Lecture | Peace Histories Seminar Series
General Jacques Pâris de Bollardière and the French Nonviolence Movement, ca. 1960s-1980s
- Date
- Monday 16 February 2026
- Time
- Serie
- Peace Histories Seminar Series 2025-2026
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.48
Abstract
In 1957, general Jacques Pâris de Bollardière abruptly left his command in Algeria out of a refusal to countenance torture, publicly denouncing this paradigmatic war of European decolonization. In doing so, he jettisoned a glittering career forged in the Free French forces and Resistance maquis in the Second World War, and in France's colonial war in Indochina (1945–1954). Gradually thereafter he emerged as a leading voice in the French nonviolence movement from the early 1970s.
In his commitment to nonviolence, he engaged former military colleagues in since forgotten national debates about the violence and legacy of France’s wars. He championed conscientious objectors, campaigned against nuclear weaponry, denounced the French military establishment, and advocated alternative nonviolent forms of defense and local democracy based on socialist self-management. He participated in mass protests against French army installations on the Larzac plateau in southern France and sailed to the South Pacific to put himself in the way of French nuclear bomb tests.
This talk contextualizes de Bollardière's public interventions to examine the contentious French debates about Western military alliances and commitment to nuclear weaponry. Thus, de Bollardière's story, while unique, sheds light on vital wider historical questions, both in France and beyond: ideas and practices of violence and nonviolence, forms of socialization and possibilities for dissent in the military, and the achievements and limitations of the nonviolence movement.
