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This article examines the French decision to send reinforcements to Indochina in April 1951 despite evidence of the futility of the Indochina War and pressing security needs in Europe. I analyze the motivation for this decision with the assistance of the minutes of the National Defense Committee, as well as the private papers of leading French politicians and military figures. I argue that the key to understanding the French decision to continue the war rather than seek peace was the belief that the war in Indochina was critical to the achievement of French goals in Europe and NATO. As a consequence of this analysis, I suggest that any celebration of France's European achievements must be tempered by the recognition that European policy was often closely linked with a regressive imperial policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During World War I male French citizens in Cochinchina whom the colonial government had drafted to fight in Europe left their families behind in the colony. Through a complicated subsidies process, the government offered financial assistance to families impoverished by the draftee's departure and the concomitant loss of income. Far from being a monolithic category, the colony's poor white applicants, also known as petits-blancs, received varying government subsidies, depending on their family configurations. This article argues that the military allocations council's judgments correlate with the petits-blancs applicants' relationships to indigenous people and their adherence to traditional gender roles. To guard white prestige, the colonial government effectively penalized petits-blancs applicants who deviated from behavior associated with whiteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on concept of a Vichy syndrome in France concerning World War II. Contours of a continuing discussion of Vichy as syndrome and obsession; Image of a historically unique postwar French retrospective fixation with the Vichy years; Controversy among those in France concerned with the country's wartime past.

Focuses the memory of the Resistance and the image of a collaboration imposed in France concerning World War II. Memory difficulties of older generations; Figures in the Vichy syndrome; Embarrassment and incomprehension in the Francois Mitterrand case; National revolution; Ideology of the National Revolution; Construction of French historical memory.