This engaging, knowledgeable book traces the American path France has followed since resolving its searing Algerian conflict in 1962. Barnett Singer convincingly demolishes two pervasive clichés ...about modern France: first, that the country never has been fit to fight wars, including wars on terror; and second, that the French have always been and remain overwhelmingly anti-American. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources, Barnett Singer clearly demonstrates that a serious and organized France fought strongly until its own divisions, international pressures, and the actions of de Gaulle ended the conflict with tragic consequences. The outcome led to an important sea change, clearing the way for France to embrace American culture, especially rock 'n' roll, and more generally, an American-style emphasis on personal happiness. The author argues that today’s France, wounded by the loss of traditions and stability, is increasingly pro-American, clinging to trends from across the Atlantic as to a lifeline.
Torture and democracy Rejali, Darius
2007., 20090608, 2009, 2007, 2008-01-01
eBook, Book
Odprti dostop
This is the most comprehensive, and most comprehensively chilling, study of modern torture yet written. Darius Rejali, one of the world’s leading experts on torture, takes the reader from the late ...nineteenth century to the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, from slavery and the electric chair to electrotorture in American inner cities, and from French and British colonial prison cells and the Spanish-American War to the fields of Vietnam, the wars of the Middle East, and the new democracies of Latin America and Europe. As Rejali traces the development and application of one torture technique after another in these settings, he reaches startling conclusions. As the twentieth century progressed, he argues, democracies not only tortured, but set the international pace for torture. Dictatorships may have tortured more, and more indiscriminately, but the United States, Britain, and France pioneered and exported techniques that have become the lingua franca of modern torture: methods that leave no marks. Under the watchful eyes of reporters and human rights activists, low-level authorities in the world’s oldest democracies were the first to learn that to scar a victim was to advertise iniquity and invite scandal. Long before the CIA even existed, police and soldiers turned instead to "clean" techniques, such as torture by electricity, ice, water, noise, drugs, and stress positions. As democracy and human rights spread after World War II, so too did these methods.
France, which has the largest Muslim minority community in Europe, has been in the news in recent years because of perceptions that Muslims have not integrated into French society.The Civilizing ...Mission in the Metropole explores the roots of these debates through an examination of the history of social welfare programs for Algerian migrants from the end of World War II until Algeria gained independence in 1962.
After its colonization in 1830, Algeria fought a bloody war of decolonization against France, as France desperately fought to maintain control over its most prized imperial possession. In the midst of this violence, some 350,000 Algerians settled in France. This study examines the complex and often-contradictory goals of a welfare network that sought to provide services and monitor Algerian migrants' activities. Lyons particularly highlights family settlement and the central place Algerian women held in French efforts to transform the settled community. Lyons questions myths about Algerian immigration history and exposes numerous paradoxes surrounding the fraught relationship between France and Algeria-many of which echo in French debates about Muslims today.
Intersects with very active areas of research in history and anthropology, and links these domains of inquiry spanning Europe and North Africa in a creative and innovative fashion. -- Douglas Holmes, ...Binghamton University Maltese settlers in colonial Algeria had never lived in France, but as French citizens were abruptly repatriated there after Algerian independence in 1962. In France today, these pieds-noirs are often associated with Mediterranean qualities, the persisting tensions surrounding the French-Algerian War, and far-right, anti-immigrant politics. Through their social clubs, they have forged an identity in which Malta, not Algeria, is the unifying ancestral homeland. Andrea L. Smith uses history and ethnography to argue that scholars have failed to account for the effect of colonialism on Europe itself. She explores nostalgia and collective memory; the settlers' liminal position in the colony as subalterns and colonists; and selective forgetting, in which Malta replaces Algeria, the true homeland, which is now inaccessible, fraught with guilt and contradiction. The study provides insight into race, ethnicity, and nationalism in Europe as well as cultural context for understanding political trends in contemporary France.
Decouvrez enfin tout ce qu'il faut savoir sur la bataille d'Alger en moins d'une heure !Durant l'ete 1956, Alger est secoue par une serie d'attaques terroristes orchestrees par le FLN visant le ...centre du pouvoir francais en Algerie. Leur revendication est simple : obtenir l'independance. Mais la France ne peut accepter de telles attaques. Alors, le 7 janvier, le general Jacques Massu recoit les pleins pouvoirs pour demanteler l'organisation, n'hesitant pas a utiliser tous les moyens mis a sa disposition. Ce livre vous permettra d'en savoir plus sur :* Le contexte politique et social de l'epoque* Les acteurs majeurs du conflit* Le deroulement de la bataille d'Alger et sa chronologie (carte a l'appui)* Les raisons de la victoire francaise* Les repercussions de la bataille Le mot de l'editeur : Dans ce numero de la collection 50MINUTES|Grandes Batailles Xavier De Weirt nous fait decouvrir cet episode particulierement douloureux de la guerre d'Algerie. Symbole des abus commis par la France pour conserver l'Algerie, l'auteur nous offre le recit d'une lutte pour l'independance ou tous les moyens paraissent bons pour atteindre l'objectif fixe. Stephanie DagrainA PROPOS DE LA SERIE 50MINUTES | Grandes BataillesLa serie Grandes Batailles de la collection 50MINUTES aborde plus de cinquante conflits qui ont bouleverse notre histoire. Chaque livre a ete pense pour les lecteurs curieux qui veulent tout savoir sur une bataille, tout en allant a l'essentiel, et ce en moins d'une heure. Nos auteurs combinent les faits, les analyses et les nouvelles perspectives pour rendre accessibles des siecles d'histoire.
Today the Algerian War of Independence remains a powerful symbol for both the former empire and its last colony. Many Algerian guerrilla soldiers were tortured and murdered during the eight-year ...conflict that ended more than a century of colonization, while in France the events became emblematic of a national failure. Cinema played an active role in representing and re-forming the public’s understanding of the conflict. The Franco-Algerian War through a Twenty-First Century Lens probes this cinematic discourse to shed light on topics such as immigration and national identity as shown in recent depictions of the war from both sides of the Mediterranean. This involves following the sons of draftees reconstructing the war to understand their fathers (Mon Colonel, L’Ennemi Intime) and Algerian immigrant directors filming in their ancestral homeland (Cartouches Gauloises, Hors-la-loi). Nicole Beth Wallenbrock examines production details, box office figures, and narrative analogy to demonstrate the relevance of the Algerian War of Independence to historical and contemporary questions of Algerian and French national identity. This book is essential for academics and students interested in the history of war and historical representation.
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