Abstract
The effect of surrendering their empires varied among the different European ex-colonial overlords. During the 1950s and early 1960s it appeared as though the most traumatic effect would be experienced by France. The loss of Vietnam and then Algeria led to a strong right-wing reaction. A phantom army was formed, the O.A.S. (Organisation Armée Secrète) which launched assassination attacks upon politicians denounced as traitors, and which terrorised Algerian and other immigrants. However, de Gaulle succeeded in demonstrating that France could still generate a special kind of world-prestige which appealed to Africans and Asians — and he even stirred the ‘colonised’ people of Quebec by the cry Vive le Québec libre, Vive le Québec Français. France ceased to be neurotic about past imperial glories and established a new kind of hegemony within the European Community.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
Michael Novak, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics, the New Political Force of the Seventies (New York, 1971). Harold Isaacs comments: ‘As some of them now seem to see it, the [melting-]pot itself was used by the wicked Wasps of the Old North-East to boil away all the rich pure stuff of non-Waspness and cook up a great thin mess of pasty second-class Waspness which then became the essence of the common American culture’ —see his Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change (New York, 1975) p. 210.
Quoted by Louis E. Lomax, The Negro Revolt (New York, 1962) p. 77.
Earl Anthony, Picking Up the Gun: A Report on the Black Panthers (New York, 1970).
The police are empowered to make arrests for ‘loitering with intent to commit a crime’ or, in other words, on suspicion. The rate of arrests on this score is twice as high among black as among white teenagers. See also J. R. Lambert, Crime, Police and Race Relations: A Study in Birmingham (London, 1970).
A much fuller account of the immigration from South Asia is given in Hugh Tinker, The Banyan Tree: Overseas Emigrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (Oxford, 1977).
Quoted in Jonathan Power and Anna Hardman, Western Europe’s Migrant Workers (Minority Rights Group, London, 1976) p. 20.
Christopher Bagley, The Dutch Plural Society: A Comparative Study in Race Relations (London, 1973).
Copyright information
© 1977 Hugh Tinker
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tinker, H. (1977). A Defensive West. In: Race, Conflict and the International Order. The Making of the 20th Century. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15807-2_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15807-2_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-19665-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-15807-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)