Violence and the Colonial State in North Africa

• In Event: History in Political Science

Abstract

How did colonial powers crush or deter resistance and establish secure control in conquered territories? Some studies of the colonial period have pointed to the strategic implementation of direct or indirect rule to effectively rule indigenous populations. Other work has stressed the ability of colonial powers to successfully manipulate ethnic cleavages, employing divide-and-rule strategies that prevented coordinated resistance. Drawing on historical evidence from French North Africa, this paper re-considers the question of why colonized populations complied with foreign domination. It examines variation in resistance, compliance, and collaboration and argues that violence played a central role in suppressing resistance long after the period of conquest was ostensibly completed. Although the French colonial state claimed to have established a stable order, portraying violence as an aberration, the use and threat of force was the rule, not the exception. Explicit colonial strategies were often less effective than colonial rulers expected, and they repeatedly resorted to brutality. This paper stresses the need to pay attention to the practices of the colonial state, rather than its rhetoric. It raises questions about how to interpret primary sources from the colonial era that provide only a partial view of how and why conquered populations complied with foreign domination.

Author

• Adria Lawrence, Johns Hopkins University