The Forgotten French. Exiles in the British Isles, 1940-44 (original) (raw)
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Sur le chemin de l'exil : les réfugiés belges dans l'Eure, 1940
2019
Thousands of Belgian refugees fled their homes for France during the spring of 1940, as they did during the summer of 1914. Many passed by the Eure département, some staying for days, others for weeks. Studying this unique exodus highlights specific dynamics, such as family solidarity or social and economic reinsertion. Embedded with previous migrations, the presence of Belgian refugees in the Eure is far from the traditional clichés of aimless and frightened crowds associated with civilians fleeing the Germans.
The aim of this special issue is to explore the history of the French external Resistance through its international networks. This introduction argues that we should think about the ‘Resistance’ as an international phenomenon, played out in a number of sites across the world, both within and beyond the Free French capital cities of London, Brazzaville – which declared its adhesion to Free France on 28 August 1940 – and (later) Algiers. Our study takes into account offi cial members of Free France, the French National Committee (September 1941–June 1943) and the French Committee of National Liberation (June 1943–June 1944), as well as ‘unoffi cial’ members of the Resistance who gravitated around Free France, such as members of the Free French committees scattered throughout the world. Studying the activities of these networks can off er historians a framework through which to reconsider the role of cultural propaganda as well as the tensions and antagonisms that traversed the external Resistance notably anti-Gaullism and anti-Semitism. By ‘de-centering’ the history of the External Resistance, we argue, we can better understand the multiplicity of exiles’ identities that were shaped and transformed outside the metropolitan territory and had long lasting consequences in the post-war period.
At Odds with Itself: British Policy towards 'France' 1941-1943
This paper, taken from the research conducted for my PhD thesis, offers an assessment of the difficulties Britain faced in trying to maintain its policy towards the Free French during the Second World War. It suggests particularly that the development of the Anglo-American 'special relationship' was a detrimental factor in these efforts, and caused serious divisions within the British War Cabinet.
THE FRENCH IN EXILE AND POST-WAR INTERNATIONAL RELIEF, c. 1941–1945
The Historical Journal, 2017
This article explores Free French responses to Allied planning for post-war international relief in Europe. A number of French experts in exile, often veterans of the League of Nations, advocated international co-operation with the nascent United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). For such figures, participating in the UNRRA could bring critical knowledge, political legitimacy, experience, and funds. They also hoped that this participation could bolster French prestige in the wake of the recent experience of defeat and foreign occupation. Their efforts had little impact on the early development of international relief, yet the contacts and exchanges between French and Allied planners resulted in a political imperative that gave a new impetus to the post-war restructuring of French relief abroad. Studying the complex inter-relationship between French foreign policy and humanitarian efforts during the Second World War can offer historians a framework through whi...
Colonial Subjects and Citizens in the French Internal Resistance, 1940-1944
French Politics, Culture & Society, 2019
In recent decades historians have done a lot to reveal the social and political diversity of the people who participated in the French Resistance. But little has been said about non-white resisters who were among the 200,000 men and women from the colonies living in the French metropole during the Occupation. This article shows that many of them were entangled in the Resistance as early as the summer of 1940 and that they became involved in the most political and violent forms of defiance. Resistance, however, was not a “natural” decision for many of the colonial workers or prisoners, whose daily struggles could bring them into tension with the Free French as well as Vichy. So, if this study aims to rectify misconceptions of the Resistance as an entirely Eurocentric affair, it also probes the complicated relationship between colonial subjects and the metropole during the war.
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Britain and France have long been intertwined, their history is so linked that the two may be more deserving of the 'Special Relationship' moniker than the relationship between Britain and the United States. This paper examines how the British tried to forge a role for France in the World after its defeat in 1940, how they butted heads with America repeatedly over this policy course, and how, eventually, they secured their aims.
Whose Liberation? Confronting the Problem of the French Empire, 1944–47
2007
Tuesday, 8 May 1945 … In all the succession of significant dates which have been commemorated from the history of the twentieth century, surely none has more ironically and symbolically divergent meanings invested in it, marking as it did both the end of the war in Europe, the culmination of France’s and occupied Europe’s struggle for Liberation, and the date on which VE-day celebrations in the Eastern Algerian towns of Setif and Guelma turned to violent disorder, to the deaths of some hundred European settlers, and then to the wholesale massacre — ‘genocide’ even, according to recent Algerian claims — of a still disputed number of Algerians (but certainly many thousands), and thus constituted the effective start of the Algerian struggle for national liberation.1