France’s wars in Chad: military intervention and decolonization in Africa

Funerals have a way of revealing underlying truths. The sad, bare facts speak volumes. Who attends? What do they say? What do they carefully avoid saying? The attendance of the French President at the funeral of Chadian strongman Idris Déby in 2021 revealed the ongoing importance of Chad for French Africa policy. His decision to sit next to the son of the fallen leader, himself de facto leader of the extra-constitutional military council which succeeded Déby, pointed to a certain level of continuity in the French role in post-independence Chad: backing authoritarian regimes for broader strategic ends. In this context France’s Wars in Chad is particularly timely and, through an analysis of earlier periods of French military intervention, offers essential historical insight to those trying to understand not only the contemporary relationship between France and Chad but the French relationship with former African colonies more broadly.