A01=Gerard Prunier
Africa
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Author_Gerard Prunier
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBTQ
Category=NHTQ
COP=United Kingdom
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eq_nobargain
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European history
France
French colonialism
French history
Gerard Prunier
Language_English
PA=Not yet available
Price_€20 to €50
Prunier
PS=Forthcoming
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781911723653
- Dimensions: 126 x 190mm
- Publication Date: 11 Sep 2025
- Publisher: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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France is the only country that never decolonised its colonies, emotionally, financially or strategically. In the aftermath of losing the Second World War, notwithstanding de Gaulle's attempts to convince his people otherwise, the French knew the game was up. (The Resistance fighters were heroes; but heroes are lonely.) For France, after 1945, the Second World War blended into the early Cold War, which Paris jumped into the day before it began. It fought in Indochina, and lost again. The independence war dragged on in Algeria. Then France lost there, too--painfully, with millions of its ordinary citizens expelled to a homeland that many of them hardly knew.
But Sub-Saharan Africa was still there. France produced a postcolonial antidote: 'Françafrique', France's sphere of influence (or 'backyard') over its former West and Central African colonies. France loved Africa. Some Frenchmen died for 'Françafrique'; others made millions from it.
The entire toxic edifice is now crumbling away. Young Africans are happy about this--but not so many of their parents, who often live in France. In his inimitable style, Gérard Prunier recounts a tragic transcultural saga, with one leg in the past and one in the future: the end of 'Françafrique'.
Gérard Prunier is a renowned historian of contemporary Africa, author of, 'inter alia', the acclaimed 'The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide' and of 'The Country that Does Not Exist: A History of Somaliland', both published by Hurst.
