Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 1914

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University of California Press, Oct 9, 2007 - History - 446 pages
How did Great Britain and France, the largest imperial powers of the early twentieth century, cope with mounting anticolonial nationalism in the Arab world? What linked domestic opponents and foreign challengers in the Middle East and North Africa—Syria, Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt—as inhabitants attempted to overthrow the European colonial order? What strategies did the British and French adopt in the face of these threats? Empires of Intelligence, the first study of colonial intelligence services to use recently declassified reports, argues that colonial control in the British and French empires depended on an elaborate security apparatus. Martin Thomas shows for the first time the crucial role of intelligence gathering in maintaining imperial control in the years before decolonization.
 

Contents

THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE SERVICES AND SECURITY POLICING IN NORTH AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST
14
PAST PRECEDENTS AND COLONIAL RULE
45
CONSTRUCTING THE ENEMY Intelligence Islam and Communism
73
INTELLIGENCE AND REVOLT I British Security Services and Communal Unrest in Egypt Iraq and Sudan
107
INTELLIGENCE AND REVOLT II French Security Services and Communal Unrest in Morocco and Syria
145
POLICING THE DESERT FRONTIER Intelligence Environment and Bedouin Communities
173
INTELLIGENCE AND URBAN OPPOSITION IN FRENCH TERRITORIES
201
DISORDER IN THE PALESTINE MANDATE Intelligence and the Descent to War in the British Middle East
226
DOMESTIC POLITICS INTERNATIONAL THREATS AND COLONIAL SECURITY IN FRENCH TERRITORIES 19361939
261
Intelligence Security and the Colonial State
293
GLOSSARY
305
NOTES
309
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
397
INDEX
419
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About the author (2007)

Martin Thomas is Reader in Colonial History at the University of Exeter. He is the author of The French Empire at War (1998), The French North African Crisis (2000), and The French Empire between the Wars. Imperialism, Politics, and Society (2005).

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