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MARTIN EVANS: So my name is Martin Evans. I'm Professor of Modern European History at the University of Sussex, the Department of History, and my area of specialism in terms of a generic theme

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is empires. I'm really interested in empires, how empires begin, how they rule, how they end, and their complex aftermaths.

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So I'm interested in that as a generic phenomenon, but I'm particularly interested in the phenomenon of the French empire, really from the invasion of Algeria onwards from 1830.

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So it's the French empire in Africa and Asia. So thinking about or situating the French empire within this wider history of empires, and in particular, I've looked at the experience

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of the French empire in Algeria and Morocco during the 19th and 20th centuries. Resistance, it seems to me, is a really under analysed or under-researched historical theme.

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But when we think about it really, it's omnipresent and everywhere. So the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault said everywhere, where there is the application of force,

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there is resistance. So if we look across history, anywhere where there is the application of force, whether it be on a state level, whether it

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be in terms of family or patriarchal oppression, we will see or we will have to engage with phenomenons of resistance. How the people that are having this force applied to them,

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how do they react or engage with that force. So it seems to me that it is a really interesting, generic, category. But of course, we've got to think

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about how that category plays out within each specific historical context. I think the other thing, and this is what we'll be talking about later on in the interview,

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is the idea of resistance as an explicit vocabulary, where people situate themselves, as resistance involved in acts of resistance. And that's really interesting to think about,

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how that has become a global phenomenon, but how that vocabulary of resistance changes according to the cultural and linguistic context.

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So how does it play out in English? How does it play out in French or Spanish or Arabic? How do these words-- what words how have these meanings? So I think it's fascinating to explore really

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in a comparative way. I think, yeah, to give a number of examples, as suppose one obvious example would be to think about if we go back to the classical period

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would be to think about the Roman empire. So how did the Roman empire begin? How did it rule and how did it end? If indeed it has ended, because many people

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think that we're still living through the Roman empire with the Roman Catholic church. So I think there, what the Roman example shows us is the way in which the Roman empire emerged, and then

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expanded through the use of physical force. And then the major question is, how did people respond to that force? And obviously, in some respects, it

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was about physical resistance. If we think about the example of Boudica as a kind of symbol of resistance to the Romans. But in a way, that response of resistance

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has to be situated within a range of possible responses. So one could be direct opposition and resistance, another response could be an acceptance, so actually the Roman empire.

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Because of its deploying of massive intimidating force, there's no alternative. In a sense, what you've got to do is you've got to come to some kind of accommodation

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with the Roman empire. It doesn't necessarily mean that you agree with it, but you have to find some way of living with it. But also, I think it's important to remember

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that the Roman empire did have aspects of some forms of universalism. It tried to reach out to people saying, actually, there are benefits from Roman rule.

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And certainly, in terms of-- we can look at examples where people did become-- they saw as one possible response the identification with Roman culture, the idea that

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being Roman was a good thing and was a mark of civilization. And then, of course, I think the Roman empire really raises questions about how empires end, and then their long and complex aftermaths.

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So I think the Roman empire is a really interesting example of how we have to situate this idea of resistance within a wide range of possible responses. And then, of course, there are a wide widely different varying

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types of resistance. So I think the Roman empire is a really good example of that. And in a sense, when we look at different empires in different contexts across the globe,

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I would say that there are similar questions that we're asking there, so the extent to which any empire use physical force, intimidation to rule, but also some sense of a civilising or universal idea

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that people could identify with, and what would the range of responses. I think another example where we can think about resistance really is a kind of huge global theme

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would be in terms of thinking about a kind of global history of patriarchy and the family. So it's the way in which, of course, differing according to cultural historical linguistic contexts.

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But if we think about the kind of phenomenon of patriarchal or male power within the family, how did women, in a sense, respond to that kind of patriarchal force?

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Sometimes it was through explicit acts of resistance, accommodation, disavowal. So I think that would be another example. And then something that I've become really interested

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in, in particular, in terms of looking at the Sultanate of Morocco from the end of the 17th century is really across the globe from in the 17th and 18th century, the way in which we see empires, that really become

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interested in trying to extract taxation from peasant populations. It's about applying pressure to peasant populations, which will extract wealth from them in terms of taxation.

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And the way in which peasant cultures, it seems to be across the across the globe, become involved in strategies about resisting that assertion of state power.

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So in Sultanate of Morocco, at the end of the 17th century, we see within the Sultanate of Morocco the creation of a particular force of black slaves, known as the abids.

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One of their explicit roles is to extract taxation through physical intimidation, force, from the rural population. And we see ways in which the rural population try to,

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in a sense, resist or sabotage this process by hiding crops, by hiding wealth, by tax avoidance. And I think that that's a really interesting phenomenon that we can sort of map out, it seems to me, in the 17th, 18th, 19th,

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and the 20th century as well. So if we look at Stalinist collectivization in the Ukraine under the first five-year plan, what we will see amongst Ukrainian peasants

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is the way in which they become involved in the process of trying to sabotage the process of collectivization, trying to resist it through the types of strategies and techniques

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that really have become kind of very, very clear from the 17th century onwards. So I think those three examples, think about the Roman empire, to what extent that sets up a template.

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Think about the examples of family history, kind of intimate and personal history, how this can play out. And then this phenomenon really it seems to me of kind of peasant resistance cultures,

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so the way in which peasant resistance cultures become involved in what's often referred to as the weapons of the weak in the face of state power. There could be deliberate misunderstanding of processes,

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a deliberate slowing up of processes, the techniques really, which is an attempt to kind of slow up or sabotage central state power. I think that's a really interesting question.

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And I think, as historians, we have to be very, very attentive to ways in which that can differ according to very, very precise cultural historical and linguistic contexts.

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It seems to me that one possible starting point could be during the Napoleonic wars, the peninsular war. So there, we see in terms of resistance to the Napoleonic state in Spain,

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a kind of language of guerrilla warfare that emerges, peasant guerrilla warfare, a kind of unorthodox warfare, warfare behind the lines and against orthodox armies. And I think that would be one really interesting point,

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this idea that the image of the guerrilla the kind of idea of the fighter that perhaps is living in and amongst the population, and is not somebody that would be identified as a kind of regular soldier.

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So we see that as it seems to me that's one point that emerges. So that's at the beginning of the of the 19th century. Slightly earlier, there would be a language in under the Louis the 14th oppression of protestants in Catholic France.

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So in particular, in the Cevennes region in the South of France, we see protestants, the camisards that become involved in creating a resistance culture, which is opposed to oppression by Catholic France.

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And that's a really interesting example because during World War II, it was amongst the Cevennes that many Jews were protected, and in many respects, the kind of local Protestant population.

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They were, in a way, drawing upon this longer and deeper language of a resistance culture to authority. So there were knowledge about where people could be hidden, for example, to escape the kind

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of Nazi and Vichy authorities. So I think those would be two examples. But it seems to me that what stands out is the importance of World War II, that world war two really

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does create a resistant language and a resistance imaginary, which has enormous influence, it seems to me, on the post-1945 world. So we see this within Nazi-occupied Europe.

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And obviously, there's been a lot of attention and focus upon the role of the French resistance. So there, with the fall of France in 1940 and the establishment of a collaborationist Vichy regime

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that is collaborating with the Germans, and we see then the emergence of small groups of resisters that, in a sense, disavow the fall of France. Some of them are located in London, like Charles de Gaulle.

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But some of them, it's about like minded people that come together in small groups. So for example, in Lyon, you have a number of left wing Catholics that come together,

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that really reject Nazism as the kind of total rejection of what the Christian message is about. And they become involved at the beginning in terms of grassroots resistance, which

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is about the emergence of a clandestine press, where they are really sort of putting about alternative views to the lines of argument being put forward by Vichy and Nazi authorities.

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It's also an example where and I think this is very important, in terms of thinking about different types of resistance. Often, we think about resistance as being something associated

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with armed resistance. But there, in terms of the clandestine press, it was about intellectual resistance. We also see that during the occupation period.

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There's the foundation of a clandestine press, the Editions de Minuit, the Editions of Midnight. So they produce clandestine novels and texts, which produce an alternative perspective on the occupation,

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but also, on the earliest acts of resistance takes place in 1940. So the armistice day in Paris, a day associated with French victory over Germany

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in World War I, a very sensitive topic for the Nazi occupiers. And then, on that day there, are a small group of French students that sort of parade on the Champs-Elysees carrying two fishing rods.

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And you might think, well, what does that mean? Why would they carry two fishing rods? Well, their French word for fishing rod is gaule. So by having two fishing rods, you are showing your allegiance

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to De Gaulle. So, in a way, part of resistance is about mobilising a hidden language, which you will understand and other people understand,

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but the people who might be occupying you will not necessarily understand. So I think, really, the example of the French resistance, but we can also look at the example of Czech resistance,

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Polish resistance, it definitely created it seems to me a language and vocabulary, which becomes very powerful in terms of the post-war world, whereby everybody wants to be resister.

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Well, I think when I came to look at really the processes of power in French Algeria, and I was particularly looking-- so Algeria is annexed by France in 1830,

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so it's invaded by France in 1830, and it's subsequently annexed as an integral part of France. So Algeria, in theory, for the French authorities, is no different to Normandy and Brittany.

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So there is a kind of intensity of colonial rule, which is kind of unique, I think, within the kind of French imperial experience. But of course, no system dominates totally.

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No system dominates totally. They're always going to be spaces which are going to emerge, whereby those ideas or that colonial domination can be contested.

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And I was really very interested about how in the 1920s and 1930s, the emergence and articulation of Algerian nationalism, which saw itself very much a phenomenon across the region, the Middle East

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and North Africa, saw itself in terms of something that was Arab and Muslim. So the idea that Arab culture had been systematically denigrated by British and French

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and Spanish colonialism. And in the wake of the disappearance of the Ottoman empire in World War I and the abolition of the caliphate in 1924,

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is the idea now is the time of the Arabs, the Arabs were going to reassert their identity. And really, what you see in Algeria in the 1920s and 1930s, the enormous explosion

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of cultural associations, sporting associations, that have an explicitly political language and message in terms of this assertion of an Arab and Muslim identity. Now, I was particularly interested in exploring this,

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and I suppose, I've got an interest. And this is where it shows, in a way, any historian, their whimsies and their perspectives are going to come into play here.

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So I've got an interest in sport and football. One of my favourite books, historical books of all time, is probably CLR James, the Trinidadian, sort of Marxist, his 1963 Book Beyond the Boundary, where really,

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he says that you will understand nothing about cricket in the Caribbean without understanding its social and political context. So he's saying that really, it's not

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that war is politics by other means, but sport is politics by another means. And he's really interested in the way in which within the Caribbean, cricket

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becomes a vehicle for an assertion of a kind of anti-colonial nationalism. So I was really interested in the way in which sport can become a kind of space through which

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kind of resistance identities can be asserted. So looking in the colonial archives in Aix en Provence, in the South of France, I was looking at the archives around Algeria, and I

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was particularly interested in what the French authorities were becoming worried about in the 1920s and 1930s. What were they monitoring in terms of trying

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to control the population? And I really found, fell upon, a kind of really-- I mean it was gold dust. It was a whole series of documents about football,

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where, really, what they were worried about was that football and that football stadiums were becoming spaces through which Algerians, being particularly strongly gendered, Algerian men were articulating their resistance and anger

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towards the colonial system. So you see through the reports about what types of chants are being sort of shouted sung on the terraces, which have a kind of explicit anti-colonial

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or anti-French message. But also, the French were very, very worried. So with the professionalisation of football in French North Africa and the emergence of professional teams and leagues,

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they were really worried that the sort of league in Algeria was beginning to become racialized. So what they do is they introduce a set of laws that try to stop that, saying that every team has

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to have at least three and then, subsequently, five settlers in that. And what's really interesting is that that law is absolutely hated amongst the Algerian Muslim population.

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It becomes something which they really mobilise against and that they really show their kind of disavowal and resistance to, and this is commented upon. I mean the kind of-- in a sense, the kind of authorities

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are really worried about this kind of Algerians coming together and they're becoming politicised. And what you find is really interesting letter exchanges, where the authorities are writing

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to certain clubs saying, why haven't you got these three settlers. And particularly, clubs in the eastern part of Algeria where there are far fewer settlers, then begin to write back,

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saying, we would love to have three or five settlers in our team, but there are no settlers here, so we can't. It's the extent to which that is actually, in a way, it's the weapons of the weak.

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Are they being deliberately disingenuous there because they don't want to have settlers? Would settlers have even wanted to play within what was seen to be a Muslim team?

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And then, also, I became really interested in a sense the kind of colours that were being used and the way in which those colours carried the language and a vocabulary that was explicitly political.

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So the oldest club in Algeria, which is formed in Algiers in 1921, Mouloudia of the Kasbah, so its name itself in terms of referencing the kind of birthday of the prophet Muhammad,

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is obviously carrying a very explicit kind of religious and political message. But then, they're very strict, which is carrying colours which are explicitly identified with Islam.

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So they become an articulation of an alternative identity, which is disavowing France. And that becomes particularly important because in 1930, you have the 100th anniversary

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of the founding of French Algeria. And France invests a huge amount in that centenary, which is experienced by large sections of the Muslim population as a kind of humiliation.

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So that's why, in a way, sport becomes a really important place through which resistance identities can be articulated. I think that one of the things that I use at Sussex university

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is really trying to think through these things in terms of photography and the recovery of Algerian female history, particularly the role of women in the war of liberation. So in a sense, I think what you've

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got to think about is how, as historians, do we approach photography as a specific type of visual source, so how is a photograph different from a poster, how is it different from a film, and when did when did photography

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emerge, and how was photography used by state power to--