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This paper argues that European cooperation in the management of African crises is not inherently more legitimate than previous unilateral forms of intervention. Nonetheless, the French colonial tradition of military intervention and continued efforts to maintain French hegemony are not necessarily incompatible with a European capacity to manage African crises. The cases of the French interventions in Cote d'Ivoire and in Chad/Darfur will support this argument. These cases show that the new interventionism cannot escape the fact that these postcolonial African states are a product of the French colonial Republic. Functionally, France's historic links to such places have both constructed their current political crises and created the expectation that France (above everyone else) should take the lead role in intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]