[not verified in body] 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.

[1] 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.

"[3] 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.

LeCour Grandmaison, distinguishes between the criticisms of colonial abuse and those of the principle of colonization itself, basing his arguments on Zola, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Darwin, André Gide, Albert Londres, Jules Verne, Maupassant, Foucault, Barthes and Joseph Conrad.

He states how Marx, Engels and their contemporaries were not immune to 19th-century racial ideology, as they too considered colonization as inevitable and justified, and non-European people as "primitives" and "barbarians".

"[1] Olivier LeCour Grandmaison was one of a number of historians who criticized the 23 February 2005 law, instituted by the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), which required that teachers promote "positive values" of French presence abroad, "in particular in North Africa".