Research project
Colonial subjects and citizens in the French (Internal) Resistance
- Start date: 1 March 2020
- End date: 31 December 2030
- Funder: Office National des Combattants et des Victimes de Guerre (France)
- Primary investigator: Professor Nina Wardleworth
- Postgraduate students: Eleanor Dufton, Elizabeth Angus
- Undergraduate students: Stella Grover, Phoebe Williams, Eleanor Smith
Value
£20,000
Description
More than 2,500 men and women from nearly every territory of the French Empire participated in diverse forms of resistance across metropolitan France during the Second World War. Their activities ranged from assassination and sabotage to armed uprisings, espionage, intelligence gathering, and the sheltering of fellow fighters and Allied soldiers. Hundreds lost their lives at the hands of the German occupiers, the French collaborationist police, or paramilitary organisations, or were deported to concentration camps.
This research project investigates how the participation of colonial subjects in the French Internal Resistance reshapes understandings of colonial migration to France during the interwar period, as well as the presence and agency of other colonial individuals (whether conscripted workers, prisoners of war, students, or civil servants) under the Occupation. It also examines what post-war commemoration, or the absence of it, reveals about France’s broader process of decolonisation in the postwar period.
Impact
Exhibition: Liberated by the Empire? Colonial Resistors and Soldiers during World War Two, Mont-Valérien Memorial, Paris (June 2023-December 2025).
Co-curated with Dr Julie Le Gac (University of Paris-Nanterre) and Dr Julian Fargettas (ONaCVG).
A travelling version of the exhibition in French (La France libérée par son Empire ?) can be loaned Mont-Valérien.
https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2024.420202