The Warfare-Welfare Nexus in British and French West African Colonies in the Course of the First and Second World Wars

The workshop aims to study the transformative impact of 20th century wars on European societies. The first research avenue emphasises a perspective “from below”, by focusing on the relations between society and State policy. A second strand aims to deconstruct the traditional view centred on the Nation-State, by analysing the phenomena of mobilisation, demobilisation and transformation according to infra-state (at micro and meso levels) as well as supra-state scales. The workshop shifts focus on social actors and “sectional interests” (e.g. unions, employers’ organisations, voluntary sector), and aims to discuss the impact of the war from a transnational and entangled point of view. As it calls into question the natural primacy of the scale of analysis of the nation-state, it questions the caesura between wartimes and post-war times to consider the processes of war exit (sortie de guerre) and those of social translation beyond the end of the fighting.