The French Army and its African Soldiers: The Years of Decolonization by Ruth Ginio (review)

Reviews 223 general reader, or for an undergraduate course, but which is detailed and nuanced enough for research or use in a graduate course. University of Memphis Melanie Conroy Ginio, Ruth. The French Army and its African Soldiers: The Years of Decolonization. Lincoln: UP of Nebraska, 2017. ISBN 978-0-8032-5339-1. Pp. 250. Ginio surveys France’s most desperate act to hold on to French West Africa, its former territories, via its army even after independence. Through a thorough examination of the protracted role played by the French Army, Ginio convincingly demonstrates how France had heavily invested in preventing the decolonization from being fulfilled in West Africa. The French army and its African soldiers will be the key component in a series of strategies and policies used by France to maintain its relations with that region. Beside the French army’s involvement in the usual warfare to consolidate its empire, it assumed most of the civilian responsibilities, such as education, social assistance, health, and participated feverishly, as Ginio puts it, in colonial decision making and in shaping the colonial agenda (xviii). Ginio is definitely the authoritative voice for conducting a work in this caliber given her constant body of research on the French military and empire.Not only does Ginio have a high command of expertise in the field of African studies, she is also deeply passionate and committed about bringing new insights and shedding lights for a better understanding of France’s sophisticated military relations with western African regions before and after decolonization . The way she portrays the French Army’s role as a stabilizing force that furthers France’s interests in time of turmoil and warfare is indicative of a vision that has long been entertained and explored by even some African leaders (Léopold Sédar Senghor among others), in that they would not depart from the empire but negotiate their independence from within while the latter could still maintain its grips on these territories through the army. The book is structured around three main themes as the title indicates: the French army, its African soldiers, and decolonization. Ginio unequivocally stresses the precarious role played by both the French army and its African soldiers in that they actively participated in the repression of anticolonial movements while they did play their part in the decolonization process. Following the book’s logic and structure, the author starts with a political and historical background for each of the three main themes highlighted above in chapter 1. She then offers a great overview of the ambiguous relations between the army, its soldiers, and its veterans from 1944 to 1949 in chapter 2.A series of attempts to reform and professionalize the army units in French West Africa is examined in chapter 3. The next two chapters focus on the involvement of African soldiers in Indochina and Algeria to fight,in the name of French empire, the Viet Minh and the FLN. The final chapter deals with the implementation of the military vision of the political future of French West Africa along with the last years of French colonial rule. Ginio in this study claims that the colonial era has never ended by demonstrating amply the everlasting effects of French colonial rule on West French Africa after independence and beyond. Sarah Lawrence College (NY) Claudy Delné Gouesbet, Gérard. Violences des hommes. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2016. ISBN 978-2-34309489 -2. Pp. 334. In this second volume of a tetralogy that investigates the multifaceted nature of various manifestations of violence that transpire in a deterministic, chaotic universe, Gouesbet focuses on the origins of human aggression. Building upon his biocentric premise in the first installment that violence is inscribed in the material essence of everything, the physicist and philosopher of science highlights the most salient features that define human aggression. In an effort to understand the complex nuances of the passions and“pulsions”that incite deadly conflicts more fully, Gouesbet incorporates philosophical, scientific, literary, theological, historical, and psychological perspectives into his reflections (17). Incessantly transgressing disciplinary boundaries, the author reflects upon the driving forces that compel us to commit barbaric acts of aggression and to subjugate the Other. Underscoring the limitations...