French Colonial Fascism

This study investigates the various extreme-rightist leagues in Algeria, with particular attention to certain key themes, among them the rabid xenophobia directed at the Jewish population and local Muslims. It demonstrates that fascism helped to construct a racial hierarchy to preserve European hegemony and a pool of cheap labor.

“By addressing the issue of settler fascism in colonized Algeria, Samuel Kalman delivers a much-welcome book in the historiographical field of the French Empire. … Structured along chronological lines, Samuel Kalman’s work proves very clear, detailed and useful. … Kalman’s book demonstrates how deep the tensions between the metropolitan institutions and the local administration ran, the police being described as largely in favor of the ‘fascist’ organizations.” (Claire Marynower, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 51 (3), 2016)

'Samuel Kalman's French Colonial Fascism is an important book that will be required reading not only for scholars and students of interwar fascism but also for researchers of the later war in Algeria.' - French History

'Samuel Kalman's French Colonial Fascism is an exceptionally well researched and very judicious account of the extreme Right in inter-war Algeria. It makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate on French fascism in the last two decades of the Third Republic and goes a long way to helping our understanding of the Algerian tragedy in the 1950s.' - William D. Irvine, Professor, Department of History, York University, Canada

'The first in-depth study of ultra-rightist groups in interwar Algeria, French Colonial Fascism is an unsettling but gripping read. Exploring the connections between settlers' attachment to a racialized view of Algerian social relations and the growing appeal of ultra-rightist ideology after World War One, Sam Kalman has produced a work of real originality, the first exploration of the warped moral economies of settler fascism.' - Martin Thomas, Professor of European Imperial History, University of Exeter, UK

'Frontier communities that feel threatened are prone to nationalist and racist extremism. The European settlers in Algeria formed a particularly virulent case. Samuel Kalman's French Colonial Fascism explores compellingly their actions and doctrines between the two world wars as they strove to exclude Jews, to keep Muslims subjugated, and to loosen the control of metropolitan French authorities that seemed to them too soft.' - Robert O. Paxton, Professor of History emeritus, Columbia University, USA

'A well-researched, fluidly written, contribution to our understanding of inter-war settler politics in Algeria. This work is essential reading for anyone interested in the development of different forms of fascism and in French inter-war colonialism.' - Patricia M. E. Lorcin, Professor of History, University of Minnesota, USA, and author of Historicizing Colonial Nostalgia

'Written beautifully and meticulously studied, Samuel Kalman's book exposes the specific fascist ideology of European settlers in Algeria. Anyone who is interested in the history of the French settlers in Algeria specifically and colonial relations in general will find this book fascinating and deeply enriching.' - Ruth Ginio, Department of History, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

Samuel Kalman is Associate Professor of European History at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is the author of The Extreme Right in Interwar France: The Faisceau and the Croix de Feu, and co-editor (with Sean Kennedy) of The French Right between the Wars: Political and Intellectual Movements from Conservatism to Fascism.