Cian Cooney - PhD Research
Biography:
I am currently writing up a doctoral thesis entitled ‘Une certaine idée de l’Algérie: The Far right, the French Army and the Fight for l‘Algérie Française’. My thesis compares and contrasts the ideologies of the Nationalist defenders of French Algeria and their interplay with the French Army.
I recently published a paper in ‘French History’ on revolutionary war doctrine and the far right. A second paper discussing the 2021 Tribunes des Militaires, and its civil war discourse has been submitted for publication. In addition to the Algerian War, my research interests include geopolitics, the post-war far right and counter-insurgency warfare.
Doctoral Thesis:
Title: Une Certaine Idée de l'Algerie: The Far-right, the Army and the Fight for French Algeria
Résumé: France’s decolonisation process was arguably the most violent of all the European colonial powers. The Algerian chapter of this process would prove to be its most dramatic, climaxing in the very real threat of civil war and witnessing the first entry of the French Army into politics since Bonaparte’s coup of 18 Brumaire 1799. The inhabitants of the nation’s capital would live under the threat of aerial assault by crack foreign legionnaires, while Sherman tanks of a WW2 vintage were rolled out ominously to guard the National Assembly from attack. The Algerian War represented the culmination of a decade long fight by France to hold on to their disparate imperial possessions. It was here in French Algeria that she had the strongest claim to legitimacy: legally part of France proper, and home to the largest European settler population anywhere within the newly rebranded ‘French Union’.
Both the far-right and the French Army had become disillusioned with the political system, had devoted themselves to the cause of a French Algeria, and both would find themselves confronted by common enemies. This convergence of goals led to collaboration between the two groups. It is this joint effort, both practical and ideological, which this study aims to elucidate. In particular, it will examine how the Army’s legacy of involvement in the Vichy regime, their fight against and subsequent defeat by the Viet Minh and the doctrines formulated as a result of this experience in Indochina, all contributed to this collaboration with the far-right, their two coup d’états and finally their role in the domestic terror group, the OAS.
Date of completion: Ongoing, scheduled for completion by September 2024.
Supervisor: Dr. Edward J. Arnold