Martin Thomas

Bedouin Tribes and the Imperial Intelligence Services in Syria, Iraq and Transjordan in the 1920s

Bedouin tribes were among those most affected by the mandate frontiers and new regimes imposed across the Middle East. Their nomadic traditions clashed with confinement within a single state. In the Syrian mandate in particular, the French authorities attempted to transform nomadic bedouin into sedentary farmers. Yet bedouin tribes were far from the loyalist smallholders envisaged by French planners. Their unwritten customary laws had never been regulated by central government and sedentarization was inevitably regarded as detribalization thinly disguised. In the interior of Syria and Iraq the writ of the central government frequently counted for little with indigenous populations for whom livestock raiding and inter-tribal dispute remained facts of life. Pioneering work on the bedouin has brought together historians, anthropologists and social scientists. This article discusses the policing of the nomad populations of Syria, Transjordan and Iraq, and the central role of imperial intelligence services in the policies pursued. Tribal control defied easy categorization or force majeure solutions. It was quite unlike the authorities concurrent struggles with emergent nationalist protest and inter-communal violence amongst the sedentary populations of the new Arab states. Preventing bedouin dissent was less a matter of repressive policing than of penetrating nomad society to secure the compliance of its leaders.

Colonial states as intelligence states: Security policing and the limits of colonial rule in france's muslim territories, 1920–40 1

Abstract At the heart of most colonial states lay a contradiction. On the one hand, colonial state institutions defined themselves in opposition to indigenous networks of power associated with the pre-colonial period, whether based on ethnicity, tribal kinship or religious affiliation. On the other hand, few colonial states had sufficient bureaucratic substance to operate separately of indigenous society. This paper suggests that a more catholic vision of the parameters and purpose of state intelligence gathering may aid our understanding of how colonial states endured. These intelligence activities were multifaceted. They were designed, on the one hand, to provide sufficient information about local social organization to enable government to function. On the other hand, intelligence gatherers were also intelligence disseminators. Those same agencies of the colonial state that amassed information about indigenous populations also sought to control the movement of knowledge within local society in order to mould popular opinion, or, at the very least, shape the views of influential elites. Only then could local authorities set about influencing these differing forums of opinion to European advantage. In this sense, the paper argues, colonial states were ‘intelligence states’.

FRENCH EMPIRE ELITES AND THE POLITICS OF ECONOMIC OBLIGATION IN THE INTERWAR YEARS

This article considers the changing ways in which French political elites understood imperial obligation in the interwar years. It suggests that the economics of imperial rule and disputes over what could and should be done to develop colonial economies provide the key to understanding both the failure of interwar colonial reforms and the irreversible decline in Frances grip over its colonies. In making this case, the article investigates four related colonial policy debates, all variously linked to changing conceptualizations of economic obligation among Frances law-makers. The first concerns Albert Sarrauts 1921 empire development plan. The second reviews discussions over the respective obligations of the state and private financiers in regenerating colonial economies during the depression years of the early 1930s. The third debate reassesses policymakers disputes over colonial industrialization. Finally, the article revisits the apparent failure of the investigative studies of economic and labour reforms conceived by the left-leaning Popular Front in 1936–8. The point is to highlight the extent to which senior political figures clashed over concepts of ‘colonial obligation’ viewed less in the cultural terms of ‘civilizing mission’ than in the material sense of economic outlay.

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AND THE LIMITS TO MOBILIZATION IN THE FRENCH EMPIRE, 1936–1939

By 1939 expectations in France of a major colonial contribution to the impending war effort were high. The idea of le salut par lempire, literally ‘salvation by the empire’, even gained some currency among ministers, officials, and the wider public. This article examines the nature of the economic and military demands imposed on Frances major overseas territories in the immediate pre-war years, focusing on the two pre-eminent colonial groupings of the empire: French North Africa and the Indochina federation. It suggests that colonial economies and working populations were poorly placed to meet French expectations of them. The colonies were severely affected by the economic depression of the early 1930s and slower to recover than metropolitan France. Structural economic difficulties imposed limits on the mobilization of colonial resources, a problem made appreciably worse by the earlier disagreements among ministers, colonial officials, and business leaders over the merits of colonial industrialization. The reversal of planned social and constitutional reforms after 1936 added to the political volatility and social divisions of colonial societies as war drew near.

From Sétif to Moramanga: identifying insurgents and ascribing guilt in the french colonial post-war

Focusing on the upsurge in anti-colonial insurgency between 1945 and 1947, this article explores critical transitions in colonial state violence in two French dependencies: Algeria and Madagascar. The suggestion is that official and local responses to colonial disorder in these immediate post-war years defined new, more violent parameters of French colonial counter-insurgency that would long endure. The argument connects the ascendancy of a new French political elite at the Liberation with a reconceptualization of imperial threats, particularly in those territories where political intelligence analysis and security policing became integral to day-to-day governance at the provincial, prefectural, or district levels.

Fighting EOKA: the British counter-insurgency campaign on Cyprus, 1955–1959

It is no easy task for anyone to write about the Cyprus emergency because it can excite passions from the various sides involved, but French succeeds because he tells it how it is. His account is impressive, especially the main chapters (two to eight), and logically structured. The argument is based on a thorough analysis of the archival material, including the recently released FCO files, which French was instrumental in having opened (some redacted though), although not the State Archives, Nicosia (yet most of the controversial files would have been ‘migrated’ and found in the FCO lot). His expertise in the history of insurgency and counter-insurgency shows in two areas: his successful integration of the political with the security/military/terrorist aspects of the story, which is the real strength of his study; and his comparisons with the Malayan and Kenyan, and sometimes Algerian, cases. Although he claims on to not label the violence as terrorism or terror, he does do so, which is fine by me, and I would have liked a brief theoretical section on terrorism – group and state based terrorism and counter-terrorism – to show how the three players in this violent saga do fit these definitions, models and typologies. For example there is a perception outside the academy that terrorism grows out of poverty and oppression, which is simply not the case and this example is no exception. Additionally, it would have been good if French had critiqued the idea that the British sponsored TMT, which has been implied by several writers, such as Christopher Hitchens, in his popular account.

Resource War, Civil War, Rights War: Factoring Empire into French North Africa’s Second World War:

This article considers the Second World War’s socio-economic impact on the colonized populations of French North Africa’s three adjoining territories: Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It suggests that the war’s significance for the long-term political future of French colonial rule was markedly different from that typically ascribed to it both by contemporary French and Allied observers and by subsequent historians of the conflict. This argument will be developed by contrasting the signpost events usually assigned to north-west Africa in strategic histories of the Second World War with the internal episodes, socio-political trends, and local changes in the fabric of colonial rule that, arguably, held greater importance for the region’s people.

Book Review: Colonial Ambivalence, Cultural Authenticity, and the Limitations of Mimicry in French-Ruled West Africa, 1914-1956:

centre-right opposition from press coverage. The Ministry of the Interior, some of whose senior figures were members of the Ceausuf7b8escu police and Securitate and whose receipt of preferential loans between 1992 and 1996 bankrupted a major Romanian bank, remained largely unreconstructed. Anti-corruption prosecutors were taken off sensitive cases and top officials supposedly protected by a law guaranteeing security of tenure (which had been introduced under EU pressure in 2000) were marginalized if not dismissed outright. Some of Gallagher’s most trenchant criticisms are reserved for the EU. Directing EU funds to a country where the concept of public service is alien to much of the leadership could, he argues, be viewed as a major stimulus for corruption. In its report for the period from July 2002 to June 2003, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) reported that of the 125 dossiers investigated from 13 EU candidate countries, no fewer than 49 involved Romania. However, OLAF cannot bring fraudsters to justice: that is a decision for the Romanian government. No charges were brought by the Romanian authorities in the cases of corruption identified by OLAF during Nauf6f4stase’s tenure as prime minister. Although the new President Traian Bauf6f4sescu – elected in December 2004 – has made the fight against corruption his number-one priority and several high-profile PSD figures have been taken in for questioning by the authorities, none has yet been tried and found guilty. The author’s conclusion that, negative factors such as these ‘make the introduction of democracy an uphill task in Romania’, should alert us to the difficulties in store for Romania – and the European Union – in meeting the target date of 2007 for EU accession, and to the problem of maintaining stability in this new member of the NATO alliance. The pressure of meeting the economic chapters of the acquis will impoverish still further a frustrated industrial and rural workforce, whilst the cavalier and irresponsible behaviour of many in the political class will continue to undermine any lingering belief among those groups in the utility of the democratic process. Gallagher’s study sounds a timely warning about Romania’s future.