Immigrants and undesirables: “terrorism” and the “terrorist” in 1930s France

ABSTRACT

This article investigates French understandings of the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” in the period of the late Third Republic when a series of assassinations, murders and bombings suggested that France was dangerously exposed to the threat of terror. The article deconstructs contemporary understandings of the phenomenon, showing that, if a variety of actions were labelled “terrorist”, the term was deployed in particular in relation to matters of foreignness. It was believed that immigrants, refugees and foreign secret agents imported terrorist violence to France. French citizens did not – could not even – perpetrate terrorism. Parallels may be drawn between discussions of citizenship in the wake of twenty-first century acts of terrorism and manifestations of such violence during the 1930s when notions of terrorism, Frenchness and foreignness were intimately connected.

KEYWORDS:

• France
• Third Republic
• immigration
• fascism

Acknowledgements

Chris Millington thanks Rebecca Clifford, Tomás Irish, Kevin Passmore, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Rahma Harouni writes that in 1937, “a series of astonishing murders and attacks implicating foreigners had reactivated hostility to non-natives”, but this point is not developed further.

2. However, in the 2007 Immigration, antisémitisme et racisme en France (XIXe-XXe siècle), Noiriel writes that political violence in France contributed to a “climate of insecurity” that affected immigration (434).

3. The references to Plisnier’s novel relate to the English translation, published by Boriswood in London in 1938 as Memoirs of a Secret Revolutionary; 11–12.

4. In an important article on the state of terrorism research during the 1970s, Walter Laqueur noted that, “[f]iction holds more promise for the understanding of the terrorist phenomenon than political science…”, suggesting that fictional works were valuable sources of “historical evidence and psychological explanation”, of terrorism.

5. Deputy and chair of the parliamentary inquiry into the events of February 1934.

6. Ralph Schor writes that it was only in the wake of the terrorist crisis that the term “undesirable”, though long used in certain sections of the press and politics, became a “banal” and “usual” term.

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Notes on contributors

Chris Millington

Chris Millington is Associate Professor of History at Swansea University.  He is author of From Victory to Vichy: Veterans in Inter-war France, published by Manchester University Press in 2012, and Fighting for France: Violence in Interwar French Politics, published by Oxford University Press in 2018.  He will shortly be taking up a post at Manchester Metropolitan University.