Permanent occupation transformed a temporary warlord into absolute monarch

Evidence

How did this transformation come about? First, because of the conquest itself, because of its military success. Because a small army had settled in an immense country which could be assumed, at least at first, to be hostile to it. It was therefore natural that the Frankish army should remain on a war footing in the Gaul it had just occupied. As a result, the man who had been warlord only for the duration of the war became both warlord and civilian leader. The very fact of the occupation kept the military organization intact. It was kept intact, but not without problems, not without difficulties, and not without rebellions on the part of the Franks themselves—on the part of Frankish warriors who did not agree that a military dictatorship should be maintained in peacetime. In order to retain his power, the king was therefore obliged to turn to mercenaries, and he found them either among the very Gaulish people who should have been left disarmed, or among foreigners. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 168

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘war footing made permanent’ mechanism prefigures how states of exception become normalized — connects to Schmitt/Agamben and to necropolitics readings. — connects to: Colonial infrastructure and language bans functioned as claims to permanent occupation — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 619; Mercenary peoples were absorbed and erased by the absolute state; UN infrastructure collapse funded the rise of a new warlord generation — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 644

Broader Connections

• Colonial infrastructure and language bans functioned as claims to permanent occupation #expands (0.85) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 619
• UN infrastructure collapse funded the rise of a new warlord generation #exemplifies (0.75) — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 644
• Mercenary peoples were absorbed and erased by the absolute state #exemplifies (0.72)