From Sétif to Moramanga: Identifying Insurgents and Ascribing Guilt in the French Colonial Post-war

Abstract

Focusing on the upsurge in anti-colonial insurgency between 1945 and 1947, this article explores critical transitions in colonial state violence in two French dependencies: Algeria and Madagascar. The suggestion is that official and local responses to colonial disorder in these immediate post-war years defined new, more violent parameters of French colonial counter-insurgency that would long endure. The argument connects the ascendancy of a new French political elite at the Liberation with a reconceptualization of imperial threats, particularly in those territories where political intelligence analysis and security policing became integral to day-to-day governance at the provincial, prefectural, or district levels.