The French experience in colonial counterinsurgency: transfer of practices and ideas

The paper describes the main stages and aspects of the development of the French theory and practice of anti-insurgency in the 20^th – early 21^st centuries. It is shown that the systematization of the colonial experience of fighting insurgents in France originates in the 19^th century. The starting date for the military thought of France in this sense is considered to be 1830, the beginning of the conquest of Algeria. The development of colonial counterinsurgency reached a new level at the end of the 19^th century, when the concept of the «oil spot» appeared, based on the works of Joseph Simon Gallieni and Hubert Lyautey. Its main provisions are also disclosed in this paper. After the «trauma of 1940», the loss of Indochina and the French war in Algeria, a new concept emerged that responded to the challenges of the Cold War – the concept of «revolutionary war», created by the French military after the defeat in the First Indochina War of 1946–1954 – Charles Lacheroy, Roger Trinquier and David Galula. The latter had a noticeable impact on the US counterinsurgency strategy already at the beginning of the 21^st century. The era of the global «War on Terror» prompted US allies and their NATO allies to actively study the problems of colonial counterinsurgency.