Conflict between comrades: exploring violence inside France’s ‘African Army’ during the First World War

A lecture by Prof Claire Eldridge (University of Leeds) for the Centre for International History Seminar Series.

Using case studies drawn from France’s multi-ethnic ‘African Army’, this paper explores the complex entanglement of violence and camaraderie during the Great War. The accusations, explanations, and justifications that emerge from multi-vocal military justice sources illustrate what it meant to commit and be criminalised for certain acts of violence within a context that was saturated with violence. By granting access, often in unexpected ways, to the perspectives and internal worlds of a diverse group of soldiers, many from racially and otherwise marginalised backgrounds, military justice sources reveal a complicated and rich set of social relationships and situational responses.

The Centre for International History draws on the burgeoning insights of scholars in the past few decades that history does not stop at the border of the nation-state.  International history explores comparative approaches and uncovers transnational flows of commerce, politics, culture, and ideas. The Centre's research seminars and public events will display these methods while examining historical developments across the globe especially in the late modern period.

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