This introduction sets the stage, describing the evolution of the international monetary system during the 1930s and the tenets of the Tripartite Agreement, as well as providing a literature review.

This introduction opens with an analysis of the way that black intellectuals from throughout the French Empire and the United States understood their relationship to Western civilization more broadly and the Republics of France and America in particular. It positions this book in the heart of contemporary historiographical debates about the relationship between anti-racist and anti-colonial activism and claims to citizenship and human rights. In so doing it brings into conversation the two disparate historiographies of rights and race in the United States and the French Empire and makes an argument for breaking down the division between the “interwar” and “postwar” periods when thinking about these histories.

The decolonization, a process that leads to the nominal independence and international recognition of states, gained momentum in the late-1950s, having its peak in 1960, the African year, when 18 colonies, protectorates, and trust territories became independent. This chapter explores the decolonization of Africa from three perspectives: of the colonial powers, of the colonial states, i.e. the colonies themselves, and of the international system. It argues that there is not one explanation to capture the decolonization. Only if we scrutinize decolonisation from all three perspectives, we are able to comprehend that process in its complexity.

African states have been and are subject to external interference. During the Cold War, the USA and the Soviet Union competed for influence, as did China and France. After the Cold War ended, a decade commenced in which there was fewer external influence but the promotion of a liberal-cosmopolitan order. The rise of China in Africa (and beyond), beginning roughly in 2000 as well as the 9/11 and other terrorist attacks ended that decade of relative calm. A phase of heightened interest in Africa began, particularly in the areas of security, migration, and economic policy, often labelled the “New Scramble for Africa” that continues to the present day.

This chapter outlines the nature of the “Franco-Chadian state” and its early postcolonial political evolution. It highlights the deep embeddedness of French influence in the Chadian economy and security services. It also provides an overview of the broader context of postcolonial Franco-African relations and French strategic aims in its former empire. The chapter then examines the outbreak of civil war in the country. In 1965, communities in central Chad rebelled against abusive governmental taxation. Quickly the revolt spread throughout the country and gradually its disparate factions became more organized under the loose banner of the Front de Liberation Nationale du Tchad (Frolinat). By early 1969, Frolinat elements threatened Fort-Lamy, Chad’s capital. This chapter examines the nature of this rebellion and French President Charles de Gaulle’s decision, in the final weeks of his presidency, to launch a sizeable military intervention on behalf of Tombalbaye’s regime. This intervention included an important statebuilding component, the Mission pour la réforme administrative (MRA). It aimed to address the administrative failures that French policymakers saw as a root cause of the rebellion. The chapter concludes with a description of the MRA’s mission and an analysis of its ultimate failure.

After several months of fighting, it became clear to outside observers that Habré’s forces had gained the upper hand. Goukouni then asked Gaddafi to formalize and escalate the support he had received over the past several months. This culminated in a friendship treaty and a meticulously organized Libyan ground invasion of Chad in December 1980. This forced Habré to disengage from N’Djamena, and flee the country. Most of his forces managed to regroup and withdrawal into neighboring Sudan, from which Habré soon began conducting guerilla operations. In early 1981, Gaddafi and Goukouni announced the “merger” of Chad and Libya. This chapter narrates these events, and questions how French policy failed to prevent the kind of nightmare scenario which had haunted French officials over the previous three years. It also discusses the origins of a growing American role in support of Habré. The chapter further introduces the early approach of Mitterrand's presidency towards Chad and assesses the gradual shift in French policy which helped to encourage Goukouni to expel Libyan forces from Chad.

This chapter centers on Franco-Chadian relations during the “Claustre Affair,” from 1974-1977. This began when the two rebel leaders of a weakened “2nd Army,” Hissène Habré and Goukouni Weddeye kidnapped several French and German citizens, including Françoise Claustre, the wife of the head of the MRA. This set the stage for a nearly three year-long series of negotiations between French officials, the rebel movement, and the Chadian government. During these negotiations, Habré arrested and later executed one of the French negotiators, Captain Pierre Galopin, and Pierre Claustre, Françoise’s husband, himself became a hostage. The chapter also focuses on the weight of French influence in the Chadian regime’s decision-making processes and the role this played in Franco-Chadian relations over the next few years. It discusses the coup d’état that overthrew Tombalbaye in 1975 and the advent of his successor, the Conseil supérieur militaire (CSM) under General Félix Malloum. Finally, the chapter chronicles the way that France’s negotiation strategy facilitated increased Libyan military and diplomatic involvement with different factions of the Chadian rebellion. Ultimately, this support upset the balance of power within the country and facilitated a return to outright war.

This chapter narrates Operation Limousin, France’s first major military intervention in Chad from 1969-1972. It traces shifting French strategies to defeat a widespread Frolinat rebellion, and charts French military successes in central Chad. It also examines the ultimate inability of French arms and diplomacy to defeat Frolinat’s “2nd Army” in the desert north of the country. The chapter also analyzes Limousin’s mixed results and its longer-term consequences for Chad’s subsequent conflicts. In particular, the chapter addresses the counterinsurgency methods employed by French forces and their Chadian allies, and their impact on local populations. These included the fragmentation of state authority through the creation of numerous militias, indiscriminate air attacks, and operational support for an even less discriminating government army. Throughout, the difficult relations between Chadian President, François Tombalbaye, and top Chadian officials with their French patrons remain a central element to the story.

This chapter covers the delicate politics surrounding the integration of Habré’s faction into the CSM. It also describes how French military successes against different rebel factions led to divisions within the northern rebellion, and a split between its main leader, Goukouni Weddeye, and Gaddafi’s Libya. It then covers the fighting which broke out between Habré and Malloum in February 1979. The chapter looks at how the balance of power shifted in favor of Habré as Goukouni’s forces infiltrated the capital and joined Habré’s men. The chapter also analyzes the ambiguous role played by France in facilitating a northern victory, as well as the subsequent debates and recriminations within the French policymaking apparatus. This led to a sharp deterioration in relations between French military officials and diplomats. Meanwhile, by early March 1979, over half of N’Djamena’s population had fled the city towards the south, thus effectively leaving behind an ethnically cleansed capital in the hands of a fragile coalition of Frolinat rebels.

Although accountability is touched on in nearly every account of current higher education developments (HE), only a few HE scholars have attempted to further theorize accountability, its forms, implications, and practical significance. In this chapter, we attempt to advance the debate by focusing on European HE in the age of Bologna, international rankings, massification, and underfunding. We begin our analysis by addressing the manifold socio-economic forces which have put accountability centre stage in contemporary HE discourse and reforms. We then outline numerous state-of-the-art conceptualizations of accountability in general, and in HE specifically. Following the lead of Huisman and Currie (2004), we wish to move beyond normative statements and generalized descriptions by analysing the emergence of ‘accountability regimes’ in four large European countries — Germany (North-Rhine Westphalia), France, Poland, and Romania — with distinctly different paths of development in HE. The analysis allows us to identify cross-national cases of convergence and divergence in the emergence of accountability regimes.

This chapter examines the fraught relationship between jihadism in central Mali and an ethnic group, the Peul, that has simultaneously furnished numerous recruits to the jihadists and become a target of collective punishment by the state. The jihadists in central Mali and those in northern Mali, beginning formally in 2017 but informally several years earlier, were part of the same organization. Yet the political approach taken by jihadists in the center differed substantially from that taken by their peers in the north; in particular, jihadists in the center cultivated a starker “ethnicizing” discourse but were simultaneously less interested than their northern counterparts in drawing local politicians into their coalition. The chapter analyzes how Peul politicians have responded to the jihadist leader Amadou Kouffa, highlighting ways in which shared religion and ethnicity provided common ground for communication but ultimately not for compromise, let alone coalition-building. The chapter argues that central Mali represents a case of jihadist coalition-building that, by its implicitly anti-elite stance, offers substantial possibilities for grassroots recruitment while simultaneously foreclosing the possibility of absorbing some of the most important political blocs on the scene.

This chapter investigates the political career of a small Islamic State affiliate operating in this border zone. These jihadists have benefited not just from the stereotypical “porous border” but also from the way that complex conflicts in this region exacerbate animosity between ethnic groups and between civilian populations and national states. This animosity creates openings for jihadists to implicate themselves in local politics and for local communities to use jihadism as a weapon in local politics. The chapter argues, however, that the “Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS)” exemplifies the case of a coalition whose horizons are limited precisely because its religious messaging is highly underdeveloped. Even as ISGS finds some recruits and achieves some military and propaganda victories, such as ambushing a patrol of American and Nigerien soldiers in 2017, ISGS has struggled to build a serious political coalition and therefore may remain, ironically, a partial satellite of its ostensible rival al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).