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The clear
and stimulating introduction to this set of essays applies the
concept of 'popular imperialism', developed for modern British
history by John MacKenzie and his school, to the French case. There
is no attempt to argue for a mass movement behind French colonial
expansion, for which there is indeed precious little evidence,
but Chafer and Sackur react vigorously against the idea that colonialism
was an affair restricted to a small cabal within the French elite.
They invite their readers to see imperialism as a constituent element
of a 'new patriotism'. The empire was among a mix of factors that
came to define France for many of its citizens, mainly on the right
of the political spectrum in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Overall, the role of colonies was to bolster a belief
that France was a great power, in spite of demographic stagnation
and a decline in the country's relative economic standing in the
world. This view of a 'greater France' coexisted quite happily
with astonishing degree of ignorance about the colonies, and a
general lack of interest as to what went on there.
Chafer and Sackur also bring out the differences
with Britain, and make some further comparisons with other colonial
empires, notably that of Germany. Militarism and racism were part
of the French ideological package, but republicanism replaced monarchism,
even though the authors note that French colonialists generally
strove to be moderate on the divisive question of the form of government.
Republicanism, rooted in the myth of the French Revolution, helped
to drive an assimilationist rhetoric that differed drastically
from that of the British, even if the reality on the ground proved
to be quite similar. Another difference was that some French people
initially believed that imperialism distracted attention and resources
from revenge, after the humiliating defeat at German hands in 1870.
However, this faded away once colonial troops came to the rescue
of France in the First World War.
There remain some major and puzzling omissions
from this introductory survey. French republicanism may well have
been moderate in a colonial context, but, even if pragmatic considerations
dictated that minor chiefs should be left in place, republicanism
did contribute greatly to the removal of the maharajas, shaykhs,
emirs, paramount-chiefs and other monarchical figures, so beloved
of British officials. Unintentionally, this French dislike of the
hereditary principle smoothed the path to national unity for many
African countries after independence. The authors also fail to
discuss arguments that French racism owed more to Lamarck than
to Darwin, and thus allowed for a greater degree of 'upward racial
mobility'. Chafer and Sackur note the role of the colonial project
in healing rifts between republicans and monarchists, which came
close to destroying the Third Republic in its first decades, but
they say nothing about the even more divisive issue of clericalism
and anti-clericalism. Indeed, anti-clericalism does not make it
to the index, even though France was durably split into Catholic
and dechristianised zones by the French Revolution, along fault
lines that still count in French politics. In a colonial context,
anti-clericalism spilled over into venomous conflicts in the mission
field. At the same time, 'missionary martyrs' helped the Catholic
Church to rehabilitate its image at home, together with news of
its contributions to health, education and other social services
in the empire.
Perhaps the most surprising element in the introduction
is the failure to pursue comparatively Linda Colley's idea that
colonialism produced a British identity out of England, Scotland,
Wales, and, much more fitfully, Ireland. Colley's thesis is mentioned
but not developed, even though Odile Goerg, one of the contributors
to the volume, describes attempts to manipulate imperialist motifs
to 'cement' Alsace back into France after 1918. The notion that
the crucible of national unity was the French Revolution has probably
been exaggerated, while the role of imperial expansion and defensive
colonial wars has been underestimated. Agitation for autonomy,
or even independence, tended to develop during the retreat from
empire, as Bretons, Basques, Catalans, Occitanians, Provençaux,
Franco-Provençaux, Corsicans, Alsatians and Flemings all
became restive. Furthermore, this pattern can be discerned all
over Europe, perhaps most obviously in Spain. Basques, including
those from the French side of the border masquerading as Spanish
subjects, participated eagerly and successfully in garnering the
spoils of Castile's overseas expansion, but began to demand their
own state after the collapse of empire. All over Europe, the movement
away from dreams of imperial self-sufficiency has been marked by
the powerful resurgence of nations deprived of states. The dramatic
collapse of the Soviet empire is only the latest example of this
trend. The slow convergence towards a federal Europe has further
raised the hopes of such movements, as shown in the recent political
crises in France over Corsican autonomy.
Editors always face a hard task in coercing their
contributors into following their editorial line, and the scarcity
of references in the introduction to the chapters that ensue is
perhaps a manifestation of this perennial problem. Most contributors
address the theme of whether empire shaped a 'new patriotism' somewhat
tangentially, with a tendency to follow other agendas in the historiography
of French imperialism. Indeed, some contributors romp though already
well-known material, without really pausing to consider how this
shaped attitudes in France. Examples of this are Pascal Venier
on the colonial propaganda of Galliéni and Lyautey, Véronique
Dimier on indirect rule, Jonathan Derrick on the politics of anti-colonialism
in France, and Catherine Atlan and Jean-Hervé Jézéquel
on the careers of prominent Africans working within the French
colonial system.
Odile Goerg's fine chapter is perhaps most true
to the volume's main thrust, exploring how imperialists sought
to draw the provinces into the service of a 'greater France'. Looking
at provincial geographical societies, colonial exhibitions, missionary
propaganda, and the stationing of colonial troops in the metropolis,
Goerg weaves an interesting story of the strengths and weaknesses
of this project to cast la France profonde into an imperial
mould. She frankly admits that the problem is how to gauge the
impact of all these activities, but suggests that high visitor
numbers to 'African villages' at least suggest interest in the
exotic nature of empire. Her main focus is on Alsace. She notes
the significance of emigration to Algeria after 1870, and dwells
on efforts after 1918 to counter earlier propaganda events centred
on the German colonies. However, she does not really delve enough
into the persistent ambiguities of the relationship between this
province, profoundly Germanic in cultural terms, and those whom
Alsatians call, somewhat disparagingly, 'the French of the interior'.
In a chapter tucked away at the very end of the
book, Robert Aldrich provides a fascinating analysis of one particular
French view of colonies, revealed in the street names of Paris.
Most telling are the names that are left out, rather than those
which are included. 'Natives' hardly figure at all, even when they
were favourable to French rule. However, Félix Éboué,
the Black Guyanese governor of Chad who rallied to General de Gaulle
in the dark hours of 1940, is commemorated. More surprisingly,
so is his wife. Even more bizarre is the omission of leaders of
anti-colonial struggles against France, when some who fought Spanish,
British and Turkish imperialism are included. Names of businessmen
are almost completely absent, possibly reflecting a certain unease
as to the ethical standards of those who made fortunes on the periphery.
Some small colonies do not figure, and a map would have been helpful
at this point in the discussion. On the whole, the distribution
of names suggests an interest in the 'glorious' process of constituting
empire, while revealing tactful silence on the shoddy and uninspiring
manner in which much of it slipped from French hands. It would
be useful to know a great deal more about how decisions to name
streets were taken, although this would require much detailed research.
Aldrich provides a hint as to the potential of such research by
indicating that a group of Caribbean students attempted, unsuccessfully,
to delete the name of General Richepanse, sent by Napoleon to Guadeloupe
in 1802 to re-establish slavery there.
Gilles de Gantès and Isabelle Merle adhere
to the editorial line to some degree, by asking whether the popularity
of Indochina and New Caledonia as destinations for migrants proved
the efficacy of colonial propaganda. However, they do not go very
far in answering this interesting question. Gantès further
suggests that settlement cemented French imperial unity, given
the prominence of 'sub-imperial' migration from French India and
Réunion in an early stage, a point that Merle could have
underlined by referring to Réunionais and Vietnamese migration
to New Caledonia. Tantalisingly, Gantès shows that the majority
of later settlers in Indochina came from the periphery of the 'hexagon',
especially Corsicans, but also Bretons, Charentais, Provençaux,
natives of the Alps, and Alsatians. Unfortunately, he fails to
ask what impact this might have had on French national unity. Moreover,
he does not detect the ancient Basque presence in the Philippines
as an ingredient in the 'Bordeaux connection' with the Far East.
As for Merle, she does not even provide a breakdown of the origins
of migrants.
Penny Edwards focuses more on peripheral identity
formation, exploring the poorly known Cambodian case, but her chapter
also yields some valuable general insights. In particular, she
describes the elaboration of the cult of Joan of Arc, canonised
by the Vatican in 1920, whose bobbed hair-style was even adopted
by some Cambodian women in the inter-war years. For royalists,
Catholics, adherents of the Action Française and supporters
of the Vichy regime, the 'maid of Orleans' formed a potent counterweight
to the Marianne figure dear to republicans. The latter is strikingly
depicted on the book's dustjacket, pouring out a cornucopia of
wealth to benighted colonial subjects.
Other chapters concentrate on the vexed question
of racial and cultural discrimination. Neil MacMaster shows how
attempts to counter German propaganda in the First World War led
to the provision of Muslim buildings and institution in inter-war
Paris, although his references to an 'apartheid' mentality seem
inappropriate. Owen White draws on some unusual sources, women's
magazines and intercepted letters, to explore the extraordinary
welter of conflicting French attitudes towards race, with a welcome
stress on women's feelings. Alice Conklin considers campaigns to
increase birth rates in France and West Africa, pointing out variations
in gender and race terminology. Emmanuelle Sibeud looks at the
views on race enunciated by sociologists and missionaries. However,
none of the three authors sufficiently draws out the implications
for the book as a whole, even though they provide much material
that might serve to question the centrality of racism for French
identity. William Kidd's trawl through a wide variety of war memorials
focuses more on the volume's central concern, but he takes French
racism as a given, rather than as something to be explored. Indeed,
the vital distinction between race and culture is often blurred
in this collection, in ways that make it more difficult to grasp
the specificity of French attitudes, compared to those prevalent
in Britain or elsewhere.
Christopher Flood and Hugo Frey round off the
volume with a thought-provoking survey of the extreme right's attitudes
to empire, which should really have been the concluding chapter.
Far right movements in France tended to be anti-imperialist to
begin with, because empire distracted France from the 'blue line
of the Vosges' and risked polluting the mère-patrie
with the blood of 'lesser breeds.' After the Second World War,
however, theorists of the extreme right moved to a defence of empire,
angrily criticising the 'masochistic' rush by centrist and leftists
to denigrate French achievements in the colonies. The National
Front even abandoned overt racism in favour of a defence of French
culture, carefully including 'people of colour' in the ranks of
its candidates for elected office. Islam emerged as the main enemy,
foreshadowing the current lurch towards islamophobia by more mainstream
elements in the industrialised world. Again, this contribution
raises problems for the centrality of racism in the constitution
of the 'new patriotism'.
Despite some weaknesses in analysis, and some
empirical gaps and lack of focus in the substance of the book,
this is an important collection, which pushes forward a growing
revisionist approach to imperialism. Reduced to its essence, the
thesis is that empire was more theatre than substance for the West.
Expansion overseas was principally a way to paper over internal
cracks in the political and social fabric of industrialised nation
states. Any search for gains from the economic exploitation of
the periphery was weak, and proved illusory. Indeed, it was internal
strength, gained from the Western agricultural and industrial revolutions,
that gave colonial lobbies the opportunity to engage in the gigantic,
and often bloody, theatrical production that was empire. How much
truth there is in this vision remains to be seen. However, it clearly
opens new avenues for research in imperial history, a branch of
enquiry once described as almost moribund.
November 2002
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