ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that French colonialism in Chad, as elsewhere in Africa, was intrinsically violent, enlisting the army, the police, and all other available means of coercion to impose control and elicit conformity. As a result it created, particularly in the south, conditions of permanent violence such as once existed in pre-colonial Central Sudan. Although the south initially showed less resistance to colonial intrusion, ultimately it was the southerners who suffered most under French colonial rule. Southern traditions were essentially shattered, and a pattern of murders, assassinations, and rejection of authority developed, accompanied by unprecedented migration and lawlessness, as well as desire for heightened revenge among southerners against their northern fellow colonial subjects.
