French Rule Research Articles

Islam, Purity, and Modernity

From the 1930s to the 1950s, the Mzab region in the north of the Algerian Sahara, then under French rule, was shaken by controversies over the consumption and lawfulness of European goods. Historians typically analyze these debates as a form of cultural resistance to colonization or as a sign of the allegedly difficult adaptation of “Islam” to “modernity.” They single out two types of reaction: that of self-proclaimed “reformist” scholars and that of “conservatives,” caricatured as shoring up a barren tradition. Based on the case of the Mzab and on a wide range of Islamic legal documents, this article opens up a new perspective on the relations between Islam, modernity, and colonialism, demonstrating that other logics were also at work. For the Islamic scholars involved, the most important issue at stake was the purity of their community and its preservation in a context of cultural and political uncertainty. Using the tools of Islamic law, both advocates and detractors of these “innovations” shaped a particular vision of their community and its boundaries. By bringing together colonial and Islamic sources, and drawing on both colonial and Islamic studies, this article challenges a reading of the modern history of Islam based on notions such as modernity and reform, which were essentially instrumental in these debates. It also moves away from a historiography that is blind to the internal complexity of these societies, drawing attention to the multiple rationales at work in colonized North Africa.

Rethinking Sacred Monarchy from a Spanish Perspective

ABSTRACT In histories on kingship, Spain seems to live up to its reputation of being different. Whereas sacred monarchy, as epitomized by the thaumaturgical English and French rulers, was the ideal of premodern kingship, Spanish monarchs were, as historian Teófilo Ruiz bluntly put it, “unsacred.” Critics countered that Iberian monarchs were sacred, they just manifested sacrality differently, not with miracles but with ceremonies. Modern historians and anthropologists have seen sacrality as a source of power based on evidence from royal propaganda and political theology, which they consider representative of a premodern worldview. Surveying rulers from antiquity to their present, Christian as well as non-Christian, in Europe, across the Mediterranean, and beyond, writers of all persuasions saw claims to miraculous powers and divinity as one answer to a question rulers faced everywhere: What should be the role of religion as an instrument of authority? From this broad perspective, Spanish difference was not a diversion from an ideal but a local answer to this question, just as sacred kingship, rather than a universal model, was another answer limited to Northern Europe. Ultimately, these observations support Carlo Ginzburg’s assertion that the encounter between different cultural traditions can open “a profound and unexpected viewpoint on reality.”

The Yen Bay Rebellion (1930) and internal security policy in French Indochina

The article contents an analysis of the French experience of anti-colonial struggle in the era of Interbellum in the Indochina region. Special attention is devoted to the degree and speed of the response of the French colonial administration and the metropolis to the events taking place. The article presents the characteristics of French military thought regarding the specifics of conducting combat operations against the rebels using aviation and native units. Attention is focused on the problem of the loyalty of the Vietnamese people, their attitude to French rule. The main fears of the French in connection with the growth of Vietnamese national identity as a threat to the colonial order are revealed. The importance of the events in Yen Bai is emphasized from the point of view of further measures by Paris to ensure internal security in the Indochina region. The changes in the national composition of the French colonial army in Indochina are shown. The uprising affected not only the army, but also the political police of France – «Sûreté». The work shows that the uprising did not receive universal support from the local population. The reaction of a part of French society to the events in Yen Bai is analyzed. Special attention is paid to the personality of Pierre Pasquier, Governor-General of Indochina, who personified the conservative part of the French colonial bureaucracy, whose attitude towards local peoples in the Interbellum era rather complicated relations between the metropolis and dependent territories. On the other hand, attention is drawn to the impact of the events in Yen Bai on changes in both the composition and leadership of the driving political force of the revolutionary struggle in Indochina. It was at this time that the National Party of Vietnam lost its leading position in the vanguard of the anti-colonial struggle to the Communist Party of Indochina.

Каталония в рамках Испанской монархии: от Католических королей до войны за испанское наследство

Catalonia maintained broad autonomy for 200 years after the unification of Castile and Aragon at the end of the 15th centu-ry. It was determined both by historical background and by the political situation on the Iberian Peninsula. Ever since joining the Crown of Aragon in the 12th century, Catalonia had self-government, which was guaranteed after the marriage of Isabella of Castile and Fernando of Aragon. Their and their successors’ attempts to unify the subject lands were not con-sistent, since there was no urgent need for the centralization. Castile and its colonies provided sufficient resources for for-eign policy. After the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, these resources were no longer enough, and the Spanish monarchs began to pursue a more active centralization policy. Catalonia responded with an uprising, which led to its transition under the French rule. After ten years of struggle, Philip IV managed to win back almost the entire rebellious region. Despite the treason, the Spanish monarchy decided to maintain Catalan privileges in order to ensure the loyalty of the region in the face of the ongoing confrontation with France.

Desecration, Secularization, Restoration: Cologne’s Churches during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1792–1815

Abstract The Napoleonic era was transformative for Cologne’s churches. The wars that characterized this period brought destruction and upheaval. The invading French army that occupied the city in 1794 was an agent of the new Republic, a polity then at war with Catholicism. Most spectacularly, this resulted in the desacralization of Cologne’s churches, some of which were turned into storage depots for the army or made into temples for the new republican cult. However, once Napoleon seized control of the Republic in 1799, a new French policy was enforced in the city and surrounding region. It restored many aspects of the old familiar religious order, but at the same time created new institutions of church management and preservation that survived the end of French rule in 1814.

Bao Dai Solution and the Formation of the “National Government of Vietnam” During the Indochina War (1945-1954)

After World War II, Vietnam declared independence from France and Japan following the victory of the resistance movement for independence led by the Viet Minh. However, with the regulations at the Yalta conference, France returned to wage war to force Vietnam and the entire Indochina peninsula to fall under French rule as before. In Vietnam, France refused to cooperate with Viet Minh because it believed that this organization was Communist. France tried every way to set up a “puppet” government and they turned to Bao Dai, an Emperor who had just been overthrown in August 1945. The Bao Dai solution was proposed by France to maintain colonialism in Vietnam. This solution aims to establish a “National Government of Vietnam” under French influence, maintaining French interests and influence. This research article aims to clarify the puppet nature of the “National Government of Vietnam” and show that it had an important influence on the situation in Vietnam during the Indochina War (1945-1954). Methods of exploiting historical documents, logical methods and international relations research methods are used to clarify the content of the research article.
 
 Received: 13 October 2023 / Accepted: 29 January 2024 / Published: 5 March 2024

Canadian Journalism: Two Centuries of Missed Opportunities (1608–1806)

The article analyzes how the events of the distant communication past affect the current information situation in the country based on the specific material of the two-century formation of a Canadian journalism. Under French rule, there were no printing houses and no press in Canada. Under the British regime, newspapers finally appeared, but English became the official language of the colony with a French-speaking population, and periodicals involuntarily, contrary to the proclamation of George III, chose “unofficial bilingualism”. However, the division of Canada by the political decision of the new metropolis into French-speaking and English-speaking ones in 1791 left its mark on all the subsequent development of journalism in the country: today two separate media systems continue to coexistt.

Feasibility studies on deepening Pondicherry Port to accommodate larger vessels explored

A Union territory in India, Pondicherry was a major trading port with the Chinese during the Chola era, having been active since 100 B.C. About 150 km south of Chennai, it was an open roadstead anchorage port. Until the late 1980s, the old port operated as a lighter-age port during French rule, beginning in the 17th century. From 1986 until 1989, the New Port was developed. An offshore (south) breakwater connected to a north breakwater by a bridge makes up the New Port. The channel, which is 2000 meters long and 40 meters broad, was built between 1986 and 1989. It also has a 150-meter container berth. An undersea tunnel has been built between the north and south breakwaters to facilitate maintenance dredging and allow cargo and fishing vessels to pass through without interruption. The port was in use until 2004, when it was shut down for a lack of maintenance dredging. Since 2004, there has been no freight business; only small fishing boats are currently in use. The viability of enhancing Pondicherry Port's current infrastructure to accommodate feeder-class vessels is investigated in this paper.

The Special Tribunal in Martinique: from the history of French colonial justice in the early 19th century

The focus of this article is on the special tribunal, a special judicial body established in the French colony of Martinique in 1803. It was created to carry out criminal repression against black slaves accused of poisoning, arson, stealing boats and pirogues to escape. The main purpose of the study is to determine the legal basis for the organization of a special tribunal in Martinique and to identify its features in relation to the special tribunals that existed in the metropolis from 1801 and 1802. The question of the correlation of these tribunals in the colony and in the metropolis seems to be little studied in historiography. The subject of research in the work is the evolution of the special tribunal during the period of French rule on the island – from the establishment of the court to the loss of control over Martinique by the French in 1809. To work on the topic, documentary materials from the National Archives of overseas France, published legislative acts and acts of ministers of the Napoleonic era, acts of the island administration from the "Code of Martinique" were involved. The study used the method of concrete historical analysis, comparative legal analysis of legal documents and structural and functional analysis of judicial bodies. As a result of the study, it can be concluded that the competence of the Martinique Special Tribunal has changed towards its expansion over three stages in 1803-1809. From an organ of repression exclusively for slaves, it gradually turned into an extraordinary court for slaves and for free people of color, and then for any vagabonds without a place of residence and recognition. Dangerous crimes of a state nature began to belong to his jurisdiction. The comparison of the tribunal with the special tribunals established in the metropolis in 1801 and 1802 does not confirm the full borrowing of judicial law from the metropolis in the organization of the colonial court and testifies in favor of the originality of colonial justice. However, similar features in the composition of these bodies and in the order of judicial procedure allow us to speak about general trends in the development of judicial systems throughout the French Empire, in the metropolis and in the colonies, expressed in the creation of bodies of emergency justice, alternative to courts of general jurisdiction.

Jaime E. Rodríguez O. (1940–2022)

Jaime E. Rodríguez O. (1940–2022)

“Tunisian Islam,” Women’s Rights, and the Limits of French Empire in Twentieth-Century North Africa

Abstract European colonialism catalyzed a proliferation of arguments linking national territories to allegedly distinctive forms of Islam. I consider “Tunisian Islam” under the French protectorate in Tunisia (1881–1956), a case that allows scholars not simply to track the formation of an orientalist discourse but to reveal the histories that the discourse has elided. This analysis has spatial and temporal parameters. First, the geographies of Muslim scholarship in colonial Tunisia exceeded both the national boundaries and the territory of the French empire. Above all, Muslim intellectuals in Tunisia under French rule pursued a multidirectional exchange with their colleagues in Egypt and the wider Middle East. This transnational context reveals the singular Tunisian Islam to be a specious construction. Second, colonial ideas about so-called Tunisian Islam were far from durable. Independence in 1956 led to a significant rupture as personal status legislation of the Tunisian Republic reconceived Tunisian Islam and created a new “invented tradition.” Crucially, the Tunisian state fused national Islam with promotion of women’s rights, a connection orientalists never made. Yet the regional circuits of intellectual life evident under the protectorate persisted after independence, raising questions about the tenability of the new version of national Islam.

Why Rara Burns Judas during Lent: Rethinking the Origins of Catholic Elements in Haitian Culture from an Afro-Iberian Perspective

AbstractUntil the 1980s, Catholic elements in Haitian culture tended to be interpreted exclusively in connection to the forced conversion of the enslaved population under French rule. This changed following John Thornton's groundbreaking research into the development of Christianity in early modern Africa—Kongo in particular—and the awareness that a significant number of enslaved Africans already identified as Christian before their arrival in Saint-Domingue. This article's goal is to go beyond Thornton's research by showing that we can acquire a better understanding of Catholic elements in Haitian culture if we start our analysis in late medieval Iberia. To illustrate this, the article focuses on one of Haiti's most enigmatic cultural traditions, known as Chariopié, Lwalwadi, or, most commonly, Rara. Although this performance has received abundant scholarly interest, questions relating to the origin of its Catholic elements have remained largely unanswered. This is regrettable considering that Rara parades follow the liturgical calendar of Lent and intensify in frequency during Holy Week. Moreover, a key element of Rara consists of the destruction of an effigy of Judas Iscariot, in accordance with the Biblical account of the Easter story. Using a comparative analysis, this article presents a number of remarkable parallels between Rara and late medieval Iberian Lent traditions. To explain these parallels, it claims that enslaved Africans who were familiar with Iberian practices prior to their arrival in the Caribbean established, by their own initiative, a network of mutual aid and burial societies modeled on Afro-Iberian Catholic brotherhoods.

War in the Mountains: Peasant Society and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, 1918–1958

In this deeply researched and ambitious book, Neil MacMaster examines the neglected history of peasant resistance to French colonialism in Algeria's Chelif Valley. War in the Mountains upends the scholarly consensus that has attributed a politically inert and reactive character to the Algerian peasantry, illuminating their central role in the struggle for independence. MacMaster dismantles the consensus view across four sections and twenty chapters, giving readers an unprecedented look at the kinship units, political organizations, and shared histories that together shaped peasant resistance in the valley. Here, there was no need for urban revolutionaries to “awaken” the ignorant peasantry; peasant communities in the surrounding Dahra and Ouarsenis mountains had been organizing mutual aid and nationalist propaganda networks for decades prior to the arrival of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) in 1956. When the Algerian Revolution finally came, these rural networks formed a base of support without which revolutionary forces could not have prevailed.War in the Mountains exemplifies just how much groundbreaking work can yet be done with colonial state archives. It is a truly social history that examines the critical—but often overlooked—kinship units that structured rural life in the Chelif Valley: the extended household (ayla) and the fraction (bocca), which were assemblies composed of the men in each ayla. By tracing the histories of individual fractions across decades, MacMaster identifies a means with which peasants preserved their communal solidarity and traditional social practices through years of land expropriation and dislocation. In the “native reserves” (communes mixtes) where most peasants lived, fraction patriarchs were often the sole links connecting the rural population to the colonial state. Absentee headmen (caïds) and French agents relied on these fraction leaders for local intelligence, offering access to state resources in exchange for their cooperation. As this system fell into crisis during the Great Depression, fractions and village councils (djemâa) coalesced into what would become a mass resistance movement. The fraction—a precolonial unit of rural social life—thus formed the organizational core through which peasants mobilized for a postcolonial future.The first three parts of the book chart the “terminal decline” of French rule in Algeria and the subsequent rise of the FLN “counter-state” that overtook it (254). Caught in an irreconcilable antagonism between the conservative defenders of the commune mixte system and reformers bent on modernization, the colonial state in Algeria underwent cycles of sputtering reform followed by reactionary backlash and repression. The constricted spaces that these cycles created for peasant political expression were never adequate to legitimize French rule, but they did provide a crucial medium for the introduction of mass electoral politics to the villages of the Chelif. Newly elected village councils operated as counterweights to corrupt French officials, compensating for the absence of colonial state administration with religious and kinship-based mutual aid networks. As revolutionary violence escalated, the survival of communist, Messalist, or Frontiste cells in the region depended on their ability to affect a “juncture” between themselves and the “dormant anti-colonialism of peasant society” expressed in these village councils (480). MacMaster contends that the FLN ultimately prevailed here because it offered a revolutionary program that was most responsive to the values and concerns of the peasantry.The final section of the text reassesses Opération Pilote, an ambitious counterinsurgency plan formulated by the anthropologist Jean Servier. With Pilote, Servier promised an ethnographic “hearts and minds” strategy—built upon political reforms and vast economic development initiatives—that would win over the region's peasant population. Military and civilian leaders soon hailed the operation as a success to be emulated throughout Algeria, but the book reveals stark truths that undermine this sanguine assessment. On the ground in the Dahra and Ouarsenis, the French presence largely continued as one of underadministration punctuated by catastrophic violence. Servier's ethnography also quickly fell out of favor with French officers, replaced by a simplistic program of sloganeering and propaganda derived from the field of behavioral psychology. Moreover, the FLN remained superior to the French in providing basic services and security to the Chelif peasantry. Pilote and its “successes” have been a staple of counterinsurgency literature for decades; MacMaster offers a necessary and overdue corrective to these accounts that dwells on the self-defeating brutality counterinsurgency practitioners unleashed on the very peasants they were supposed to be winning over.By positioning peasants at the center of Algeria's revolutionary struggle, War in the Mountains compels scholars to reconsider the balance of forces driving the country's independence and subsequent state formation. It also establishes a comparative research agenda grounded in an attentiveness to enduring structures of rural life that promises to influence the field for years to come. Accessibly written, albeit dense in its argumentation, this text will make for compelling reading in advanced undergraduate and graduate-level seminars.

Catholic Charity and Public Poor Relief in Nineteenth-century Belgium: Reconquest, Competition, Complementarity, Superiority

Abstract The compatibility of public poor relief with private, in particular faith-based, charity is a long-debated issue. Our contribution offers a historical reflection by analysing the evolving discourses of Catholic charity in nineteenth-century Belgium. We highlight its somewhat ambiguous self-imagery and evaluate its (un)willingness to cooperate with official provisions. Belgian Catholics at first sought to complement and even to infiltrate the public structures created under French rule, but rising ideological tensions on the issue in Belgian society from 1850 onwards made them realise that the clock couldn’t be turned back. A further expansion or more pronounced agency of public provisions, however, was considered unwanted and unnecessary. The Belgian Church eagerly defended the pre-eminence of private charity provisions, considering them to be more community-embedded, encompassing, efficient, flexible and innovative. Religious charity was portrayed as morally pre-eminent, much more committed and interpersonal, with strong connotations of vocation, pastorate, penance and salvation emerging from its transcendental perspective. Given this mindset, it was far from self-evident that a division of tasks with public poor relief should be sought. While nineteenth-century Belgian Catholics repeatedly made public appeals for pragmatism and cooperation, the continued expansion of their charitable networks and the associated discourses reveal an inherently competitive strategy and a continuous, even growing conviction that upheld the superiority of private initiative.

French Influence in the Bay of Kotor at the End of the 18th and the First Years of The 19th Century: The Activities of Mirislav Zanović

The paper discusses the activities of Mirislav Zanović, the leader of the pro-French political faction in the Bay of Kotor at the end of the 18th and the first years of the 19th century. This research indicates that the first reliable data on his pro-French orientation date back to the end of 1793. At that time, the general providor of Dalmatia, Alvize Marin, was warned about individuals in Boka, who were suspected of feeling sympathy towards the Revolution and its ideas. In October 1795, Mirislav tried to launch a rebellion, motivated by the ideas of brotherhood and freedom. This revolt was aimed at liberating certain areas on the border from Ottoman servitude. It was quelled, while Mirislav was kept in prison for some time, in Venice. He was released after the French conquered the city and sent to Budva to propagate the ideas of the Revolution and work to win over the local population.
 The paper also discusses its position during the first Austrian (1797–1805), Russian (1806–1807) and French (1807–1813) rule in Boka. Although the Austrian authorities harbored suspicion of Mirislav, he managed to survive thanks to the influence of his father, Count Antun Zanović, who was appointed manager of Budva. Mirislav found himself in the most difficult position during the Russian rule, when he spent some time in prison. He reached the peak of his rise in the political life of Boka during the French rule, when he was appointed to certain administrative positions in Budva. After France lost all illusions about the possibility of the survival of its government in Boka, Mirislav, thanks to good relations with Bishop Petar I Petrović-Njegoš, changed sides in 1813, denying any support to France. In the years that followed, Mirislav was relegated to the background. He spent a short time in prison in Dubrovnik, after which he was released, but was placed under surveillance by the Austrian authorities for the rest of his life.

Between the law and the actual situation: Failure as property formation in French colonial Indochina

This article complements and complicates Bhandar’s discussion of ‘racial regimes of ownership’ (2018) by examining the relational co-constitution of notions of racial and property formations in the ‘non-settler’ colonial context of Cambodia. Working through the record of intra-colonial correspondence relating to the control of non-white but also non-Khmer property interests in Cambodia, this article documents racialization’s powerful disruptive impact on liberal property formation. Colonial failure as property formation indexes, first, how the racialized categories of ethnic difference that underpinned the rationalities of French colonial rule simultaneously undermined French colonial programs to alienate land. Second, it positions the failure to reconcile a confusing array of property laws and logics as integral to maintaining paternalistic colonial (and post-colonial) authority to sort racialized populations via the privilege of property. Through the lens of French attempts to control property claims, we show how the French colonial property regime, supposedly based on universal liberal norms, was in fact also deeply racialized, requiring it to be managed in a highly localized manner, in accordance with each territory’s existing set of ethnic property relations—or the practical racial hierarchy of colonialism would unravel.

Wołoska gospodarka transhumancyjna w Dalmacji i Bośni na początku XIX wieku w perspektywie francuskiej

French rule over Dalmatia in the Napoleonic era (1806–1813) resulted in the gathering of the information about this region, as well as neighboring Bosnia. Travelogues and reports on those lands are so rich and detailed that they can serve as an informative source on the populations inhabiting those areas. This paper focuses on a very precise element of this depiction: the specific status of the Vlach communities and their economic activity in Dalmatia and Bosnia (transhumant pastoralism). The comparison of the depiction of shepherding in those two regions leads to two main conclusions which concern the differences and similarities behind those two depictions. The differences are partially related to the presumed ineffectiveness of the Vlach economy of Dalmatia. On the contrary, in the case of Bosnia, local stock raising was depicted as diversified and able to bring considerable commercial benefits. The similarities between both depictions of the Vlach population in Dalmatia and Bosnia is the transhumant and traditional form of their activity, which was perceived as primitive, i.e. dependent on the natural conditions.

Transnational Dimensions of Moroccan Gender History

Transnational Dimensions of Moroccan Gender History

Historical Gaps and Non-existent Sources: The Case of the Chaudrie Court in French India

AbstractThis article develops a typology of historical and archival gaps—physical, historiographical, and epistemological—to consider how non-existent sources are central to understanding colonial law and governance. It does so by examining the institutional and archival history of a court known as the Chaudrie in the French colony of Pondichéry in India in the eighteenth century, and integrating problems that are specific to the study of legal history—questions pertaining to jurisdiction, codification, evidence, and sovereignty—with issues all historians face regarding power and the making of archives. Under French rule, Pondichéry was home to multiple judicial institutions, administered by officials of the French East Indies Company. These included the Chaudrie court, which existed at least from 1700 to 1827 as a forum where French judges were meant to dispense justice according to local Tamil modes of dispute resolution. However, records of this court prior to 1766 have not survived. By drawing on both contemporaneous mentions of the Chaudrie and later accounts of its workings, this study centers missing or phantom sources, severed from the body of the archive by political, judicial, and bureaucratic decisions. It argues that the Chaudrie was a court where jurisdiction was decoupled from sovereignty, and this was the reason it did not generate a state-managed and preserved archive of court records for itself until the 1760s. The Chaudrie’s early history makes visible a relationship between law and its archive that is paralleled by approaches to colonial governance in early modern French Empire.

Prabhanjan will narrates short stories Puduvai Tamil status of during the French rule

This Article, The Position of The Tamils of Pondicherry during the French rule, which deals with the short stories of Vishwasan, who is one of the most important tamil short story creators, is based on the short stories of The Cycle, Security, Brother Oro and Business of The Universe. It also examines the difficulties faced by the inequalities of caste and religion and the racist activities of the French rulers, especially when Pondicherry was under the control of the French in the 16th and 19th centuries. This article also deals with the tragic history of the exile of tamil people by using their ignorance and poverty to foreign countries for tea plantation industries.