Nationalism, Colonialism, and Imperial Ideology in French Africa and Algeria

Historiography of the Middle East Series

A lecture by Adria Lawrence, Depts. of Political Science and International and Area Studies, Yale University

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Duration: 00:37:47

PART OF THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE MIDDLE EAST SERIES

When the French conquered territories in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, they took on the project of ruling diverse populations that differed from Frenchmen along ethnic, linguistic, and religious lines. The French drew on two distinct ideologies of rule to manage the diversity they encountered in their overseas possessions. The first was explicitly interventionist: it defended and justified colonial rule as a “civilizing” project that would modernize and transform colonial territories; the conquering state itself provided the model to be emulated. Accordingly, colonial rulers sought to implement changes in a variety of domains – transportation, housing, education, law, health, citizenship, and religion. The authenticity of the colonialists' commitment to this civilizing mission has been widely questioned, in part because it contradicted the other dominant ideology, which framed the colonial project in preservationist terms. This second ideology advocated avoiding intervention in local societies, framing the imperial project as one that would protect culture, tradition, and existing structures of authority. Both ideologies were paternalistic, reflecting a belief in European superiority, but they had very different implications for how the colonies would be governed and where the boundaries of the political community would be drawn. This talk considers the causes and consequences of of imperial ideologies. It addresses the historiography of the colonial period, pointing to a tendency to emphasize nationalist responses to French policies and to deemphasize variation in local responses and colonial projects. This talk describes several historical myths that continue to affect scholarly work and popular understandings of imperialism.

Adria Lawrence is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International and Area Studies at Yale University. She studies nationalism, conflict and collective action. Her book, Imperial Rule and the Politics of Nationalism: Anti-Colonial Protest in the French Empire (Cambridge University Press 2013), provides an account of how and why nationalist mobilization against colonial rule erupted. Her work on the use of violence by non-state actors has been published in International Security, as well as in Rethinking Violence: States and Non State Actors in Conflict (co-edited with Erica Chenoweth, MIT Press, 2010).

Her research has been supported by fellowships from the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and a B.A. from Vassar College.

She is a scholar of Middle Eastern and North African politics. She is currently at work on two new projects: one on collective action in the Arab Spring and a second on empires and the origins of cultural and racial exclusion.

Published: Friday, March 20, 2015