Contenu du sommaire : Pratiques ordinaires de l'ordre en Afrique

This article focuses on the comparative history of Saharan law enforcement units in two former French colonies, during the period when national institutions were being established. By examining the daily life of these units, as well as the debates that their organisation prompted, we can highlight the contrasting effects of late colonial policing in two different post-colonial situations. After the colonial authorities failed to standardise a confusing and highly unusual situation, the first Nigerian and Mauritanian governments inherited the sensitive question of how to redistribute the colonial income of the arms service.

This article sheds light on the “deuxième portion du contingent” [literally, “the second portion of the contingent”], a form of forced labour analogous to military service used in colonial Senegal. It focuses on the labour camp, understood as a kind of ordinary confinement with disciplinary goals. The main objective of the system was to maintain the social order and to instil the value of hard work in the “natives”. Nonetheless, recruits to the deuxième portion reacted in different ways to their living and working conditions. They called for their rights and their dignity to be respected, gradually pushing colonial authorities to reform and abolish this form of forced labour in the 1950s.

Drawing on three case studies, this article delves into the use of “ethnographic” techniques in the day-to-day exercise of power in the Belgian Congo during the 1930s. In the Kwango-Kwilu area, local officials tried to retrace clan genealogies in order to provide a basis for forced population displacements. The enquiry following the murder of a field agent sheds light on the administration's lack of knowledge regarding local cosmogonies and power dynamics. Finally, the repression of the millenarian movement Lukusu reveals the anxiety that stemmed from this ignorance among colonial public servants. Each case study also highlights the ability of Congolese communities to counter and circumvent the hegemonic ambitions of imperial actors.

In the 1920s, the colonial tribunals of French Guinea and the Ivory Coast witnessed a rash of death sentences handed down to a very specific group of criminals: cannibals. This article analyses this historical episode and demonstrates how condemnations for cannibalism were driven by political imperatives, which were in turn rooted in fantastical perceptions of African identity. Without any tangible proof but the unwavering support of Metropolitan authorities, colonial administrators implemented an unprecedented policy of judicial repression against the people of the Guinean and Ivorian forest.

This article reconstructs the everyday life of chief administrators in the Cacheu subdivision of Guinea-Bissau by examining their service journals. Recounting a number of repetitive tasks, their journals emphasise the monotony of their daily routines. The writing itself becomes monotonous and repetitive, thus reinforcing the image of stability attributed to the local colonial power. Nevertheless, the routines of senior administrative officials were often disturbed by incidents and acts of resistance, which in turn broke the monotony of their narratives. More broadly, studying these archives of everyday life reveals the hesitations and uncertainties that made up daily existence in the employment of the Portuguese colonial service in Guinea.

This article examines whether – and how – gender-based violence formed part of the quotidian activity of State-building. As the most visible representatives of the State, policemen in German South-West Africa aspired to a specific type of masculinity that was honourable, martial, and professional in nature. Their individual honour simultaneously reflected the honour of the colonial State as a whole. Hence, when rape – a distinctively masculine form of violence – was committed by State representatives, this posed a problem with regard to State legitimacy. In the case examined here, colonial administrative representatives expressed what masculine honour and fellowship meant to them. Discussions of what constituted “honourable” behaviour were always implicitly also a dialogue on the nature of the colonial State and its agenda.

Despite repeated attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) managed to weather the storm of Mc
Carthyism which hit Washington D.C. in the early 1950s. While the CIA did not escape Soviet interference, its successive directors took a firm stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy, a position which set them apart from most other government officials. This offensive stance highlighted the shortcomings of the Republican Senator's strategy and tactics alike. It also allowed the CIA to preserve its integrity and reputation, which gave it new stature and unprecedented leverage within the State apparatus.

During the 1960s, the Cold War was much more than a bipolar conflict between the Left and the Right. In Latin America, the Cold War also gave rise to tensions amongst Marxists. The Cuban Revolution, which from 1960 onwards demonstrated a revolutionary possibility (the theory of focalism) and came to challenge “orthodox Communism” as embodied by the USSR, was not always seen as the quintessential model by Latin American Communists. The Chilean Communist Party led by Luis Corvalán – who championed a peaceful path to revolution – countered Cuba's radical discourse, which emphasised armed struggle as the only means to achieve a revolutionary victory. The notorious retaliation of Cuban Communists against Neruda in 1966 epitomised the apex of these tensions.

The creation of an oil industry encountered many obstacles in France. The country was a latecomer on a market that was largely controlled by powerful foreign trusts, at a time when no French company had the means to adopt an independent policy. After the First World War, the French government used diplomatic agreements to join the oil sector, hoping to unify its citizens and breathe new life into its attempts at developing a national oil policy. This article analyses the difficulties which public officials faced, as well as the private sector's resistance to their ambitions. It exposes the mechanisms of influence wielded by a powerful French investment bank and the conflicts of interest that oil exploitation engendered.

From 1963 to 1981, the French Republic had a special court, the Cour de sûreté de l'État [or State Security Court], which tried individuals accused of political crimes. The establishment of this political jurisdiction by the National Assembly in January 1963 should not be considered its original act of creation, however. Though apparently new, the Cour de sûreté de l'État in fact merely represented the institutionalisation of the justice d'exception [“exceptional justice”, or cases of treason and other exceptions to the legal system] which had been instated during the last months of the Algerian War of Independence. The Court was in fact the descendent of a temporary court created in 1961, the Tribunal militaire [Military Tribunal], now transformed into a permanent court.