Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison

Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (born 19 September 1960), is a French historian and author whose work chiefly centres on colonialism. He is best known for his book Coloniser, Exterminer - Sur la guerre et l'Etat colonial.

Le Cour Grandmaison is a professor of political science at the Évry-Val d'Essonne University, and a teacher at the Collège International de Philosophie. He is president of the October 17, 1961 Association Against Oblivion, which advocates official recognition for the crimes committed by the Fifth Republic during the 1961 Paris massacre.

In his book Coloniser, Exterminer (2005) Le Cour Grandmaison states that techniques and concepts used during the period of late 19th-century New Imperialism were later used during the Holocaust. He points to both and Michelet who spoke of "extermination" during the colonization of the Western United States and the removal of Native American tribes. He quotes Tocqueville's 1841 comment on French conquest of Algeria:

"In France I have often heard people I respect, but do not approve, deplore [the army] burning harvests, emptying granaries and seizing unarmed men, women and children. As I see it, these are unfortunate necessities that any people wishing to make war on the Arabs must accept... I believe the laws of war entitle us to ravage the country and that we must do this, either by destroying crops at harvest time, or all the time by making rapid incursions, known as raids, the aim of which is to carry off men and flocks"

"Whatever the case, continued Tocqueville, we may say in a general manner that all political freedoms must be suspended in Algeria."

According to LeCour Grandmaison, "De Tocqueville thought the conquest of Algeria was important for two reasons: first, his understanding of the international situation and France’s position in the world, and, second, changes in French society." Tocqueville, who despised the July monarchy (1830–1848), believed that war and colonization would "restore national pride, threatened, he believed, by "the gradual softening of social mores" in the middle classes. Their taste for "material pleasures" was spreading to the whole of society, giving it "an example of weakness and egotism". Applauding the methods of Thomas Robert Bugeaud, Tocqueville went as far as saying that "war in Africa" had become a "science":

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