This dissertation examines the determinants of nationalist mobilization in the 20th century French colonial empire. The resonance of nationalism in the context of imperial rule is often taken for granted, yet nationalist mobilization in the colonial world was not omnipresent, nor was it particularly easy to organize given the existence of a powerful authoritarian state. Studies that depict nationalism as an obvious response to imperial rule over-predict the occurrence of nationalist opposition, and cannot account for widespread variation in how colonized populations responded to imperial rule. My dissertation analyzes multiple dependent variables that capture some of the ways that nationalist mobilization varied in the colonial world. First, I ask why nationalist mobilization in favor of independent statehood supplanted other kinds of political organizing. Second, I ask why participation in nationalist movements varied over time and place. Third, I ask why nationalist movements in some places turned violent.

In Part One, I argue that nationalist mobilization was a function of two factors. First, the French government's failure to implement democratic reforms in its colonial territories led elites to begin articulating nationalist goals. Second, discontinuities in imperial authority provided opportunities for political opponents to act and prompted nationalist mobilization in favor of independent statehood. Part Two investigates the determinants of nationalist violence. Instead of seeing violence as the result of the imperial power's unwillingness to decolonize, I argue that competition within the nationalist movement fueled violence. To evaluate these arguments, this project combines a sub-national, microcomparative analysis of colonial Morocco with a medium-N approach that analyzes nationalist mobilization across the French empire.