PhD defence by Salvador Lima
This thesis examines the French Foreign Legion and the Spanish Tercio de Extranjeros as transnational military institutions during the interwar period (1919–1939), situating both within the broader history of European imperialism, social crisis, and political modernity. Through a comparative and trans-imperial approach, it argues that the two Legions — though rooted in distinct national traditions — emerged as parallel responses to a set of similar political, imperial, and military challenges, tracing six interconnected dimensions of the legionnaires’ lives, organised into three parts.
Part I establishes the institutional and social foundations of both Foreign Legions, showing how transnational military exchanges shaped their organisation and recruitment practices, and how colonial forces absorbed the socially displaced men of interwar Europe — unemployed workers, demobilised veterans, political exiles — whose diverse motivations defied the romantic and criminal stereotypes perpetuated in popular culture and official propaganda. Part II examines how both Legions constructed corporate identities through invented traditions, cults of sacrifice, and mythologies of masculine honour, arguing that these apolitical symbolic systems resonated with the authoritarian currents of interwar Europe. Next, it analyses the political entanglements of the Foreign Legions and their men during the Spanish Civil War and the early years of World War II, tracing how fascist and antifascist volunteers navigated the tension between ideological conviction and professional military obedience. Part III explores the everyday experiences of colonial soldiers, framing military boredom, alcoholism, gender relations, and desertion not as aberrations, acts of indiscipline, or moral failures, but as rational, often collective responses to institutional coercion. It highlights the disparity between the expectations fostered by colonial propaganda and the harsh realities of military service.
Drawing on military archives in France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and Britain, alongside diplomatic correspondence, legionnaires' memoirs, press accounts, and contemporary literature, the thesis recovers the history of the Foreign Legions as military and colonial institutions that transformed Europe's socially marginalised men into the instruments of colonial power.
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