Between 1945 and 1969 the Sudanese achieved independence and overthrew a military junta with a popular uprising. Nevertheless both democratic periods were quickly ended by military coups. At the same time a civil war divided the country. The thesis asks why the democratic structures were so unstable, and unable to end the conflict between north and south. It argues that the ideas about the Sudanese nation by different groups were so contradictory, that no nation could be built. As a result, the political system failed to find a stable form and to deliver policy results to the constituents. The thesis is using political parties as units of analysis and primarily the constitutional process and, secondarily, questions of independence and sovereignty, as prisms. It discusses the history of the political parties within the context of the political history of Sudan. The discussions about the constitution are understood as one form of expressing ideas about the nation. The thesis presents the different suggestions for the constitution by different parties, especially in regards to governance, federalism, and religion. These contradictory ideas led to the failure of the constitution writing process. The thesis argues that the contradictory positions of the parties created a dual deadlock, which led to a breakdown of democracy. Firstly, due to reciprocal distrust, widely diverging platforms, and generally the difficulty of forming coalition governments, especially in the absence of a democratic tradition, coalitions became extremely unstable and politicians were forced to invest a lot of time and effort to keep coalitions alive and in consequence concrete political actions did not receive enough attention. Secondly, the divergent perceptions of the nation led to a situation where they stopped to see each other as part of the same nation and therefore stopped to recognise others as legitimately participating in the political process.

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe in detail the efforts made to protect natural indigo the blue dyestuff extracted from the leaves of the indigo plant (Indigofera tinctoria) - against the market competition of cheaper and purer synthetic indigo - which was derived from coal-tar hydrocarbons. Throughout the nineteenth century British India was the pre-eminent producer and supplier to the West of indigo for its thriving textile industry. The introduction of synthetic indigo on the market in 1897 by two German companies threatened to end Indias dominant role in the indigo trade. To counteract competition from the synthetic substitute the European planters living in India, supported by the colonial and the national governments, conducted scientific research in the laboratories and farm stations. This dissertation fundamentally focuses on these scientific efforts made in India and England, and contributes to the scientific and technological history of Modern South Asia.

This research intends to explore the reverberations of the colonial experience in the European Union (EU) peacebuilding policy-making towards the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In particular, it aims at reconstructing the link between the European colonial past and the EU, in order to address to what extent such historical heritage is manifested in the discursive practices of EU peacebuilding policy-making towards the Democratic Republic of Congo.Thus, the thesis seeks to answer to the following research question: “How does the EU address the European colonial legacy in peacebuilding policy-making towards the Democratic Republic of Congo?” To do so, the research position itself in a critical conversation with EU Studies and Postcolonial Studies, and mobilises Discourse-Historical Approach influenced by Colonial Discourse Theory as a methodological tool. After having gathered interviews with EU Officials working on peacebuilding policies, having conducted archival research in the Historical Archives of the European Union and having undertaken participant observation at the European External Action Service, the results of this research are mainly twofold. Firstly, this study shows that within EU peacebuilding policy-makers the colonial legacy is hardly addressed. Yet, the EU relies on a dehistoricised regime where selective historical events are mobilised to the objective of legitimising EU peacebuilding actions. Secondly, the research identifies discursive strategies that reproduce colonial discourses in EU peacebuilding policy-making. These strategies, mainly based on racial stereotypes, connote an unchanging order based on a fixed donor/recipient binary. Such pervasive discourses tend to perpetuate dependency, instead of reaffirming an independent peace process that is supposed to be the final goal of EU peacebuilding policies. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Despite having roots in 19th century Europe, Marxism had a deep impact on the trajectory of political ideas in the non-European world in the twentieth century. In particular, anti-colonial thinkers engaged productively with Marx’s ideas as part of their struggle against Empire. Yet, little attention has been paid to the displacements and innovations in political thought as a result of this encounter between anti-colonialism and Marxism. This dissertation aims to fill this gap by studying the history of Indian communism, focusing on the first three decades of the communist movement (1921-1950). I claim that this is an ideal time period to interrogate the formation of political ideas in India, since they presented themselves with particular intensity in the midst of an unfolding anti-colonial struggle, and arguably, the birth of the Indian political. The entry of communist ideas into the charged political environment of the 1920s had an impact on the ideological debates within the Indian polity, as well as stamping Indian communism with its own specific historicity. Through a tracing of debates among communist leaders, as well as their non-communist interlocutors, this work seeks to provide a novel lens to consider the relationship between ideas and their historical actualization, or between the universal and its instantiation in the particular. Moreover, the dissertation argues that the radically different socio-political and historical landscapes of Western Europe and colonial India necessitated a confrontation with the stagist view of history dominant in the history of Western Marxism, prompting novel theoretical work on the issue of political temporality. Consequently, the relationship between necessity and volition, central to enlightenment thought, was radically transformed in the colonial world, particularly in terms of its entanglement with the problem of subjective violence. Engagement with such questions not only impacted Indian political thought, but transformed global communism itself, putting into question the concept of an “originary site” for political ideas. Thus, this work intervenes in debates in three distinct registers: Global Intellectual History, Marxist theory and Indian political thought.

Ma thèse porte sur les savoirs cartographiques en situation coloniale, au nord de la péninsule indochinoise. J'y envisage la manière dont des espaces frontaliers, disputés par des États coloniaux et nationaux, ont été représentés et construits, entre 1885 et 1914, par les différents acteurs en présence: empires britannique, français et chinois, royaume de Siam, populations locales. L'enjeu est de dépasser les histoires nationales afin de proposer une étude croisée des politiques géographiques britannique et française clans des marges impériales. Ce croisement révèle trois processus centraux. Tout d'abord, il montre que la cartographie des confins constitue un observatoire de la production des territoires et de la définition des entités étatiques et coloniales. Il montre égalemen1 le rôle de la cartographie au service des relations internationales dans un contexte de forte compétition. Enfin, il permet de lire les relations entre politiques géographiques impériales et pratiques de terrain : par-delà la manichéenne opposition entre « savoirs traditionnels » et «sciences modernes » se dessine une riche dialectique entre savoirs coloniaux et savoirs vernaculaires. / My dissertation offers a connected history of Northern lndochinese Peninsula during the early years of colonization (1885-1914). I discuss the link between cartography and the empire and question the construction of the imperial territories through maps. I see how the border areas that were disputed by the colonial and national States have been represented and constructed, between 1885 and 1914, by the different actors: British, French and Chinese empires, Siam realm, local peoples. I argue the central value of a spatially marginalized territory, for which Willem van Schendel has spoken of a "geography of ignorance". Mostly unknown from the Europeans, inhabited by ethnic minorities, it is actually a border space. Looking at the empires from their borders is a good way of studying the central imperial politics. Besides, cartography plays a role in the international relations in a context of high competition. Finally, there are links between the different cartographies at that lime, which show the rote of cartographic knowledge in the colonial encounter in Burma and in Vietnam as well.