1st Edition
France and the New Imperialism Security Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa
The role of French security policy and cooperation in Africa has long been recognized as a critically important factor in African politics and international relations. The newest form of security cooperation, a trend which merges security and development and which is actively promoted by other major Western powers, adds to our understanding of this broader trend in African relations with the industrialized North. This book investigates whether French involvement in Africa is really in the interest of Africans, or whether French intervention continues to deny African political freedom and to sustain their current social, economic and political conditions. It illustrates how policies portrayed as promoting stability and development can in fact be factors of instability and reproductive mechanisms of systems of dependency, domination and subordination. Providing complex ideas in a clear and pointed manner, France and the New Imperialism is a sophisticated understanding of critical security studies.
Biography
Bruno Charbonneau is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, Laurentian University, Canada.
'A valuable and provocative book, combining insightful deployment of critical theoretical ideas on security and the symbolic state with historically and empirically rich analyses of French engagements with Africa. The author successfully demonstrates both the dynamism and the powerful continuities that mark Franco-African relations, to the detriment of most Africans within the ambit of this deeply rooted special relationship.' David Black, Dalhousie University, Canada '...this book raises a number of fascinating questions and opens a necessary and long delayed debate about France's security policy in Africa...' Journal of Contemporary European Studies '...the book succeeds in showing where the Franco-African complex has come from and how it has endured, rendering it open to further scrutiny. It also forms a useful guide to how such issues might be investigated in other contexts.' African Affairs
