Geography Archives: France

The independence of French Indochina after the Second World War triggered a wave of independence in the French-speaking African countries, and it appeared that French colonial foundations had suffered a huge blow in the early 1960s.

The coups in sub-Saharan Africa have opened a new era for the African peoples rising against French imperialism.

The great cultural theorist Stuart Hall called Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth “the bible of decolonisation” as it encapsulated the urge for freedom across the colonial world. Fanon illuminates how racism represented an organising principle for capitalist classes by systematically devaluing the lives of the majority of the world’s population.

In this venture, ECOWAS has been fully supported by the United States and Europe, leading many to suspect it is being used as an imperial vehicle to stamp out anti-colonial projects in West Africa.

On March 5, in Bangui, Central African Republic (CAR), there was a fire-bombing of a French–owned brewery which destroyed 50,000 bottles of beer.

France refuses to withdraw its ambassador and troops from Niger, and reiterates its threat of supporting military invasion by ECOWAS, while the regional bloc itself is “determined to bend backwards to accommodate diplomatic efforts”.

Of late however there has been a popular anti-imperialist upsurge in several countries of Francophone Africa. In Guinea, Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso, new anti-imperialist governments have come to power in the last couple of years that want French troops out of their countries; and in Mali they have even succeeded in getting French troops out.

This isn’t what Western countries wanted to sow in West Africa, writes Owen Schalk.

Niger is shaping up to be the surprising frontline of the new Cold War.

Burkina Faso and Mali have declared their willingness to defend Niger with armed force if France, Nigeria, or ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) were to intervene in Niger following the recent change of power.

Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité. That was the slogan with which the French masses overthrew the hated monarchy in 1789.

South Africa’s media agencies report that the country’s authorities have rejected a French request to send an invitation to President Emmanuel Macron to attend the upcoming summit of the BRICS economic group.

France’s Interior Minister reports that one-third of those imprisoned during the week of violence were young rioters.

The proposed law specifies that the procedure can be executed “without the knowledge or consent of its owner or possessor,” but is limited to suspects involved in terrorism, organised crime and other illegal activities punishable by five or more years in prison.

France never really came to terms with its colonial heritage or its colonial mindset.

“Tout le monde deteste la police!”—Everyone hates the police—was chanted at demonstrations and riots across France last week.

Newly declassified British files shed disturbing light on the origins and internal workings of Operation Gladio, a covert NATO plot deploying fascist terror militias across Italy. Have spies in London applied these lessons in Ukraine?

175 years on from the 1848 June Days insurrection, Katherine Connelly explores what Paris’ working-class revolutionaries taught Marx and Engels.

Ever since the Haitian people successfully overthrew slavery and colonialism in 1804, they have been subjected to interventions and policies by the French and U.S. governments–from devastating “debt” collection to brutal military occupation, from coups to neocolonial puppet dictatorships–designed to destroy their existence as sovereign people, as an independent nation.

During the May 2023 Group of Seven (G7) summit, the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, near where the meeting was held.