The Colonial Roots of Political Violence in France: The Croix de Feu, the Popular Front and the Riots of 22 March 1936 in Morocco

Abstract

Historians of France have generally believed that interwar France was more stable and less violent than its European neighbours.¹ However, this assumption rests upon a Eurocentric conception of political violence that considers Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as the models for conflict: bloody street fights, high body counts and the destruction of parliamentary democracy by authoritarian fascists. This chapter suggests that political violence played a key role in French political culture, although it did not follow patterns of violence that historians associate with the era of fascism.² Indeed, the actions of the largest political movement in French history, the far right Croix de Feu, kept the death toll in France low relative to other European countries while it deployed strategies that compelled other political groups to use tactics that included physical confrontation. Throughout the 1930s, the Croix de Feu, the antifascist Popular Front and the French state were entangled in political violence that was different in form and function from that perpetuated by the Nazis, the Italian Fascists and the far right groups of Eastern Europe.