The French Intifada Quotes

“The real rivalry between Britain and France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was about commercial and political power. They sought to achieve their aims, however, in very different ways. The British were mostly interested in money and therefore mainly indifferent to the cultures of the ‘natives’ they colonized, subjugating them by force of arms when and if necessary. The French, in contrast, controlled their colonies by pursuing the ‘civilizing mission’, effectively seeking to make their subjects culturally French. Of course the French plundered where they could, but there was an added strategic urge to extend the concept of ‘Frenchness’ across the world.

Furthermore, under the rigidities of the French educational system, there could be no argument about what this identity meant. The absurd end-point of this policy was Berber Muslim students in the hills of Algeria, who had never been to France, reading about their ‘Gaulish ancestors’. The comedy soon turns tragic when this cultural cosh splinters individual identity; as we shall see, such psychic trauma is the key to understanding not just the killing-jar of Algeria but the entire French sphere of influence in the Arab world.”
― Andrew Hussey, The French Intifada: The Long War Between France and Its Arabs