Contenu du sommaire

The Purge and its Representations in Languedoc and Roussillon (1944-1945). From Nîmes to Perpignan, the purge followed a rather "national" curve. The same phenomena were observed there as in other regions : shaved heads of women, jailing of suspects by precaution, summary executions, intervention by the autorities. The chronology recalls the decisive role of war-time, until May 1945, in the explanation of the useless violence and condemnable excesses. P. Boyer puts forward new figures, but by mixing reality and its representations, she explains the role of the collective realease that the purgers expressed and how their action, under public opinion's eye, pointed to the terrible internal violence persisting in liberated France.

France's Spanish Policy (1945-1955). France's policy toward pro-Franco Spain during the post-war decade was separated into two hinged parts : August 1947: the revising of the policy of ostracism was put into motion because of its patent failure ; end of 1950 : the lifting of the pro-Franco liabilities was seen by the UN vote eliminating the discriminatory recommandations enacted late 1946. This led to two opposing phases, separated by a transitional step : confrontation during the two years in which the French government contributed to printing the seal of infamy on a peninsular power that it isolated by interrupting frontier communications ; appeasement, by which coexistence followed interventionism. The opposite attitude was adopted with regard to the republican exile. After a period of pregnance of Resistance values in the immediate post war, this development showed the France's inability to follow an original line in a bipolar context.

Why Read Le Canard enchaîné ? Le Canard enchaîné, born in 1915 by the editor Maurice Maréchal and the artist Henri-Paul Deyvaux-Gassier, has become an institution in the French press. Its present fame owes a great deal to the sensational revelations it publishes each week on all subjects. But this specializations is relatively recent. Before the 1960s, most of the information in Le Canard was known by everyone ; it was the special treatment of this information that distinguished the satiric weekly from the rest of the press. Its early readers were attached to a moral attitude, an original language and type of humor, and a fantasy of the simple and joyous life that continue to characterize this journal unique in the world.

This article examines the motivations, expressions and consequences of resis tance to the Vichy regime in the French Caribbean. The multiple forms of opposition employed by the Antillais were profoundly influenced by the legacy of slavery. By dismantling the republican System in the French West Indies, Vichy unwittingly associated itself with a lineage of authoritarian regimes which had relegated the Antillais from citizens to subjects. It is in this context that one should understand both the success of Antillais resistance and the place of its memory in the post-war era.

The Communist Party of Reunion Island (1946-2000). The communist movement of Reunion Island came into being in the period between the two wars and acquired a structure in 1946 during the fight for the departmentalization of the Island. In 1959, this Federation became the Reunion Communist Party, under Paul Verges, and it affirmed its desire to decolonize the Island by claiming autonomy. By its ideological homogeneity, this party, violently opposed by Michel Debré until 1988, was a fundamental matrix in the construction of a political identity ofa population expressing both a strong personality and an undeniable attachment to France. The RCP became an indispensable interlocutor for Paris and holds much of the local political responsibility today. It considers itself as the intangible defender of liberties and democracy, yet it keeps some characteristics and practices of the Stalinian model and refuses, unlike the FCP, to question its past.

Citroën and Tourism in the Sahara (1924-1925). CEGETAF/CITRACIT(1924-1925) was an ambitions project initiated by André Citroën to establish a regular automobile service between French North Africa and French West Africa and at the same time to attract high-end tourism to the colonies. The project was a total failure ; the hotels that Citroën built in the middle of the desert were sold offto the army before they were ever used, and Citroën himself refused to speak ofthe plan after its cancel-lation. However, the elaboration of this project provides an interesting case study of the political and cultural ramifications of an attempt to rationalize the French Empire both geographically and symbolically. Despite its ultimate failure, the short history of CITRACIT shows Citroën 's understanding of the prevalling colonial psychology. Couching his argument in terms of technical rationalization rather than of military conquest, and adding an element of fantasy that would appeal to the bud-ding tourist market, Citroën was able to garner considerable support from the French State for his venture. The silence thatfollowed the cancellation of the project was complete, though the name of Citroën was linked in the press to another major mission, the Croisière noire, a journey across Africa in Citroën-made vehicles. This diversion of public attention confirms the extent to which the French Empire remained an unknown in the public imag ination during the interwar period ; the idea of the Empire could therefore be easily manipulated according to the political climate in the metropole.