colonialism

In December 1940 colonial police forces in Malaya arrested two strike leaders on suspicion of being communists. Police shot at 500 striking workers who were marching on the police station to protest the arrest, killing three workers and injuring more.

In 1947 an insurrection broke out in Madagascar, beginning with raids on police stations in the East and South then quickly spreading across the island. The French colonial government doubled its defence force in response, and the subsequent repression led to an estimated 90,000 or more deaths. While the revolt has been attributed to the reformist MDRM party, two underground organisations, Vy Vato Sakelika (VVS) and JINA, were instrumental in the early stages, although even they stated later that they did not begin the insurgency. Strikers at Renault in Paris denounced the repression.

In May 1945 the French state committed a massacred thousands in Sétif, Algeria after a street demonstration marking the end of the Second World War adopted anti-colonial demands. Members of the French Communist Party (PCF) in De Gaulle's government supported the massacre, claiming that the anti-colonial demonstrators were supported by the Germans. The Sétif massacre is mentioned briefly by Frantz Fanon in the Wretched of the Earth.

How did the state become distinct from the castes and presented itself as a neutral entity that hovers and contrasts with a so-called civil society? What is the relation between the emergence of capitalist power over the world and the emergence of absolutist monarchies and nation-states? This short article presents a synthetic look at the history of the emergence of the modern state.