Journal articles on the topic 'French Colonial Empire'
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1
Sicking, Louis. "France and the Dutch Colonial Empire in the Nineteenth Century." Itinerario 22, no. 1 (March 1998): 41–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0165115300012419.
Abstract:
In the historiography of the colonial empires in the nineteenth century, much attention has been paid to the large European powers Britain and France. When the Dutch colonial empire is studied in an international context it is mostly in relation to the British empire. However, little or no attention has been given by scholars to Franco-Dutch colonial relations. This is surprising given the fact that after Britain, France and the Netherlands were the second and third largest colonial empires. Three Franco-Dutch colonial frontiers existed: in South America between French Guyana and Surinam, in the Caribbean on the island of St Martin and in Africa on the Gold Coast. In Asia, where the most important Dutch colony, Indonesia, was located, the French and Dutch did not have neighbouring possessions. Nonetheless, because of its location, Indonesia was highly important for navigation between France and Indo-China. In each of the regions mentioned above, French colonial administrators or private individuals developed plans to extend French territory at the expense of the Dutch: on St Martin from 1843 to 1853, on the Gold Coast from 1867 to 1871, in South America from 1887 to 1891 in Indonesia in 1888. This article will focus on nineteenth century France-Dutch colonial relations and will. address such questions as: what were the motives of the French administrators and how effectively did they exert pressure on the metropolitan government in order to effect their schemes? What was the role of special interest groups? And finally how did the Netherlands react? Being a small European power, how were they able to resist the French?
2
Boulle, Pierre H. "Needs and Opportunities in French Colonial History." Itinerario 18, no. 2 (July 1994): 137–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0165115300022555.
Abstract:
If anything is clear to the student of the history of the early modern French colonial enterprise, it is the need for a general overview to equal Boxer's and Parry's fine volumes on the Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish seaborne empires, or George Winius' volume in the Minnesota series. Not that such volumes on the French colonies do not exist, in French. Indeed, there has not been a decade since the 1920s without some such publication. None of them, however, appears to me to be wholly satisfactory. The glorification of the French ‘mission’ characterizing the earlier works nowjars; the more recent works are more balanced, but still, on the whole, too descriptive. This is particularly the case for the Histoire de la France coloniale, des origines à 1914. While the authors responsible for the period which interests us, Jean Meyer and Jean Tarrade, have produced distinguished works on the French overseas empire, their survey remains somewhat uncritical and, at least for the seventeenth century, very thin. As to the treatment of New France, it draws on a rather unreliable series of monographies.
3
Kalman, Samuel. "Policing the French Empire." Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 46, no. 2 (September 1, 2020): 1–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/hrrh.2020.460201.
Abstract:
Commenting on the colonial setting in its twilight during the Algerian War of Independence, Frantz Fanon famously observed: “Le travail du colon est de rendre impossible jusqu’aux rêves de liberté du colonisé. Le travail du colonisé est d’imaginer toutes les combinaisons éventuelles pour anéantir le colon (the task of the colonizer is to make impossible even the dreams of liberty of the colonized. The task of the colonized is to conceive of every possible strategy to wipe out the colonizer).”
4
Simonetti, Marie-Agathe. "Color Galore in the French Colonial Empire." Rundbrief Fotografie 29, no. 3-4 (December 1, 2022): 20–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/rbf-2022-3004.
Abstract:
Abstract Léon Busy (1874–1951) was an amateur photographer mostly known for his autochromes made in French Indochina for Albert Kahn’s multimedia collection “Les Archives de la planète” (Archives of the Planet). In addition to being an operator for Kahn, this article casts light on a less studied part of Busy’s life: his engagement with the French government of Indochina as of 1921. He exhibited his autochromes at the colonial exhibitions in Marseille (1922) and Paris (1931) and also served as head of the photographic section of the Office indochinois du Tourisme et de la Propagande (Indo-Chinese office of tourism and propaganda). This article provides an insight into my current research project and intends to demonstrate Busy’s instrumental role in producing colonial propaganda in color for the French government.
5
Fonju, Dr Njuafac Kenedy. "Mali from the Empire of the Lion’s King and Kings to the Hands of Fifty Four Diplomatic Colonial Agents in the Appellation of French Sudan, Federation 1235-1960." Scholars Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences 10, no. 6 (June 12, 2022): 263–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.36347/sjahss.2022.v10i06.004.
Abstract:
This paper focuses on the identification of different French colonial agents whom in their portfolios were able to show their strength and hegemony in one of the former greatest African Empire known as Mali Empire with outstanding Lion King Sundiata Keita and other Kings from 1235 until it’s collapsed. The lucrative economic and commercial activities of the empire called for the attention of different actors in the later centuries at the time thereby making the history of the present day Mali very important to Africa. The French pre-colonial and colonial era dating from 1880 through the Berlin colonial conference of 1884-1885 to the granting of independence in 1960 opened the doors and mechanisms of neo-colonialism characterized with pre-crisis era which became serious challenges to that country till the 21st Century denunciations of French activities in that country. The scrutiny of specialized sources and other related scientific works enable the use of historical approach by bringing the highlights of the Mali Empire before identification of the main European agents. This study is very important because the young generation of historians can open other research activities concerning those specific colonial agents during their tenure of office and any colonial claims still waiting by Africans can be very important with concrete evidences.
6
Lisenkov, Oleg. "Modern Age empires: colony management principles on the example of Great Britain and France." Genesis: исторические исследования, no. 6 (June 2020): 38–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.25136/2409-868x.2020.6.33316.
Abstract:
The object of this research is the colonial policy of the two largest European empires of the Modern Age: France and Great Britain. In the course of conquering new lands, these countries faced the problem of managing vast territories and diverse indigenous population. The solution consisted in establishment of effective colonial management systems. The peculiarities of functionality of such systems became the subject of this research. The goal lies in determination of specificity of organization and operation of the systems of colonial management in the British and French Empires from the perspective of their interrelation with cultural factors. The conclusion is made that the British Empire retained the traditional government system on the conquered territories – indirect management. The French Empire either replaced the traditional government institutions with European analogues or included traditional system into their system of management as a lower administrative link – direct management. Comparing the described management system, the author notes the French approach was more resource-intensive and did not allow gaining a large profit. This lead to an assumption that the colonial management policy was affected by both, cultural and economic factors. The scientific novelty consists in examination of the systems of colonial management from the perspective of their interrelation with the imperial strategies that are based on the policy of recognition of population differences. Such strategies could be implemented within the framework of two paradigms: unification (formation of the unified imperial culture and institutions in all subordinated territories), and diversity (preservation on the conquered territories of the local cultural and political institutions). Further on, the examples of India, Africa and other regions would demonstrate that there is a direct link between the indicated British and French imperial strategies and systems of colonial management.
7
ALDRICH, ROBERT. "IMPERIAL MISE EN VALEUR AND MISE EN SCÈNE: RECENT WORKS ON FRENCH COLONIALISM." Historical Journal 45, no. 4 (December 2002): 917–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x0200273x.
Abstract:
This review looks at English- and French-language books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century French colonial history published since 1995. It considers issues of ideology, imperial governance, the mise en valeur (development and ‘improvement’) of colonies (for instance, in health and education policy), the representation of empire in art and architecture, and decolonization. Special attention is paid to Indochina. Recent works have stressed the evolving nature of colonial policy and its adaptability to local circumstances. The review notes a certain divide between works emphasizing the discursive aspect of empire, and more ‘materialist’ treatments, but remarks on a general renewal of interest in colonial history. Contemporary scholars have also given colonial history a more prominent position in French national history than it previously held.
8
Murray-Miller, Gavin. "Arab Press Networks and Imperial Connectivities from Mediterranean Africa to France in the Late 19th Century." ISTORIYA 12, no. 7 (105) (2021): 0. http://dx.doi.org/10.18254/s207987840015283-0.
Abstract:
The press was an instrument of colonial governance. Yet newspapers and print also served to connect populations across borders and demonstrated how trans-imperial flows influenced empires. This article examines Arab print networks in North Africa and France. It argues that print networks assisted with processes of colonial expansion while also providing a forum for Muslim activists and Arab modernists to present their views to foreign audiences. This two-way channel illustrates how imperialism engendered new synergies that would influence political developments in both the French empire and the modern Middle East, suggesting that print networks were central to the entangled histories of empire in the modern period.
9
Dormois, Jean-Pierre, and François Crouzet. "The Significance of the French Colonial Empire for French Economic Development (1815–1960)." Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History 16, no. 1 (March 1998): 323–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s021261090000714x.
Abstract:
In May 1940, among panic-stricken ministers and politicians, General de Gaulle was virtually alone to reflect and proclaim that France was not vanquished as long as it retained its colonial empire, which would serve as the springboard for France's future liberation and status as a world power. Not many of his contemporaries shared his conviction, and his loneliness testifies to the detachment of public opinion and politicians vis-a-vis an empire which in extent ranked second only to the British. In spite of the headlines, newsreels, slogans, colonial exhibitions and propaganda, most Frenchmen would have probably agreed that, over the years, the mother country had spent more on its colonies than it had received.
10
Carroll, Christina. "Republican Imperialisms." French Politics, Culture & Society 36, no. 3 (September 1, 2018): 118–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2018.360308.
Abstract:
In the 1880s and 1890s, a wave of histories of colonial empire appeared in France. But even though they were produced by members of similar republican colonial advocacy groups, these accounts narrated the history of empire in contradictory ways. Some positioned “colonial empire” as an enterprise with ancient roots, while others treated modern colonization as distinct. Some argued that French colonial empire was a unique enterprise in line with republican ideals, but others insisted that it was a European-wide project that transcended domestic political questions. By tracing the differences between these accounts, this article highlights the flexibility that characterized late nineteenth-century republican understandings of empire. It also points to the ways republican advocates for colonial expansion during this period looked both historically and comparatively to legitimize their visions for empire’s future in France.
11
Hassett, Dónal. "Colonialism and Contested Cultures of Victory in the French Empire of the 1920s." Journal of Contemporary History 54, no. 4 (May 28, 2019): 759–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022009419838035.
Abstract:
More than any other belligerent power, France relied heavily on the contribution of her colonies during the First World War. Thus, the triumph over the Central Powers and the culture(s) of victory which emerged from it were undeniably ‘imperial’. But what did this mean for the postwar Empire? This article explores the extent to which victory was a disruptive force in France's Empire. It examines how actors of all ideological, social and ethnic backgrounds from across France's colonies articulated their own visions of how victory in the First World War should shape the future of the Empire. It considers their attempts to place the war into their broader narratives of the Empire, past, present and future and thus impose their own ideas of what a just postwar imperial order should look like. Drawing on examples from across the Empire, it underlines the extent to which victory in the First World War gave rise to competing and often opposing demands for a new settlement among colonial administrators, colonial citizens and colonial subjects. In doing so, it teases out the contradictory role played by imperial cultures of victory in simultaneously facilitating contestation of the colonial system and limiting the radicalism of such challenges to Empire.
12
BENNINGTON, ALICE. "(RE)WRITING EMPIRE? THE RECEPTION OF POST-COLONIAL STUDIES IN FRANCE." Historical Journal 59, no. 4 (July 25, 2016): 1157–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x16000054.
Abstract:
ABSTRACTThis article explores the fierce resistance and controversy that have marked the reception of post-colonial studies in France. In contrast to the anglophone academy, where post-colonialism emerged and was gradually institutionalized throughout the 1980s and 1990s, in France these approaches did not make a mark until much later. The context of social and political crisis over France's post-colonial populations, in which the debate surrounding post-colonial studies emerged, is fundamental to understanding the high stakes and thus the vehemence and polemical nature of their reception. Institutional factors and the particularities of the French intellectual climate, France's strong Republican ideology, and its problematic relationship with its own colonial history, are all explored as reasons for this troubled relationship. The anglocentrism of post-colonial studies is also considered, as are the mutually beneficial outcomes of a dialogue between post-colonial studies and the French debates and context. I outline a specifically ‘French’ post-colonialism that has emerged from these debates, and suggest that whilst positive moves have been made towards a truly inclusive post-colonial studies that would take account of numerous languages, former empires, and former colonies, there remains work to be done in this direction.
13
McGrath, John T., and Shannon Lee Dawdy. "Building the Davil's Empire: French Colonial New Orleans." Journal of American History 96, no. 1 (June 1, 2009): 185. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/27694751.
14
Lowe, J. "Building the Devil's Empire: French Colonial New Orleans." French Studies 64, no. 1 (December 17, 2009): 124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/fs/knp240.
15
Brown, Richmond F. ":Building the Devil's Empire: French Colonial New Orleans." American Historical Review 114, no. 3 (June 2009): 752–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/ahr.114.3.752.
16
Furstenberg, François. "Building the Devil's Empire: French Colonial New Orleans." Atlantic Studies 6, no. 3 (November 30, 2009): 403–5. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14788810903264944.
17
Le Guelte, Johann. "Photography, Identity, and Migration." French Politics, Culture & Society 37, no. 3 (December 1, 2019): 27–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2019.370302.
Abstract:
This article examines the politics of interwar colonial identification practices put into place by the French colonial state in order to curtail the mobility of colonial (im)migrants. I argue that photography was used as a tool of imperial control in both French West Africa (AOF) and metropolitan France, since colonial men’s inability to provide the required photographic portraits often prevented them from moving around the empire. In response, colonial subjects appropriated photography in alternative ways to subvert these administrative restrictions. Moreover, they took advantage of metropolitan racial stereotypes to contest Western identification practices.
18
Pomfret, David M. "Raising Eurasia: Race, Class, and Age in French and British Colonies." Comparative Studies in Society and History 51, no. 2 (March 20, 2009): 314–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0010417509000140.
Abstract:
Sexual relationships between European men and indigenous women produced racially mixed offspring in all of Europe's empires. Recent interdisciplinary scholarship has shown how these persons of mixed race, seen as transgressing the interior frontiers of supposedly fixed categories of racial and juridical difference upon which colonizers' prestige and authority rested, posed a challenge to the elaborate but fragile sets of subjective criteria by which “whiteness” was defined. Scholars critiquing the traditional historiography of empire for its tendency to present colonial elites as homogeneous communities pursuing common interests have emphasized the repertoire of exclusionary tactics, constructed along lines of race, class, and gender, devised within European colonial communities in response to the presence of “mixed bloods.” This article aims to show that the presence of people of biracial heritage inspired collaborative as well as exclusionary responses in outposts of European empire during the late imperial era. It also illustrates how, with white prestige and authority at stake, age, age-related subcategories, and in particular childhood and adolescence, powerfully underpinned responses to the threat this group posed to the cultural reproduction of racialized identity.
19
Cogneau, Denis, Yannick Dupraz, and Sandrine Mesplé-Somps. "Fiscal Capacity and Dualism in Colonial States: The French Empire 1830–1962." Journal of Economic History 81, no. 2 (April 6, 2021): 441–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022050721000140.
Abstract:
What was the capacity of European colonial states? How fiscally extractive were they? What was their capacity to provide public goods and services? And did this change in the “developmentalist” era of colonialism? To answer these questions, we use archival sources to build a new dataset on colonial states of the second French colonial empire (1830–1962). French colonial states extracted a substantial amount of revenue, but they were under-administered because public expenditure entailed high wage costs. These costs remained a strong constraint in the “developmentalist” era of colonialism, despite a dramatic increase in fiscal capacity and large overseas subsidies.
20
Mirzekhanov, Velikhan. "The Ideology of Colonization: Metamorphoses of the Colonial Question in the Political Philosophy of Alexis de Tocqueville." ISTORIYA 13, no. 4 (114) (2022): 0. http://dx.doi.org/10.18254/s207987840021057-1.
Abstract:
In this article the evolution of views on the empire, colonies and colonization by Alexis de Tocqueville, the outstanding French liberal thinker of the 19th century, are analyzed. It was shown that in the process of expanding the scale of the colonization of the 19th century Tocqueville, like many other French thinkers, began to defend and justify colonial domination, trying to justify colonial policy in every possible way and try to give it legitimacy. Although Tocqueville was fully aware of the vices of colonization, he was ready to defend it. He believed that the French nation could not afford not to be the dominant colonial power. Justifying the expansion of the French empire, he believed that the colonial project could contribute to the political unification of the French, and at the same time he feared that France would lose its position and its international reputation, lagging behind Great Britain in the annexation of overseas possessions. Tocqueville’s ideas about progress and the understanding of progress were fairly typical of nineteenth-century European thinkers. In 19th century Europe as a rule, attempts to justify colonization were combined with a linear theory of progress and a belief in the superiority of Europeans over other worlds.
21
THOMAS, MARTIN. "ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AND THE LIMITS TO MOBILIZATION IN THE FRENCH EMPIRE, 1936–1939." Historical Journal 48, no. 2 (May 27, 2005): 471–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x05004474.
Abstract:
By 1939 expectations in France of a major colonial contribution to the impending war effort were high. The idea of le salut par l'empire, literally ‘salvation by the empire’, even gained some currency among ministers, officials, and the wider public. This article examines the nature of the economic and military demands imposed on France's major overseas territories in the immediate pre-war years, focusing on the two pre-eminent colonial groupings of the empire: French North Africa and the Indochina federation. It suggests that colonial economies and working populations were poorly placed to meet French expectations of them. The colonies were severely affected by the economic depression of the early 1930s and slower to recover than metropolitan France. Structural economic difficulties imposed limits on the mobilization of colonial resources, a problem made appreciably worse by the earlier disagreements among ministers, colonial officials, and business leaders over the merits of colonial industrialization. The reversal of planned social and constitutional reforms after 1936 added to the political volatility and social divisions of colonial societies as war drew near.
22
Teelock, Vijayalakshmi. "‘In defence of the empire’: Mauritius’ government slaves in eighteenth-century Mauritius." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 64, no. 2 (December 1, 2021): 60–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbab022.
Abstract:
Abstract Mauritius' Government slaves form a unique body of slaves emerging out of its French colonial past. Slaves bought by the colonial administration formed part of the 'public works' department and built the infrastructure of the islans as well as manning forts, manufacturing gunpowder and even being recruited in the French naval squadrons going to fight the British in India.
23
Geloso, Vincent. "Predation, Seigneurial Tenure, and Development in French Colonial America." Social Science History 44, no. 4 (2020): 747–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2020.24.
Abstract:
AbstractThere is substantial debate over the colonial origins of divergence within the Americas. In this debate, the French Empire has been largely ignored even though, until 1760, it included Canada. This article uses recent empirical advances in our knowledge of the colonial Canadian economy to introduce the role of French institutions—most notably the institution of seigneurial tenure—into the debate on the colonial origins of divergence. It argues that the institution of seigneurial tenure in Canada when it was under French rule (up to 1760) had predatory features that help to explain why Canada was the poorest of the North American colonies.
24
BOHLING, JOSEPH. "Colonial or Continental Power? The Debate over Economic Expansion in Interwar France, 1925–1932." Contemporary European History 26, no. 2 (May 2017): 217–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0960777317000066.
Abstract:
In the 1920s various French elites argued that the nation state was not viable in an increasingly interdependent world economy dominated by ‘continental blocs’ such as the United States and the Soviet Union; instead, they hoped to expand French economic power through larger political structures, whether France's existing empire or a federal Europe. French foreign minister Aristide Briand called for the organisation of Europe at the same time that other elites advocated the consolidation of the French empire. Although imperial rivalry would trump European cooperation in the interwar years, the 1920s created a framework for post-1945 debates about whether France would achieve economic growth and maintain political independence through colonial development, continental cooperation or some combination of the two. Conventional narratives locate the origins of European integration in the devastations of the Second World War and the crisis of empire. This article argues that integration was conceived within and in tension with, not outside of, an imperial framework.
25
Houllemare, Marie. "Seeing the Empire Through Lists and Charts: French Colonial Records in the Eighteenth Century." Journal of Early Modern History 22, no. 5 (October 2, 2018): 371–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700658-12342603.
Abstract:
Abstract By looking at list-making and comparative assessments of trade, this article on central administrative practices of record management aims at discussing the mobilization of archives in French colonial supervision in the eighteenth century. A Bureau des Colonies was created in the French Secretariat of the Marine in 1710: from the very outset, its main mission was to deal with the colonial records, mostly correspondence, through which the colonies were administered. Archives had been collected and classified in the Bureau des archives from 1699 onwards. But this implied an effort in the organization of papers: throughout the eighteenth century, the imperial administration created several other documentary tools that produced a simplified and ideal vision of the empire and of its place in the global order. Looking at the kinds of papers produced by the colonial administration and where these records were kept provides insight into how the central authorities understood the colonial empire. The paperwork shaped the way administrators understood empire, through operations carried out by the clerks on the records. Records were collected from all the colonies and actors, with a growing sense of being a unique agency possessing relevant records that were reduced to similar storage units by agents without field experience. In fact, archives became crucial in strengthening the empire as a political unity, under a centralized metropolitan direction, mainly after the Seven Years’ War.
26
MOTADEL, DAVID. "ISLAM AND THE EUROPEAN EMPIRES." Historical Journal 55, no. 3 (August 3, 2012): 831–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x12000325.
Abstract:
ABSTRACTThis essay surveys literature on the engagement of different European empires, including the French, British, Dutch, Russian, and German, with Islam. While the history of Islam and empire has attracted the attention of scholars for decades, most of their studies have been written primarily as contributions to the historiography of a specific empire or a distinct geographic region and rarely refer to research on other imperial powers, even though the questions and themes raised are remarkably similar. The article brings together these studies, exploring the following topics: Islam and imperial rule and, in particular, the ways in which religious institutions were accommodated and controlled in the colonial state; Islam and anti-imperial resistance; and the relationship between Islam, information, and colonial knowledge. It assesses the dominant themes in the field and points to a number of questions that remain to be studied.
27
Pearson, Jessica Lynne. "The French Empire Goes to San Francisco." French Politics, Culture & Society 38, no. 2 (June 1, 2020): 35–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2020.380203.
Abstract:
This article explores the French delegation’s approach to debates about colonial oversight and accountability that took place at the Conference on International Organization in San Francisco in 1945, where delegates from fifty nations gathered to draft the United Nations (UN) Charter. Drawing on documents from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UN, and the American press, it argues that while French officials at home and in the empire were eagerly negotiating a new French Union that would put metropolitan France and the colonies on unprecedently equal footing, French delegates to the San Francisco conference were unwilling to take a stand for these reforms-in-progress. Ultimately, French delegates to the conference lacked confidence that the incipient French Union would stand up to international scrutiny as these delegates worked to establish new international standards for what constituted “self-government.”
28
MANN, GREGORY. "WHAT WAS THEINDIGÉNAT? THE ‘EMPIRE OF LAW’ IN FRENCH WEST AFRICA." Journal of African History 50, no. 3 (November 2009): 331–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021853709990090.
Abstract:
ABSTRACTWhat was theindigénat? This article approaches this question via three arguments. First, a study of theindigénat(the regime of administrative sanctions applied to colonial subjects) challenges the idea that French West Africa formed part of an ‘empire of law’. Second, a dynamic spectrum of political statuses developed around theindigénatuntil its abolition in 1946. This spectrum is no less significant than one of its poles alone, that of colonial citizens. Third, theindigénat, its narrative of reform, and its relationship to law, bureaucracy, and authority illuminate the tensions between imperial rhetoric and colonial governance.
29
Kelly, Michael. "Introduction." French Cultural Studies 17, no. 2 (June 2006): 131–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957155806064437.
Abstract:
The introduction to this special number of French Cultural Studiespresents the key themes in the articles it contains, focusing on writers, intellectuals and the colonial experience. It sets them in the context of a reappraisal of Empire in both France and Britain, expressed in the recent French law obliging schools to recognise the benefits of the French colonial enterprise, and in related developments in Britain. French writers and intellectuals of the colonial period were concerned with issues of the benefits of civilisation, the universal spread of republican humanism, and the practical and theoretical implications of inter-imperial rivalries, especially with Britain. When they criticised colonial practice, it was in the name of the same values of civilisation that underlay the ‘civilising mission’ of colonialism. In a modulated discourse, these issues continue to inform the way governments and intellectuals view the mission of leading industrial countries to bring the benefits of Western values to the rest of the world. An understanding of how earlier generations of French writers thought about the colonial experience may be relevant to a reflection on similar current concerns.
30
Diagne, Dimitri. "“Among the French People”: The Departmentalization of Mayotte and the Colonial Politics of Inclusion." French Colonial History 21-22 (December 31, 2023): 169–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.14321/frencolohist.21.22.2023.0169.
Abstract:
Abstract With its 2011 change in administrative status, Mayotte, a small island colony in the Mozambique Channel, became the only contemporary French department with an indigenous African Muslim population. Mayotte's departmentalization required restructuring a colonial local legal system influenced by Islamic, Swahili, and Malagasy legal practices. By putting legislation and public discourse concerning Mayotte's status into conversation with earlier political movements within the French Empire and scholarship on French colonial governance, I show how Mahoran politicians, writers, and activists advocating for departmentalization invoked claims to racialized notions of belonging “among the French People.” These claims were joined by demands that France fulfill its Republican promise by granting juridicopolitical inclusion to a colonial population. These distinct but related political discourses illuminate central features of the mutually constitutive relationship between law, race, and citizenship in the French Republic.
31
Laidani, Amar. "The role of the natural law in the French second colonial Empire. The example of the French colonial law in Algeria (1830-1930)." Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai Iurisprudentia 65, no. 3 (March 10, 2021): 141–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.24193/subbiur.65(2020).3.5.
Abstract:
The article examines the role played by the natural law in the History of French colonial law during the Second French colonial Empire. We analyse how the notion of the natural law, which was perceived as an instrument of emancipation during the French Revolution, became an instrument of legal acculturation in the French colonial law in Algeria. We focus the attention on the case of Algeria during the period 1830-1930, for the reason that in this colony, the French tried to apply a policy of legal assimilation that tried to modify the Muslim law and the Kabyle customary law, making them more similar to the French law. The natural law had an important role in three phenomena: the implantation of private property, the codification of the Kabyles’ customs and the Muslim Law and the reformation of the customary law in the matters of inheritance and marriage.
32
Diagne, Dimitri. ""The cultivator is tired": Senegalese Councilors and the Struggle over Development in the Late Colonial Senegal River Valley." L'Esprit Créateur 64, no. 1 (March 2024): 39–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/esp.2024.a929203.
Abstract:
Abstract: In an extraordinary April 1956 meeting, Senegalese territorial councilors confronted French colonial administrators over a massive agricultural project designed to transform the Senegal River Valley. The Mission d'Aménagement du fleuve Sénégal (MAS) was one of several postwar colonial development initiatives that France pursued to bolster its economy and reassert political authority over its empire. I argue that in the 1956 meeting, the councilors did more than critique the impact of one project on the rural communities they represented. They articulated a vision of agrarian political economy that diverged dramatically from the aims and infrastructures of French colonial capitalism.
33
Wardell, D. A., M. Elias, M. Zida, A. Tapsoba, K. Rousseau, D. Gautier, P. N. Lovett, and T. Bama. "Shea (Vitellaria paradoxa C. F. Gaertn.) – a peripheral empire commodity in French West Africa, 1894–1960." International Forestry Review 23, no. 4 (December 1, 2021): 511–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1505/146554821834777198.
Abstract:
Burkinabé women have traded shea kernels and shea butter in periodic local markets, and on a regional scale with the densely-populated West African littoral, for centuries. This paper traces the origins of French colonial efforts to develop shea as a commodity of empire from the 1890s to independence in 1960. Colonial efforts to incorporate Upper Volta, a French colonial backwater, into the world economy was drawn out, heterogenous, and messy. The colonial state assumed erroneously that little shea trade existed, and that producers would respond positively to market incentives. Yet, we suggest that French colonial policies failed due to a composite of factors including the limited investment in either the colony or shea as an oilseed crop, adaptation by women shea producers to the extraction of male labour and the trade opportunities created by new international borders, and the 'blindness' of colonial officials to the economic, social and cultural functions of periodic local markets used by women shea traders. The historical trajectory of the shea trade continues to have implications for current-day shea markets and their actors.
34
Chatani, Sayaka. "The Ruralist Paradigm: Social Work Bureaucrats in Colonial Korea and Japan's Assimilationism in the Interwar Period." Comparative Studies in Society and History 58, no. 4 (September 27, 2016): 1004–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0010417516000517.
Abstract:
AbstractHow did the Japanese Empire, while adamantly adhering to assimilationism, manage the politics of colonial difference in the interwar years? How should we situate the seemingly exceptional conduct of Japanese colonial rule from a comparative perspective? To examine these questions, this article analyzes the mindsets of mid-level colonial bureaucrats who specialized in social work. Social work became a major field of political contestation in the post-World War I period around the globe. Policies on social work tested colonial officials regarding their assumptions about state-society relationships and Japan's assimilationist goals. Their debates on social work reveal that by the end of the 1920s colonial officials in Korea had reached a tacit consensus to use a particular analytical lens and ideological goal that I call “ruralism.” In the ruralist paradigm, these officials viewed Korean society as consisting of “rural peasants” and understood Korean social problems as primarily “rural problems.” Ruralism was a product of many overlapping factors, including pressures to integrate colonial society into the imperial system, the empire-wide popularity of agrarian nationalism, global discourses that increasingly dichotomized the “rural” and the “industrial,” and the rivalry between the colonial government and the metropole. How social work officials re-conceptualized the colonial masses and attempted to engage with social problems under the rhetoric of assimilationism showed a similar dynamic to the “developmental colonialism” that prevailed in the French and British empires after World War II.
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BAYLEY, SUSAN. "French Anthropology and the Durkheimians in Colonial Indochina." Modern Asian Studies 34, no. 3 (July 2000): 581–622. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x00003954.
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to use both anthropological and historical approaches to explore the distinctive nature of colonialism in French-ruled Indochina. From this interdisciplinary perspective, it seeks to contextualize a rich but little known series of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writings on Indochina's peoples and cultures. It notes particularly their emphasis on concepts of the community and of the transforming revolutionary event. And it argues that these writings' distinctive understandings of race, culture and polity profoundly affected the thought and action of Asians as well as Europeans, with these effects being felt both within and beyond the French empire.
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THOMAS, MARTIN. "FRENCH EMPIRE ELITES AND THE POLITICS OF ECONOMIC OBLIGATION IN THE INTERWAR YEARS." Historical Journal 52, no. 4 (November 6, 2009): 989–1016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x09990379.
Abstract:
ABSTRACTThis article considers the changing ways in which French political elites understood imperial obligation in the interwar years. It suggests that the economics of imperial rule and disputes over what could and should be done to develop colonial economies provide the key to understanding both the failure of interwar colonial reforms and the irreversible decline in France's grip over its colonies. In making this case, the article investigates four related colonial policy debates, all variously linked to changing conceptualizations of economic obligation among France's law-makers. The first concerns Albert Sarraut's 1921 empire development plan. The second reviews discussions over the respective obligations of the state and private financiers in regenerating colonial economies during the depression years of the early 1930s. The third debate reassesses policymakers' disputes over colonial industrialization. Finally, the article revisits the apparent failure of the investigative studies of economic and labour reforms conceived by the left-leaning Popular Front in 1936–8. The point is to highlight the extent to which senior political figures clashed over concepts of ‘colonial obligation’ viewed less in the cultural terms of ‘civilizing mission’ than in the material sense of economic outlay.
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Forth, Christopher. "Gender, Empire, and the Politics of Regeneration." French Politics, Culture & Society 36, no. 2 (June 1, 2018): 149–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2018.360207.
Abstract:
Edward Berenson, Heroes of Empire: Five Charismatic Men and the Conquest of Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). Margaret Cook Andersen, Regeneration through Empire: French Pronatalists and Colonial Settlement in the Third Republic (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2015). Geoff Read, The Republic of Men: Gender and the Political Parties in Interwar France (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2014).
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Eraslan, Cezmi. "On the Similarity of Colonialist Policies Implemented Against the Ottoman Empire and the Far East: The Bargains Over Korea After the Shimonoseki Agreement." Belleten 85, no. 304 (December 1, 2021): 967–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.37879/belleten.2021.967.
Abstract:
The industrialized Western powers, seeking free trade, raw materials and market, turned their faces to the underdeveloped states of the Middle and the Far East in the 19th century. First Ottoman Empire, then China and Japan became the targets of this process in a short time. Ottoman Empire was transformed into a semi colony between 1856-1881. After China’s defeat against Japan, the French and British diplomats had discussed repeating the policy which they implemented against Ottoman Empire after the Crimean War in 1853-1856, for China. Colonial effects had begun with trade agreement in Ottoman Empire and continued with changes in judiciary, land laws and increasing the rights of foreigners. Also Japan, who learned how to be a colonialist from British Empire, captured the sovereignty and made changes to judicial and social laws in Korea. In this study, we emphasized that the colonial policies were the same everywhere in both the Near East or the Far East. The Archival documents show the similarities to colonial policies implemented in the Ottoman Empire and Korea. The main source of the findings in this study is the diplomatic correspondence of British diplomats in the region, in the National Archives.
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Belmessous, Saliha. "Emancipation within Empire: an Algerian Alternative during the Era of Decolonization." History Workshop Journal 88 (2019): 153–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbz030.
Abstract:
Abstract This article aims at shedding new light on the salience of empire as a political idea even at the height of decolonization. It discusses why and how colonial subjects – here Muslim Algerians – would continue, when faced with a choice, to look to empires rather than nation-states. The article focuses on six women and men who, during Algeria’s war of independence, rejected the nation-state as their political horizon and imagined a decolonized empire in which they could pursue their emancipation and that of their people. These individuals pursued various political projects that would reconcile their claims for equality and cultural distinctiveness. Though a great number of pro-French supporters fought with arms alongside the French army, others fought with ideas, producing laws that would establish civil and economic equality. While historians have conventionally focused on materialist reasons to explain the loyalty of colonized peoples to imperial polities, this article considers instead the ideas and ideals that inspired the claims expressed by Muslim Algerians. Only a focus on ideas allows us to understand why people could continue to support the French imperial state despite its being disastrous for their material circumstances.
40
MOHAN, JYOTI. "The Glory of Ancient India Stems from her Aryan Blood: French anthropologists ‘construct’ the racial history of India for the world." Modern Asian Studies 50, no. 5 (March 28, 2016): 1576–618. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x13000206.
Abstract:
AbstractIn the last century the French presented their race-neutral policies as evidence of their colour blindness. Yet they were among the foremost proponents of race theory and racial hierarchy, which propelled the colonial machine of the nineteenth century. This article examines the role of French academics in creating a position for India in the racial imagination for the first time in history. It examines the motivations behind such a focus on India and the resulting response from Britain, the colonial ruler. The works of Paul Topinard, Louis Rousselet, Arthur Gobineau, and Gustave le Bon are situated in the colonial and political context of the mid-nineteenth century to demonstrate not only that it was the French, and not the Germans, who placed India on an Aryan pedestal, but that this move was propelled by the dream of an unfulfilled French empire in India.
41
FitzSimons, William. "Sizing Up the “Small Wars” of African Empire." Journal of African Military History 2, no. 1 (June 22, 2018): 63–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/24680966-00201005.
Abstract:
Abstract This short essay makes the case that the theories and practices employed by European armies during the “small wars” of nineteenth-century imperialism were military innovations produced within the distinctly modern and global context of colonial conquest. Colonial military experiences spurred new tactics and strategies which were captured in treatises written by British and French military theorists at the same time that they transformed the nature of warfare in colonized spaces—often with devastating effects. Military approaches developed in response to these “small wars” have important legacies, both in shaping the contours of military operations within postcolonial Africa and contributing to worldwide “counterinsurgency” theories of the twenty-first century. Understanding the specific historical context in which colonial violence was produced can contribute to a fuller understanding of the meaning, impact and multiple legacies of imperial warfare.
42
Vann, Michael G. "Caricaturing 'The Colonial Good Life' in French Indochina." European Comic Art 2, no. 1 (January 1, 2009): 83–108. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/eca.2.1.6.
Abstract:
André Joyeux's La Vie large des colonies ['The Colonial Good Life'] is an insider's portrait of the French colonial encounter in Southeast Asia. Published in Paris in 1912 but most likely penned in Saigon, the collection of cartoons explores the racial order of the colony. Although the artist critiques many aspects of the colony and highlights certain gross injustices, such as the coloniser's sexual predation and physical violence, he also articulates many of the bluntly racist French stereotypes of the Vietnamese, Chinese and other Asians in the colony. Joyeux, as an artist and as an art teacher, contributed to the development of cartoon and caricature as a medium in Vietnam, which would eventually be used in the anti-colonial, nationalist and communist movements. La Vie large des colonies is of importance as a primary source in the study of empire.
43
Zherlitsina, Natalia. "French and English Methods of Colonial Expansion in the Maghreb on the Example of the Franco-Moroccan Crisis of the Late 1840s — Early 1850s." ISTORIYA 14, S23 (2023): 0. http://dx.doi.org/10.18254/s207987840025637-9.
Abstract:
The article is devoted to the Franco-Moroccan crisis of the late 1840s — early 1850s, in which Great Britain was directly involved. This historical event is not covered at all in Russian/Soviet historiography and only in the few works of French and English scientists. The research is based on the study of published documents of archives and works of historians of France and Great Britain of the late 19th — early 20th centuries — the heyday of European colonial empires. The analysis of the causes, course and consequences of the crisis allows the author to compare the methods of colonial expansion used by France and Great Britain when creating their colonial empires in the 19th century. The article shows that both European empires were interested in subjugating the sultanate, but if France sought to include Morocco in its colonial empire, then Britain, using economic and political pressure, gradually turned the North African country into its obedient puppet. The author concludes that Morocco's loss of independence was only a matter of time — when France and Britain could agree on the terms of this seizure. Thus, the fact that the sultanate of Morocco remained independent throughout the 19th century was explained by the conflicting interests of European empires in this region, and not by the success of the policy of the authorities of this country.
44
Phuong, Nguyen Thi Hoai. "The Port City of Haiphong, 1874–1940: The Position of the Chinese Community in a French Colonial City." Lembaran Sejarah 17, no. 2 (November 25, 2022): 188. http://dx.doi.org/10.22146/lembaran-sejarah.79415.
Abstract:
This article discusses the position of the Chinese community in Haiphong, the largest port city in Northern Vietnam during the French colonial period. The Chinese had arrived and lived in Haiphong, as well as many other places in Vietnam long before the advent of the French. Nevertheless, a large-scale influx of Chinese migrants to Haiphong only happened after the French established colonial rule over Indochina and took full control of the town in the late nineteenth century. Haiphong became a strategic port in the transportation system of French Indochina, as well as within the French colonial empire. In Haiphong, the Chinese gathered in a separate residential quarter having the social and cultural life distinct from the French and Vietnamese communities. Yet, they were actively engaged in various economic activities of the town, notetably trade, intrustry, and financial services. The bombardment and occupation of Haiphong by the Japanese army in late 1940 caused great damages and casualties to the Chinese community. The prolonged warfares and the establishment of the communist regime in Vietnam after 1945 virtually ended the economic hegemony of the Chinese in Haiphong, as well other cities in Northern Vietnam.
45
Lewis, James I. "Félix Eboué and Late French Colonial Ideology." Itinerario 26, no. 1 (March 2002): 127–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0165115300004976.
Abstract:
French Colonial Minister Paul Coste-Floret presided over the interment of the remains of Adolphe-Sylvestre-Félix Eboué in the Pantheon of the Republic on 20 May 1949. This singular honour accorded only sixty others in the two centuries since the Great Revolution of 1789 placed Eboué among the greatest heroes and cultural luminaries of modern France. He now rests with Rousseau and Voltaire, the great men of letters Victor Hugo and Emile Zola and the political heroes of Republican France Jean Jaurès and Jean Moulin. Félix Eboué, however, is the only black Frenchman among these great thinkers, writers and leaders of the Republic. His inclusion among the heroes of France in 1949 was indeed in recognition of acts of great personal courage. It was also an expression of French hopes and fears for the future at a time when vast populations of colour under French rule in Africa, in Asia and in the Americas were asserting themselves politically and culturally on an unprecedented scale. In death, Eboué became the symbol of those in France who were most determined to preserve French hegemony over the seventy million souls spread over the globe who formed the French Empire. His life as a French national, a man of African ancestry and as the man whose actions in 1940 helped transform Charles de Gaulle from an obscure Brigadier General into one of the most important leaders of the Second World War made Eboué this symbol.
46
Roberts, Tim. "The Role of French Algeria in American Incorporation of the Philippines and Puerto Rico." Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 48, no. 3 (December 1, 2022): 90–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/hrrh.2022.480306.
Abstract:
This article argues that France’s conquest and subsequent legal treatment of Algeria as an integral part of France, though without French citizenship for Algerians, served as a transnational precedent for US incorporation of former Spanish colonies in the early twentieth century. While the United States also drew lessons from British colonial policy, as scholarship has shown, France’s republican empire offered particular tools, which scholars have not studied, for US courts to designate Filipinos and Puerto Ricans like French Algerians. In essence, French Algeria provided an example for US jurists to create an imperial category for new territorial peoples as neither US citizens nor foreign subjects but as “nationals.” The article draws principally on the so-called Insular Cases, US newspapers, and political documents. The article exposes transnational connections between the United States and France in constructing empires of white freedom, no less important than imagined Anglo-Saxonism at the time.
47
Nasiali, Minayo. "An Inconvenient Expertise." French Politics, Culture & Society 37, no. 1 (March 1, 2019): 117–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2019.370107.
Abstract:
In the 1950s, French shipping companies began to replace their old fleet of steamships with new diesel ships. They also began to lay off sailors from French Africa, claiming that the changing technology rendered their labor obsolete. The industry asserted that African sailors did not have the aptitude to do other, more skilled jobs aboard diesel vessels. But unemployed colonial sailors argued differently, claiming that they were both able and skilled. This article explores how unemployed sailors from French Africa cast themselves as experts, capable of producing technological knowledge about shipping. In so doing, they shaped racialized and gendered notions about labor and skill within the French empire. The arguments they made were inconvenient, I argue, because colonial sailors called into question hegemonic ideas about who could be modern and who had the right to participate in discourse about expertise.
48
Pelley, Patricia. "“Barbarians” and “Younger Brothers”: The Remaking of Race in Postcolonial Vietnam." Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 29, no. 2 (September 1998): 374–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022463400007505.
Abstract:
In the spring of 1954, Vietnamese revolutionaries launched a decisive assault against French colonial troops in the mountain valley of Dien Bien Phu. The military defeat of France, crystalized in the surrender of French troops in May 1954, was the single most crucial event in the collapse of colonial power. In military terms, France had unambiguously yielded to the strategic brilliance and soldierly élan of the Vietnamese, but culturally and intellectually, the empire was not so easily dispatched. Though it was decisive, the military victory alone could not resolve the problems caused by colonial domination. Rather, it created the possibility for Vietnamese to recover from the experience of colonization. Thus, in June, only a month after the French surrender, revolutionary scholars began a new offensive — an intellectual assault — against the most basic assumptions and conclusions of the colonial presence by sending forth a cascade of histories, a rush of ethnographic works, and waves of folkloric studies. In unintended ways, however, the sheer energy of their response also underscored the great difficulty of their endeavor.
49
Horan, Joseph. "The Colonial Famine Plot: Slavery, Free Trade, and Empire in the French Atlantic, 1763–1791." International Review of Social History 55, S18 (December 2010): 103–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0020859010000519.
Abstract:
SummaryThis essay examines the use of famine-plot rhetoric in the course of disputes over free trade in the French Atlantic during the late eighteenth century. Seeking to discredit officially sanctioned trade monopolies, French plantation owners frequently suggested that the control exercised by metropolitan merchants over transatlantic commerce was responsible for food shortages among the enslaved population of the colonies. In reality, the planters themselves bore primary responsibility for malnutrition in the French Caribbean, thanks to their reliance on the slave trade and support for the expansion of plantation agriculture. While proponents of the colonial famine plot accepted that plantation slavery had made it impossible for the resources available in the colonies to sustain the growing enslaved population, they remained committed to the plantation system. In advocating expanded free trade as the best means to ensure the continued growth of the colonies, French planters anticipated a response to the environmental problems caused by colonial expansion that became increasingly prevalent among proponents of European imperialism during the nineteenth century.
50
Smith, Andrea L. "Interlopers of empire: the Lebanese diaspora in colonial French West Africa." Ethnic and Racial Studies 39, no. 13 (May 6, 2016): 2473–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1178790.