Documents  University of California Press | enregistrements trouvés : 3

"In this pioneering book, Irwin M. Wall unravels lie intertwining threads of the protracted agony of
France's war with Algeria, Americas role in the fall of the Fourth Republic, the long shadow of Charles de Gaulle, and the decisive postwar power of the United States. At the heart of this study is an incisive analysis of how Washington helped bring de Gaulle to power and a penetrating revisionist account of his Algerian policy. Departing from widely field interpretations of the Algerian war, Wall approaches the conflict as an international diplomatie crisis whose outcome was primarily dependent on French relations with Washington, the NATO alliance, and the United Nations, radier than on military engagement.
Wall makes extensive use of previously unexamined documents from the Department of State and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and heretofore secret files of the Archives of the French Army at Vincennes and the Colonial Ministry at Aix-en-Provence. He argues convincingly that de Gaulle always intended to keep Algeria French, in line with his goal of making France the center of a reorganized French Union of autonomous but dependent African states and the heart of a Europe of cooperating states. Such a union, which the French called Eurafrique, would further France's chance to be an equal partner with Britain and the United States in a reordered "Free World."
In recent years the Algerian war has reclaimed its place in popular memory in France. Its interpreters have continued to view the conflict as a national, internai draina and de Gaulle as the second-time savior who 'ended French participation in a ruinons colonial war. But in analyzing the conflict in ternis of French Foreign policy, Wall shows the pivotai role of the United States and counters certain political
myths that portray de Gaulle as an emancipator .of colonial peoples. Wall's interpretation of the Algerian conflict may well spark controversy and will open important new avenues of debate concerning postwar international affairs." (4ème couv.)