concerns the respective merits of popular and art house cinema; the second the relationship between French cinema and its global competition. Keen to elevate cinema above its status as a fairground entertainment and crown it as the septième art, early French film critics took it upon themselves to demarcate the films of Feuillade, which they considered popular forms of entertainment, from what one might call the art films of the day. They took Feuillade to task for pandering to the tastes of the masses...

Arrogance or ambivalence? Rethinking France's role in a Europe of twenty-seven

France's role in an expanded EU of 27 member states is often presented as one of French arrogance, domination and hegemony. Christian Lequesne's book challenges this view, arguing that France has lacked the confidence and ambition to lead in an expanded EU. Its difficult relationships with new member states, and its ambivalent support to enlargement in the 1990s, are the product of a country unsure of its own role in Europe and in the world. Lequesne's book should serve as a starting point for reflecting about the impact of 1989 on European integration, the nature of the EU enlargement process and the reasons behind France's hesitant embrace of globalization.

The European Rapid Reaction Force: Implications for Democratic Accountability

This study aims to provide an overview of democratic accountability aspects of the European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF), taking into account that the development of an operational European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) and the further fine tuning of the ERRF are part of a dynamic process. In this context, this study examines aspects of the ERRF where a growing gap in democratic accountability is identified and recommends measures of bridging this gap. Given that the ERRF is still at its initial stages and has not been officially utilized in any international crisis, the author borrows a narrow definition of democratic accountability developed by Robert Behn. According to this definition, a governing body is accountable when it explains and justifies its specific actions or inactions. In this framework, the author addresses the questions of how the European Union (EU) acts; what it has set to accomplish on issues relating to the ERRF; and, who it answers to.Accordingly, this study looks at the divergent and vague definitions of the Petersberg Tasks that have prevailed among the EU member states as well as within the European Union. The paper concentrates primarily on the role of France and the UK, the leading states in ESDP issues, without which an EU military operation could not take place. It proposes prescribing precise limits to the Petersberg Tasks, both in terms of geographical reach and the intensity of the operations. Another aspect of democratic accountability of the ERRF is assessing EU decision-making processes and coordination mechanisms. In this context, we address such questions as, how do the European Parliament (EP), European Commission and Council of the European Union work together on defense issues? What are relations like between the EP and the newly (trans)formed Interim European Security and Defense Assembly? More importantly, how do EU citizens feel about efforts at militarizing the EU? The last section explores the transparency of the ERRF from an international perspective. It therefore assesses EU-NATO relations; considers the possibility of creating an autonomous EU planning apparatus; looks at relations between the EU and non-EU 'partners'; deals with American concerns regarding EU military capabilities; and, addresses the relevance of a UN mandate in EU military operations.

France-Africa Policy and the Formation of the Union for the Mediterranean: Implications for a United Africa

In May 2007, President Nicolas Sarkozy promised to reconsider every possible issue relating to French-Africa relation. France's policing role on the continent has been under increasing criticism from both African countries and the French public opinion. Many in France, including President Sarkozy argued that France's involvement on the continent should be meant to keep a balance between the cost and the risk. However, the focus of this article is to appraise this new paradigm shift in France-Africa policy and to show how it has informed the formation of the Union for the Mediterranean. The article will also critically examine how such policy shift could impact on the AU search for a political union for the continent.

The French betrayal of Rwanda

After the Holocaust, the victorious Allies pledged never again and enshrined their promise in the UN Convention on Genocide. Daniela Kroslak explores what the responsibility to prevent genocide entails by asking the following questions about what happened in Rwanda in 1994: To what extent can external actors, such as the French government, be held responsible for not preventing or suppressing genocide? Why did outsiders remain passive while Hutu extremists perpetrated genocide against their compatriots? How can the French government's responsibility be evaluated? What was France's role in the chilling events that took place in Rwanda? Focusing on three key themes French awareness of the impending disaster, French involvement before the genocide, and French diplomatic efforts and military capacity to change the tide Kroslak concludes that never again must be upheld by action and accountability.

A real break or reluctant parting? France, the United States and the Spanish Question, 1946

In 1946, the French government imposed sanctions on the authoritarian Franco regime in Spain. France was the only western state to take action on Spain that moved beyond rhetorical condemnation. This action was preceded and followed by intense private and public efforts to convince the United States and Great Britain to impose sanctions too. Why could France not accept the western alliance's commitment to the status quo when it was evident this was the preferred policy of the Foreign Minister Georges Bidault? When it came to the Spanish Question, the significance of Resistance rhetoric and imagery about an idealized new world competed with a realistic assessment of France's new role tied to the United States. The result was an awkwardly constructed French policy which undermined, at least for a moment, France's place in the emerging Cold War alliance.

Monetary Blocs on the Periphery: Small State Choice or Great Power Hegemony?

Over the past 40 years, enduring regional monetary institutions have been created in West and Central Africa, Southern Africa, the East Caribbean, and Western Europe. Short-lived or failed regional currencies can be found in East Africa, the post-Soviet successor states, Central America, and the Persian Gulf. Using the role of France in the franc zone as evidence, one common argument is that most regional efforts are merely by-products of hegemonic powers' ambitions and interests – imposed from above by great powers rather than chosen from below by newly independent states. By examining the overall pattern of regional currency institution-building during the Cold War and after, I show that the hegemonic argument is misleading. I also use archival evidence for an in-depth examination of Britain's influence on Southeast Asian cooperation during and after decolonisation. I find that extra-regional hegemons have played only a slight role outside the franc zone, and, even in the franc zone, French influence had its limits. Broadly comparing across all world regions – francophone Africa, anglophone Africa, Central America, the rouble zone, Southeast Asia, etc. – the common denominator is not hegemonic imposition, but small power choices.

Mitterrand's France, the End of the Cold War, and German Unification: A Reappraisal

France's role is often overlooked in the abundant literature on the end of the Cold War. In addition, most accounts tell of the country's alleged lack of understanding for the democratic revolutions in the East and of its supposed attempt to block German unification. Yet archival research, now becoming possible, which allows for a thorough reappraisal, categorically invalidates most of this. In spite of concerns over the risk of instability – which were shared by other key players – French diplomacy in fact played an important and constructive role in the events of 1989–91, not least through the relaunch of European integration which led to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. The French case provides a useful reminder that the dominant narrative of these events – with its almost exclusive focus on the superpowers (the US to begin with) and its lack of interest in European actors or factors – needs to be revised.

Philopolemology?

Philopolemology? Joshua Kates (bio) Review of: Badiou, Alain. Polemics. Trans. Steve Corcoran. London: Verso, 2006. Reading Alain Badiou's Polemics, one might initially have the sensation of having wandered into a conversation not meant for oneself. Polemics consists of an English translation of a series of three slender French books, Circonstances I-III, which themselves contain a good deal of previously published material. Two heretofore unpublished lectures (the meatiest pieces of the lot) have also been included. Except for these last two chapters, almost all the assembled pieces either pertain to topical controversies (the wars in Yugoslavia, in Iraq, the response to Jean-Marie Le Pen's entry into the second round of the French presidential elections), or initiate such controversies (a series of articles on the word "Jew" that raised quite a furor in Paris at the end of 2005). They are thus specific to the French scene (where for example the role of France in the first Iraq war looked quite different at the time than it did here). Nevertheless, the sense that one is witnessing a conversation already underway and not intended for present auditors appears wrong. Alain Badiou--do not most of us know it already?--is a philosopher of situations, of circumstances, of the event. Par excellence he seems to be the occasional philosopher, as well as the philosopher of the occasion. In addition, he is also the proponent of a new universalism and a novel and unexpected return to truth.[1] The daringness, the gamble of Badiou's thought indeed consists in his resuscitation of the most standard philosophical reference points--truth, the universal--even as he recasts these to meet concerns that might seem to disqualify them. Truth and universals are wedded to themes to which they appear allergic: indetermination, the void, and most of all the event. Accordingly, Badiou's is a return to truth, a standing by, a loyalty to this reference point, that also reckons on the pervasive questioning of truth that so many now take for granted. On a "practical" or political plane, Badiou's work is equally innovative. His political initiative, in fact, turns on a similar balance between the old and the new. For Badiou's politics are at once militant--some of the most stout and innovative that we have--yet they are by no means Marxian, nor, even, dare I say, revolutionary. Working in the aftermath of twentieth-century Marxism, Badiou aims at a new understanding of political activity that can be the successor of this radical politics that shaped Badiou's early years and so much of the last century. This endeavor gives these essays their singular importance. Badiou's radicalism's stamp most shows through in Polemics in what Badiou stands against: left-liberal democracy in both its national and international forms. Though an affirmative strand of his thought exists, which he himself would highlight, what is plainest on Polemics' surface is that against which all these essays war. The most provocative essays in Polemics are the final series, however, which gesture toward what politics (if not political order) Badiou would affirm in the place of the existing one. They mark an especially critical engagement, as Badiou no longer supports a recognizably revolutionary Marxian program (though he also denies that the predicates "Marxist" or "Marxian" carry any univocal semantic charge). In these two concluding pieces, Badiou returns to his Marxist roots, and reviews the history of the Paris commune and its subsequent Marxian interpretation for possible indices of a very different future radical politics. The novelty of Badiou's politics as a whole lies in its rejection of any embrace of the particular (including, for example, of every politics of an identitarian stripe), stemming from its insistence on a role for truth in politics, even as it denies that this truth can in any way be comprehensive, as in traditional Marxism. Such navigation between particularity and totality leaves Badiou closer to modern representative democracy than he often seems to realize. This form of political organization also rejects the premise that we possess all or no political truth, while itself continuing to show fealty to universals. Thus, the very features that make Badiou's...