- The role of violence in the political order of colonial regimes: British rule in Iraq and French Rule in Algeria
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Abstract:
- This essay draws a comparison between the role of violence in the political orders of two colonial regimes: that of France in Algeria, and of Britain in Iraq. It seeks to investigate the reasons why violence escalated to extreme extents in one case, becoming a defining feature of French rule in Algeria, while it remained restrained and controlled throughout the British mandate over Iraq. In order to conduct its analysis, this essay will rely on a historical approach that fleshes out the contexts of colonisation in both cases, as well as on social movement theory, in order to understand how violence was used as a tool by the regimes in power. It will conclude that while violence was used for the same purposes, namely the maintenance of peace and order, the establishment of hierarchy and the suppression of dissent. Its scale varied, however, as identity issues that were at stake in the case of Algeria, (seen for the French as an extension of France itself), were absent in the shorter-lived occupation of Iraq by the British.
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