Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Riot control – France – History »

Until fairly recently, grain riots were viewed as spontaneous reactions of the poor to hunger, not worthy of detailed analysis. Over the past twenty years, partially as a result of pioneering studies by George Rudé and Edward Thompson with reference to France and Britain, a considerable body of scholarly writing about these disturbances has appeared. Consistent cross-cultural patterns have emerged from this research. Grain riots were not necessarily a product of hunger, although they were a facet of struggles over the control of food. They have normally taken one of two forms. One was the market riot, where the crowd protested against the price or lack of availability of grain. Such disturbances often commenced with the offer to buy grain at a “just” or “customary” price. If this demand was not met, more drastic action was taken. Sometimes rioters seized grain and sold it to the crowd for a just price, and then turned the receipts over to the owners of the grain. More often grain was strewn about, destroyed, or stolen. The second main form of grain riot was the blockade. In times of shortage, people prevented the export of grain from a town or district because they believed that merchants and landlords should not benefit from scarcity and that such exports would drive up the price locally. Sometimes retributive action accompanied or followed both types of protest, meting out punishment to traders, landlords, or others who were perceived as wrongly profiting from food shortages. Such action usually took the form of wholesale looting. In general, grain rioters avoided serious violence.

AbstractThe past few years have seen a number of “riots” – in Mexico City, Hong Kong, Chile, Ecuador, the United States, Argentina, France, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. What do they have in common with one another and with other popular upheavals in history? How do they differ? What do they represent as sites of protest, resistance and rebellion? This forum explores the meaning of such riots through the meaning of the term itself, focusing mainly but not exclusively on the Global South, in theory and in the words and actions of rioters and the authorities who act to suppress them. If it is true the world has entered a “new age of riots,” citizens and scholars must begin to reach some conceptual clarity of what a global riot is, and seeks to become.

AbstractPain! Most humans feel it throughout their lives. The molecular mechanisms underlying the phenomenon are still poorly understood. This is especially true of pain triggered in response to molecules of a certain shape and reactivity present in the environment. Such molecules can interact with the sensory nerve endings of the eyes, nose, throat and lungs to cause irritation that can range from mild to severe. The ability to alert to the presence of such potentially harmful substances has been termed the ‘common chemical sense’ and is thought to be distinct from the senses of smell or taste, which are presumed to have evolved later. Barbecue a burger excessively and you self-experiment. Fatty acids present in the meat break off their glycerol anchor under the thermal stress. The glycerol loses two molecules of water and forms acrolein, whose assault on the eyes is partly responsible for the tears elicited by smoke. Yet the smell and taste of the burger are different experiences. It was this eye-watering character of acrolein that prompted its use as a warfare agent during World War I. It was one of several ‘lachrymators’ deployed to harass, and the forerunner of safer chemicals, such as ‘tear gas’ CS, developed for riot control. The history of development and mechanism of action of some sensory irritants is discussed here in relation to recent advice from the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on chemicals that conform to the definition of a riot control agent (RCA) under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

AbstractOn Rosh Hashanah, 1961, six months before the conclusion of the Evian accords promised independence for Algeria, riots broke out in the city of Oran. Surprisingly to many, the aggressors were overwhelmingly Jews, while those injured or killed were largely Muslims. The events—widely covered in the media but since forgotten—were a product of Oran's particular social chemistry, but were also shaped by far wider set of debates about a chasm that was growing between Jews and Arabs in France, Algeria, and the wider Arab world. This article focuses on responses to these riots, especially how they drew on polemical renderings of a shared Muslim-Jewish history. I make two interrelated arguments based on printed matter of the period, French government archives, and memoirs. First, Algerian Jewish observers and pro-FLN nationalist writers, groups that only rarely agreed on the question of Algerian independence, both recalled that the two groups' shared a largely harmonious history. They vehemently disagreed, however, on what this shared, harmonious history meant in terms of political obligations. The article's second argument is that the Israel-Palestine conflict helped sour relations between Jews and Muslims in Algeria, as well as historical renderings of these relations, during the Algerian War of Independence. Specifically, the question of Palestine frequently appeared as a reference when interpreting the riots. Together, the two arguments demonstrate how international issues helped occlude the particular, local stories and belongingness of Algerians, while they defined the future, religio-ethnic contours of the Algerian nation.

What do the visual arts tell us about historical events happening in our societies? In this article, we will examine the case of the French riots of 2005. While anthropology, media, and cultural studies have investigated visual forms such as video games, YouTube videos, and graffiti that address the riots, there has been a blind spot in the study of the representation of the riots in the fine arts, such as painting and sculpture. This study will thereby identify and analyze the art works of three contemporary francophone, and transnationally recognized artists who visually represented the riots of 2005. Indeed, the art pieces by Alexis Peskine (La France “des” Français), Guillaume Bresson (Untitled), and Adel Abdessemed (Practice Zero Tolerance) could not be more different esthetically speaking. Peskine’s colorful painting offers a postcolonial reading of the riot, deconstructing stereotypes associated with race that the riot reinforced. Bresson’s imposing neoclassical painting stages the choreography of agitated rioters. Abdessemed comments on the violence provoked by the governmental management of the riots with a sculpture installation showing three burnt cars. Despite these differences, the three artists’ approaches indubitably converge insofar as they first react to the constant play between images of power and the power of images. In addition, this observation involves an intervention into the discourse and imaginative processes that are currently shaping the narrative and interpretation of the riots. In this sense, Peskine, Bresson, and Abdessemed operate as sculptors of history.

The condition of the Anglican elite in eighteenth-century Ireland has been the focus of some debate by historians. Members of the Protestant Ascendancy class have been variously cast as a community under constant threat, or as a self-confident group secure in their control of the country's political and economic systems. Various contributions to this dialogue have been made through the study of popular movements and civil disorder. Rather than further comment on such phenomena this article seeks to examine the reactions of the Irish political elite to them. Although the country had no general Riot Act on the English model until 1787, legislative initiatives were made on several occasions prior to this. While these initially tended to be unsuccessful in parliament, local in their application, and to impose relatively lenient punishments, attitudes began to change in the 1770s. The political elite then moved comparatively rapidly to general legislation that created riot as a felony. Such developments suggest that prior to the last quarter of the eighteenth century civil disorder was not seen as a real threat to Protestant ascendancy, though Protestant fears finally culminated in legislative action in 1787. Arguably it was this event that marked the first great nadir in Anglican self-confidence in eighteenth-century Ireland.

Atlantic sugar production and European sugar consumption rose dramatically in the late eighteenth century. Despite this increase, there were two separate calls to refrain from consuming sugar in both Britain and France at the end of the eighteenth century. Demands for abstinence were directed toward women to stop household consumption of sugar. In Britain, abolitionists urged women to stop buying West Indian sugar because it was a slave good, produced on plantations where enslaved Africans were subject to cruelty and where mortality rates were high. In France, the call to forego sugar came during the early years of the Revolution of 1789, in response to rising sugar prices. The women of Paris were asked to refrain from buying sugar at high prices that were assumed to be a result of market manipulation by speculators and hoarders engaging in anti-revolutionary behavior. The increase in Parisian sugar prices was not driven primarily by profiteering, but by a global shortage caused by the slave revolt in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, now Haiti. Comparing these two sugar boycotts, one in Britain, the other in France, provides an opportunity outside of national historical narratives to consider how both events employed the same technique for very different aims. The call to renounce sugar in both cases used economic pressure to create political change. An exploration of these movements for abstinence will provide a better understanding of how they critiqued consumption, and translated discourses, both abolitionist and revolutionary, into practice.

Throughout the first year of the French RevolutionThe Timesnewspaper could not decide who was the madder, Lord George Gordon or Edmund Burke. The former as a violent incendiary and convicted libeler had fortunately been safely locked in Newgate the previous year, but Burke was still loose. The newspaper had no doubt that he belonged in Bedlam; there could be no other explanation for his obsessive campaign to impeach Warren Hastings long after everyone else had lost interest in the case. A stream of reports suggested variously that he had checked himself into a lunatic asylum, been forcibly confined in a straitjacket, or become temporarily deranged through physical and mental exhaustion. On first readingThe Reflections on the Revolution in Francepublished in November the following year, many of his friends, as well as his foes, felt forced to agree.Even those who found things to like in the book were puzzled that Burke should have produced such a work. In the first place, how did one explain what Thomas Jefferson called “the revolution of Mr. Burke,” an abrupt political tack from advocating parliamentary reform, religious toleration, and American liberty to denouncing France's fledgling efforts at liberty. Why had he turned so violently against the Dissenters and radicals with whom he had often cooperated in the past? Why did he believe that the apparently innocuous revolution in France was unlike anything that had gone before? And even when events in that country began to move more in line with his predictions, there remained something embarrassing about the tone of the book.

Freshman Sen. William H. Seward of New York was not expected to say anything noteworthy in his "Freedom in the New Territories" speech against the Compromise bills on March 11, 1850. The venerated "Great Triumvirate" had previously addressed the Senate—Sen. Henry Clay on Jan. 29, Sen. John C. Calhoun on March 4, and Sen. Daniel Webster on March 7—so everything there was to say was thought to have been said. Seward's "Freedom in the New Territories" speech, however, is recalled as one of the more divisive of Compromise orations and most significant of Senate maiden speeches in history because of its appeal to "a higher law than the Constitution." The utterance drew a maelstrom of criticism from the partisan press and congressional adversaries and colleagues; however, Seward's rhetoric introduced a reformist interpretation of the phrase "higher law" to the slavery discourse.

This thesis applies concepts from the literature on rhetoric of agitation and control and ideographs to define Seward's rhetoric as managerial, show his motives as socio-economic, and discover how the senator's reformist arguments were controlled by the establishment after the Christiana Riot in 1851. The researcher suggests that the establishment employed a kind of denial of rhetorical means to obstruct Seward's reformist rhetoric of its solidifying slogans. Future research into the control response to agitative rhetoric is suggested to understand the strategies and tactics used to control reformist rhetoric.

This thesis argues that from June 1940 when German soldiers occupied Lorient, France until May 8, 1945 when the Lorient "Pocket" surrendered, although the women of this port city faced drastic changes, they took control of their everyday lives. They did what it took to feed and clothe their families, working, standing in lines, buying on the black market, bartering, demonstrating, and recycling. They developed relationships with German soldiers which ran the gamut. Due to aerial raids in the context of the Battle of the Atlantic, they sought shelter, buried their dead, took care of their wounded, looked for new lodging, and helped each other. They even tried to have some fun. After evacuation in early 1943, scattered to the four winds, in the American held "Lorient Sector," they served as advocates for others and made inquiries to the American 66th Infantry Division Counter-Intelligence Service. At the Liberation women were easy targets for blame, and some from Lorient were punished, notably for "horizontal collaboration" with Germans. When the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Liberation of Lorient was celebrated in 1995, the story of the women of Lorient was essentially left out.
Master of Arts

Le golfe du Lion a été confronté à une forte baisse des captures de ses deux principales espèces exploitées, la sardine Sardina pilchardus et l’anchois Engraulis encrasicolus depuis le milieu des années 2000, malgré des populations abondantes. Cette situation est due à une forte diminution de la condition corporelle et de la taille des individus causée par une croissance plus faible et la disparition des individus les plus âgés. La surpêche, la prédation ou les épidémies ayant été rejetées pour expliquer cette situation, une hypothèse majeure reste à étudier. Un changement du régime alimentaire de ces espèces pour des proies plus petites suggère un contrôle bottom-up comme principal facteur régissant la dynamique de ces populations. Le premier objectif de la thèse était d'étudier si un contrôle bottom-up pouvait expliquer les diminutions de croissance et de condition chez la sardine suite à des modifications de taille et/ou de quantité de nourriture et de comprendre les mécanismes sous-jacents. Le deuxième objectif de cette thèse était d’étudier les facteurs potentiels conduisant à la surmortalité des adultes. Pour cela, nous avons combiné approches expérimentales et modélisation. Les expériences ont montré que la taille et la quantité de nourriture avaient un impact significatif sur la condition, la croissance et le stockage des lipides. Ainsi, les sardines nourries sur de petites proies devaient en consommer deux fois plus que celles nourries sur de grandes proies pour atteindre la même condition et la même croissance. Ces résultats semblent être liés à une dépense énergétique plus élevée des sardines filtrant les petites proies par rapport à une chasse à vue sur de grandes proies. Nos résultats suggèrent plusieurs adaptations pour faire face à des petites proies et à une restriction calorique. L'étude des branchies suggère une augmentation entre 2007-2009 et 2016 de la capacité de filtration des sardines. Ensuite, les sardines nourries avec des petites proies ont montré plus grande efficacité et abondance en mitochondrie, suggérant une adaptation permettant des économies d'énergie. Enfin, les sardines habituées à se nourrir sur de petites proies ont réduit leur activité pour limiter les dépenses énergétiques. Néanmoins, toutes ces stratégies peuvent engendrer des surcoûts ou ne pas suffire à compenser les besoins énergétiques élevés imposée par la filtration, la croissance et la condition des sardines filtrant les petites proies étant restées plus faibles au cours de toutes nos expériences. En outre, les sardines nourries avec de grosses proies présentaient une fréquence de ponte plus élevée que les sardines nourries en même quantité mais sur des petites proies. La faible production d'œufs de ces sardines pourrait s'expliquer par une condition trop élevée pour engendrer un changement de compromis énergétique. Pour les mêmes raisons, les petites proies ne semblent pas avoir d’impact sur leur immunité et leur stress, les concentrations en leucocytes et en cortisol étant similaires quel que soit le traitement utilisé. L’étude de l’hypothèse de surmortalité adulte a permis de montrer que la probabilité de survie chute fortement quand la condition devient inférieure à 0,75 et que le seuil de 0,72 correspond à l'entrée en phase III du jeûne. Alors que la proportion de sardines atteignant de tels seuils dans la nature reste faible, elle a récemment doublé, pour atteindre environ 10% en hiver. Un modèle DEB paramétré à l’aide de données in situ et expérimentales a mis en évidence une plus faible probabilité de survie des individus les plus grands. Ainsi, ceux de plus de 14 cm, c-à-d âgés de plus de 2-3 ans, ont une probabilité inférieure à 50% de survivre un mois après la période de reproduction. En conclusion, ces résultats confortent les hypothèses d'un contrôle bottom-up et d'une surmortalité des sardines adultes après la reproduction pour expliquer la dynamique et la troncature démographique de la population de sardines
The Gulf of Lions has faced a sharp drop in the catches of its two main small pelagic exploited species, the sardine Sardina pilchardus and the anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus since the mid-2000s, despite both population abundances remaining high. This situation has been due to a severe decrease in individual body condition and size as a result of both lower growth and the disappearance of the oldest and largest individuals. While overfishing, predation or disease outbreaks have been refuted to explain this situation, one major hypothesis remained to be investigated. A potential shift in sardine and anchovy diet towards smaller planktonic prey indeed suggested bottom-up control as the main driver of these populations in the Gulf of Lions. The first aim of this thesis was to investigate whether bottom-up processes could explain the changes in sardine growth and condition through changes in both food size and/or quantity and to understand the behavioral and physiological mechanisms involved in this control. The second objective of this PhD thesis was to identify the potential underlying drivers leading to adult overmortality. To do so, we combined an experimental approach on wild sardines maintained in captivity with a modeling approach. Experimentations showed that body condition, growth and storage lipids were significantly impacted by both food size and quantity. Thus, sardines fed on small particles needed to consume twice as much as those feeding on large particles to achieve the same condition and growth. Such results seemed to be linked to higher energy expenditures of sardines while filtering small prey compared to particulate feeding on large prey (sardines being able to shift between two feeding modes according to the prey size). Moreover, our results suggested several adaptations to cope with small food and caloric restriction. The study of the gill raker apparatus involved in the filtration of small prey suggested an increase of the filtration capacity for a given length between 2007-2009 and 2016. Then, sardines fed on small particles exhibited higher mitochondria efficiency and abundance suggesting energy-saving adaptation. Finally, sardines accustomed to feed on small pellets showed lower activity to limit energy expenditure. Nevertheless, all these strategies might incur other costs or may not be enough to compensate the high energy demands of filtration on small prey, as growth and condition remained lower for sardines filtering small prey in all our experiments. Further, sardines fed on large pellets exhibited higher spawning frequency than sardines fed with the same quantity of small ones. The low egg production of these sardines might be explained by a too high body condition of these individuals to observe a change in energy trade-off towards reproduction. For the same reasons, small particle meals did not seem to impact their immunity and stress, leucocyte and cortisol concentrations being similar whatever the feeding treatment. Furthermore, to investigate the hypothesis of adult overmortality, we first studied whether individual could die from starvation and low body reserves. The survival probability sharply decreased when the body condition index became lower than 0.75 and the threshold of 0.72 was identified as the entry in phase III of fasting. While the proportion of sardines reaching such thresholds in the wild remains low, it still increased two-fold in the recent period, reaching about 10% in winter months. A DEB model parameterized using a combination of in-situ and experimental data suggested a lower survival probability for larger fish. Individuals larger than 14 cm, i.e. older than 2-3 years, had a lower than 50 % probability to survive 1 month after the reproduction period. In conclusion, these previous results comforted the two hypotheses of a bottom-up control and an overmortality of adult sardines after reproduction to explain the dynamic and demographic truncation of the sardine population

Le cancer de la cavité orale représente un problème important de santé publique en France où les taux d'incidence sont parmi les plus élevés au monde. Bien qu'une détection précoce soit possible, ces tumeurs sont souvent diagnostiquées à un stade avancé et sont ainsi responsables de plus de 1500 décès par an. L'objectif général est de clarifier le rôle et l'impact des différents facteurs de risque dans la survenue des cancers de la cavité orale en France, notamment d'examiner de façon détaillée le rôle du tabac et de l'alcool par localisation anatomique précise, et d'étudier les associations avec d'autres facteurs de risque potentiels (indice de masse corporelle, antécédents médicaux, antécédents familiaux de cancer, consommations de café et de thé). Ce travail s'appuie sur les données d'une large étude cas-témoins en population générale, l'étude ICARE. Il porte sur un sous-ensemble de ces sujets (772 cas de cancer de la cavité orale et 3555 témoins). Les résultats montrent que le tabac augmente le risque de cancer de la cavité orale même pour des quantités et/ou durées faibles, alors que l'augmentation de risque liée à l'alcool n'est observée que pour de fortes consommations. L'effet conjoint du tabac et de l'alcool est plus que multiplicatif. Les associations avec les consommations d'alcool et de tabac varient selon la sous localisation : les associations les plus fortes sont observées pour le plancher buccal, les plus faibles pour les gencives. L'étude des autres facteurs de risque a mis en évidence : une association inverse entre risque de cancer de la cavité orale et indice de masse corporelle, avec un risque plus faible chez les personnes en surpoids ou obèses ; un risque augmenté lorsqu'un parent du 1er degré a été atteint d'un cancer des voies aéro-digestives supérieures ; un risque élevé chez les personnes présentant des antécédents de candidose buccale ; un risque diminué chez les consommateurs de thé ou de café. A partir de ces premiers résultats, il est envisagé de construire un score prédictif de cancer de la cavité orale permettant d'identifier les sujets à risque élevé sur lesquels cibler préférentiellement les actions de dépistage.

Defence date: 20 April 1999
Supervisor: Prof. Raffale Romanelli, European University Institute ; Co-supervisor: Prof. Michael Müller, University of Halle-Wittenberg ; External supervisor: Dr. Vincent Wright, Nuffield College, Oxford ; External examiner: Prof. Peter Becker, European University Institute
First made available online 21 September 2017
The purpose of the thesis is to understand the role of the army in the management of civil conflicts within the 'democratic' republican system in France and the 'semiabsolutist' and 'militaristic' Prussian system. In both countries, existing interpretations of the domestic role of the army focus on legal-constitutional perspectives, governmental and parliamentary policy making, and social conflicts, and are often normative. However, the lack of a cross-national comparative perspective has led to a series of conclusions that are called into question when the French and Prussian cases are compared. The thesis seeks to answer the question why the authorities in French and Prussian industrial areas, when confronted with similar challenges from mass protest movements between 1889 and 1914, adopted strategies that involved very dissimilar roles for the army in maintaining public order. On the basis of empirical observations of the process of bureaucratic decision making and inter-institutional co-operation between the state administration and the military authorities in Westphalia and Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the analysis was established using a 'historical institutionalist' framework of interpretation. The thesis puts forward two main arguments: that the strategies adopted by the French and Prussian authorities in the early 1890s that involved very dissimilar roles for the army in domestic peacekeeping were linked to dissimilar perceptions of the threat to the regime. The French Republic, despite its democratic and civilian ideals, made extensive use of the army because the fragility of the regime meant that it could not afford the danger that public unrest might get out of control. Conversely, the Prussian authorities considered their regime to be sufficiently stable to experiment with strategies to deal with public unrest that did not imply military intervention, even if these strategies provided a much lower degree of control over public unrest. The other main conclusion of the study is that the repeated implementation in the French case o f strategies that involved mobilisation of the army and the implementation in the Prussian case of strategies that drew upon civil forces alone, led to different strategies, organisations and uses of forces available. Hence, veiy dissimilar patterns of inter-institutional co-operation developed between the state administration and the military authorities in Westphalia and Nord-Pas-de-Calais.

Defence date: 30 January 2009
Examining board: Prof. Laurence Fontaine (EUI, Florence and EHESS, Paris)-supervisor ; Prof. Peter Mandler (University of Cambridge) ; Prof. Dominique Poulot (Université de Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne) ; Prof. Bruno de Witte (EUI, Florence)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses

France's Third Republic, which was in place from 1871 to 1940, saw the establishment of the nation's first state-run primary school system. This school system was far from politically neutral: it was designed to strengthen the Republic by wresting control of education away from religious orders and by encouraging the use of a universalized French language. The implementation of French education encountered significant resistance in rural provinces and overseas colonies, where linguistic and religious traditions clashed with the secularizing and universalizing tendencies of Republican France. This thesis explores how education was imposed and resisted through a case-study analysis of French schooling in Alsace and Algeria between 1918 and 1940. The experience in colony and metropole are examined on the same plane, in order to see how France sought to control the cultural identity of its citizens and subjects and how local populations in both locations resisted this imposition.

This chapter explains how the ceremony at Bwa Kayiman—the Vodou ceremony of August 22, 1791, that set the Haitian revolution into motion—was able to come about. The ruling class of powerful landowners and French commissioners was theoretically unified; the class of free people—whether white, mixed race or black—was supposed to be in their fold so that their profiteering would churn on undisturbed. The revolution exploded when the ruling class could no longer balance competing interests and when the lower classes refused to participate in the conspiracy any longer. Trouillot traces the roots of discontent in Saint-Domingue to the class struggles between the French aristocracy, bourgeoisie and workers in eighteenth century enlightenment France. He also sheds light on the reverberations that French class conflicts had in Saint-Domingue. In the late 1780s, the local landowners began clamoring for free market control over where their products could be sold. France had exclusive purchasing privileges over the colony’s output. By 1790, this major rift emerged between French commissioners and the local landowners. At the same time, a deep rupture appeared between whites and free people of mixed race when racist whites rejected Ogé and Chavannes’s demands of greater equality for mixed race people. Instead of cultivating their coalition with mixed race people, the ruling class sent 1,500 white soldiers and 3,000 black recruits to crush the movement of the people of mixed race. The ruling class’s traditional coalition was severed in various places. The leaders of the enslaved population saw the power they had when properly armed; they detected the conflict among the whites and the whites versus mixed race people; and they received and transmitted the exciting news of equality proclaimed by the rising French revolutionaries. Underneath this political quicksand, the enslaved population had established the cornerstones of an indigenous culture: farming, Vodou religion and the Creole language. The small plots that enslaved people were encouraged to cultivate for food and the small income they generated created a passion for agrarian independence. Vodou gave enslaved people the conviction they needed to fight, as well as a means of organization and cultural preservation. The Creole language provided a foundation for a common culture. The chapter closes with an analysis of the maroon culture of runaways and rebels and why it was unable to secure widespread independence. Finally, it introduces the geographic and demographic realities that favored an uprising in the northern plains of Haiti.

This chapter analyses the behaviour of the police during violent confrontations. The democratic Third Republic strove to control the behaviour of the forces of order, hoping to inculcate a respect for citizens’ democratic rights in the policeman. However, in the heat of the moment, officers frequently lashed out at political activists and innocent bystanders. They thus earned a deserved reputation for gratuitous brutality. As political conflict worsened during the 1930s, the Mobile Guard riot police were increasingly called to maintain law and order, sometimes with fatal consequences. While the authorities deplored such killings they nevertheless recognised that lethal force was sometimes necessary to defend the regime.

Civil status, and particularly birth certificates, rather than identity papers, are the legal basis of identification in France. Its nineteenth-century history presents a complex picture, which cannot be reduced to a process of increasing state control. Far from implementing ambitious registration projects, French liberal administration left information scattered and scarce as compared to European standards. It had to find a balance between the need to provide open information in order to minimize uncertainty in social and economic relationships, and the protection of personal and family honour and reputation. Citizens' agency and consent have been determinant in this process, whose traces are still visible in contemporary France.

This final chapter opens with Toussaint Louverture in Santo Domingo in 1802, preoccupied with the possibility of a new French invasion. In February, General Leclerc invaded Cape Haitian in the north; Toussaint was captured by French troops and taken to France as prisoner. Although his demise occurred for various reasons, most problematic are the tactics he embraced during the period of 1793-1799, wherein he neglected the interests of the former enslaved people and instead allied himself with the upper class and military interests. The rallying cry of “freedom for all” for the population of the former French colony did not imply that formerly enslaved masses could enjoy autonomy or freely cultivate edible crops on their own properties. While not all rebel leaders fit into the same social category, they did have different interests than the former slaves. Trouillot reminds readers that a true revolution produces profound social changes, inverting the old social order; and thus formerly-enslaved people should have all become property owners. However, the competing revolutionary leaders (including Rigaud, Beauvais, and Toussaint) stunted this possibility, neglecting the needs of the poor majority. It was chiefly the economic aspect of independence that divided Toussaint from the masses. After taking control of the former colony, Toussaint imposed import and export taxes that benefited European countries and the United States instead of Haitians; U.S.-built warehouses popped up on the capital’s wharf, and Saint-Domingue remained economically dependent. The former slaves benefited in no way from growing the sugar, coffee or cotton that they were required to produce during Toussaint’s reign; they were punished for planting food crops. Worse still, Toussaint required that the ex-slaves “respect” the integrity of former plantations by staying and working on them, while he distributed free land to rebel officers. The idea of “freedom” thus lost its resonance amongst the masses. Although members of the State of Saint-Domingue and the ruling class gained economically, it was at the expense of the former enslaved workers. From this point, the behavior of the Haitian State was that of sitting heavily upon the new nation, since their economic and political interests were at odds with one another. A host of contradictions emerged: Dependence/ Independence, Plantations/Small Farms, Commodity/Food crops, White/Black, Mulatto/Black, Mulatto/White, Catholic/Vodou, and French/Creole. Although the Constitution of 1801 abolished slavery and supposedly “guaranteed freedom” to all, it reinforced these fundamental contradictions. The “Moyse Affair” in late 1801 illustrates Trouillot’s understanding of Toussaint’s betrayal of the Haitian people. Moyse, Toussaint’s adopted nephew, had populist political ideas that attracted the black masses. Fearing his potentially subversive ambitions, Toussaint had Moyse judged by a military commission that included Christophe, Vernet, and Pageaux. Moyse was condemned to death and executed, effectively crushing the interests of the masses. Throughout the Revolution Toussaint maintained power by crafting coalitions amongst a wide variety of social classes and competing interests. The dominance of the new military class was a social contradiction that had to be masked, and Toussaint’s actions showed a will to conceal it. Aspects of this problematic behavior and ideology have reappeared in Haiti under Dessalines, Christophe, Salomon, Estimé, Duvalier and others. Official discourse is grounded in several central notions that are easily manipulated by Haitian leaders: first, the notion of “family,” allowing the concealed dominance of one group and the privileging the organized Catholic religion; second, the idea that Haitians should “respect property”; and, the myth of nèg kapab (“capable people”) who possess an inherent right to govern and oppress the people. The political concept of “family,” common throughout Africa and countries with African descendants, was employed by Toussaint as a form of social control: throughout the revolution Toussaint refers to the new Haitian society as a family in order to advance his own “paternal” political objectives and conceal its many contradictions. The state—which his ideology came to epitomize—began to take advantage of the people; it was akin to a vèvè, a matrix holding society together, and a Gordian knot, where complex and twisted socio-economic contradictions favoring a certain class were inscribed. Although Toussaint was kidnapped by the invasion of Leclerc in 1802, this motivated the Haitian masses to stand up and fight for independence from France, which ultimately led to freedom. Thus, living up to the surname of “Louverture” that was given him, Toussaint indeed opened the barrier to independence and warrants appreciation for that. When one revisits the ideology of Toussaint Louverture, and concurrently that of the state of Saint-Domingue, one must not forget that, in spite of all its weaknesses, libèté jénéral (“freedom for all”, or “universal freedom” in today’s terms) was originally a powerful unifying factor, which merits recognition: it helped Toussaint’s troops defeat the British, crush Hédouville, etc. Toussaint was betrayed by plantation owners and French and American commissioners alike, and he always maintained some faith in France, even if the masses did not. Trouillot implies that Toussaint understood the direction in which he wanted to go, but he got lost on the way. To his credit, Toussaint’s experience demonstrated that liberty without political independence was a senseless notion, and others (such as Dessalines) were able to break with his approach and capitalize on this lesson. The book closes with Grinn Prominnin declaring that he is exhausted and that everyone must return to discuss the situation tomorrow to reach a conclusion. The scene remains peaceful, the people complacent. Trouillot suggests that, more than 170 years after the revolution, the task of bringing about real social change in Haiti—and seeing the ambitions of the Revolution fulfilled—remains starkly inert. Readers easily infer that Haiti’s stagnant socio-economic and political situation (in 1977) is due not only to the as yet unfulfilled promises of the Revolution and War for Independence, but also to the escalating damages wreaked upon the Haitian nation by the Duvalier regime and its manipulative cronyism coupled with its totalitarian indigenist ideology.

This chapter opens with Sonthonax’s decree of 1793 that emancipated the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue. French revolutionary Léger Félicité Sonthonax brought a Civil Commission to Saint-Domingue in 1792 along with 6,000 soldiers. Their mission was to convince white landowners to form a coalition with mulatto landowners in order to crush the rebellion of enslaved people and preserve the colonial system. This delegation was fraught with contradictions as it was a microcosm of the conflict that had engulfed France: the struggle between aristocrats (the king, military leaders and Church leaders, and powerful landowners) and the bourgeoisie (businessmen and factory owners). Saint-Domingue’s social fissures were complex, with six major groups vying for power: the partisans of the new French government; the aristocrats; the freedmen, mixed race and black; the small whites; the leaders of the rebel slaves; and the masses of enslaved people. Trouillot explores the quicksand of shifting alliances and feuding rivalries during this early period of the Haitian Revolution. The white aristocrats refused to ally with the landowning and slave-holding mulatto and black freedmen. The new French government formed a coalition with the freedmen. The small whites resisted and were crushed by the new French government troops. The aristocrats turned to England and Spain for military assistance against the new French government, and these nations invaded and occupied parts of Saint-Domingue. To gain the upper hand, Sonthonax emancipated enslaved people willing to fight with the new French government in June 1793. Days afterward 10,000 French colonists fled the colony by ship. Sonthonax attempted to recruit the leaders of the rebel slaves; however, they were already fighting in the Spanish army and enjoying their freedom—some were even trafficking slaves. By emancipating the enslaved population in August of 1793, Sonthonax lost the support of the slave-owning aristocrats and freedmen, who were the principle power holders, and he was unable to recruit the leaders of the rebel slaves who saw no advantage in collaborating with an army that was losing ground. Having lost control of the traditional alliances, Sonthonax had overcorrected and found himself leaning upon those who had nothing to lose, the enslaved population.

In the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, political and economic power was concentrated in just a few countries. Having eclipsed the most mighty early modern empires—those of Spain and Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, The Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries— Britain, France, the Russian, and the Austro-Hungarian Empires became the major European powers. Later, these were joined by the newly formed countries of Germany and Italy, together with the United States of America and Japan. In these countries elites drew their might not only from the industrial revolution but also from the economic exploitation of their ever-increasing colonies. Colonialism, a policy by which a state claims sovereignty over territory and people outside its own boundaries, often to facilitate economic domination over their resources, labour, and markets, was not new. In fact, colonialism was an old phenomenon, in existence for several millennia (Gosden 2004). However, in the nineteenth century capitalism changed the character of colonialism in its search for new markets and cheap labour, and the imperial expansion of the European powers prompted the control and subjugation of increasingly large areas of the world. From 1815 to 1914 the overseas territories held by the European powers expanded from 35 per cent to about 85 per cent of the earth’s surface (Said 1978: 41; 1993: 6). To this enlarged region areas of informal imperialism (see Part II of this book) could be added. However, colonialism and informal colonialism were not only about economic exploitation. The appropriation of the ‘Other’ in the colonies went much further, and included the imposition of an ideological and cultural hegemony throughout each of the empires. The zenith of this process of colonization was reached between the 1860s and the First World War, in the context of an increasingly exultant nationalism. In a process referred to as ‘New Imperialism’, European colonies were established in all the other four continents, mainly in areas not inhabited by populations with political forms cognate to the Western powers. In the case of Africa, its partition would be formally decided at an international meeting—the Berlin Conference of 1884–5.

This chapter examines public credit and political representation in three European territorial states: France, Castile, and Holland. It tackles the following question: If having a representative assembly with strong control over finance had major advantages, then why could territorial states not emulate the institutions present in their city-state neighbors? The chapter first considers the early history of the rentes sur l'Hôtel de Ville and how it set the stage for the French monarchy's frequent difficulty in later obtaining access to credit. It then discusses absolutism in Castile and Castilian public credit in the seventeenth century, along with representative assemblies in the Dutch Republic. The experience of France, Castile, and the Dutch Republic shows that most territorial states faced obstacles in establishing an intensive form of political representation, and thus in gaining access to credit.