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The French Colonialist Movement during the Third Republic: the Unofficial Mind of Imperialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

C. M. Andrew
C. M. Andrew
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
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Extract

British colonial expansion, it has been argued, was governed during the nineteenth century by the workings of the official mind. French colonial expansion was not. The official mind of French imperialism was slow to develop and at best half-formed. The first steps in the creation of the modern French Empire under the July Monarchy and Napoleon III followed no grand design or strategic obsession. Empire-building in Africa, Indo-China and the South Pacific proceeded instead by a series of fits and starts of whose significance successive governments were usually unaware. When the Third Republic embarked on colonial expansion in the 1880s, its policies proved almost as incoherent as those of precedessors. Intervention in Tunisia was swiftly followed by refusal to intervene in Egypt; a forward policy in Indo-China was first accepted, then violently rejected; in West Africa Army officers carved out a private empire on their own initiative. After 1880, however, French expansion at last acquired a clear sense of direction. French imperialism, in its final phase from 1890 to 1920, consciously pursued and substantially achieved a series of imperial grand designs; the unification of France's African Empire in the 1890s; the completion of Frenćh North Africa by the Moroccan protectorate in the early twentieth century; the acquisition of a Middle Eastern Empire and German West Africa during the First World War. These grand designs, however, were the product not of the official but of the unofficial mind of French imperialism. That unofficial mind forms the subject of this paper.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 26 , December 1976 , pp. 143 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1976

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References

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20 Galliéni to Alis, 30 June 1890, Terrier MS 5892.

21 Etienne once acknowledged: ‘Si nous avons pu constituer toutes nos colonies africaines, on peut dire que c'est contre l'opinion publique’, Dépêche Coloniale, 5 July 1910.

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24 Delcassé to his wife, 18 and 27 July 1893, Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Delcassé, MS 1.

25 La Politique Coloniale, 12 September 1895. Lanessan was one of those colonialists opposed to what they considered the unnecessary use of military force in the Mada gascan and other expeditions.

26 Etienne himself acknowledged: ‘En France l'attention du grand public ne s'attache à une question que lorsqu'elle est arrivée à l'état aigu… C'est ce qui est arrivé pour le Maroc comme pour toutes les questions coloniales’, Dépêche Coloniale, 5 July 1910.

27 ‘Bulletin de la Ligue Coloniale Française’, Dépêche Coloniale, 2 February 1914.

28 The Times, 27 January, 3 February 1896.

29 Journal Officiel, Débats Parlementaires, Chambre, 8 December 1896; Andrew, and Kanya-Forstner, , ‘Fashoda Strategy’, pp. 76–77Google Scholar.

30 Bulletin du Comité de l'Afrique Française, April 1912.

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36 Candace, , vice-president of the groupe colonial in the Chamber, described the colonial ministry in 1920 as ‘au dernier ou à l'avant-dernier rang dansla hiérarchie conventionnelle du conseil des ministres’. Another deputy in the same debate called it ‘la cendrillon des ministères’. Journal Officiel, Débats Parlementaires, Chambre, 29 06 1920Google Scholar.

37 Cohen, W. B., Rulers of Empire: the French Colonial Service in Africa (Stanford, 1971), pp. 34 ffGoogle Scholar. By the interwar years the Ecole Coloniale had produced a distinct improvement in the quality of the colonial administration.

38 Report by Laffont, Paul, Journal Officiel, Documents Parlementaires, Chambre, 1920, no. 807, p. 1106Google Scholar: ‘A l'heure actuelle un gouverneur qui prend un congé est à peu près sur de ne jamais rejoindre le poste qu'il vient de quitter’.

39 Ibid., p. 1103.

40 Haussmann, Archinard, and Binger were members during the 1890s; Lagarde and Roume were elected later; J-L Deloncle, though never formally a member of the Comité, was closely associated with it (see the correspondence between Deloncle and Alis in Bibliothèque de l'lnstitut de France, Terrier MS 5891).

41 Berthelot, de Gaix, Francois Georges-Picot, Gout, and de Margerie. Divergences of view inevitably occurred between those colonialists within the Quaid'Orsay, who had to take daily account of the constraints imposed by the international situation, and the colonialists outside, who did not. But there remained a general identity of aims between them.

42 Archinard, Brazza, Doumer, Galliéni, Gouiaud, Jonnart, Lanessan, Lyautey, René Millet, Révoil and Roume belonged to an average of seven colonialist societies each.

43 During Pichon's five-year term as foreign minister (1906–11) only six diplomats (Billy, Jules Cambon, Guiot, Marcilly, Regnault and Saint-Aulaire) ha d any significant influence on the formulation of Moroccan policy. Allain, J-C, ‘Joseph Caillaux et la seconde crise marocaine’, unpublished dissertation (Paris, 1974), pp. 1767 ffGoogle Scholar.

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45 Allain, , ‘Joseph Caillaux’, p. 1676Google Scholar. Allain does not, however, discuss Toutée's longstanding links with the leaders of the parti colonial. These links dated back at least to 1894 when the Comité de l'Afrique Française had financed Toutée's expedition in West Africa; Toutée to Terrier, 25 September 1895, Bibliothèque de I'Institut de France, Terrier M S 5908.

46 The details of this collusion were, unsurprisingly, not committed to paper. But that there was collusion seems clear from a number of sources. De Caix (joint secretary-general of the Comité du Maroc and secretary-general of the Comité de I'Asie Française) wrote to Terrier (joint secretary-general of the Comité du Maroc an d secretary-general ot the Comité de l'Afrique Française) on 23 January 1911: ‘Samedi 21 déjeuner Etienne. Toutée a expose son programme…’ (Bibliothèque de I'Institut de France, Terrier MS 5896).

47 During his final months in office Pichon was increasingly fearful of colonialist schemes to precipitate a French protectorate. H e wrote to Jules Cambon, his ambassador in Berlin, in January 1911: ‘Je trouve notre situation au Maroc aussi bonne que possible. Ne donnons pas aux militaires et au parti colonial trop de pretextes à tronquer le mouvement et à nous lançer dans des aventures’. (I am grateful for this information to Mr David Miller, at present preparing a thesis on Pichon). Jules Cambon was equally concerned by ‘politique des déjeuners’ being hatched by Etienne and the Algerian generals; Documents Diplomatiques François, 2e série, XIII, no. 248. Cf. Andrew, and Kanya-Forstner, , ‘The French “Colonial Party”… 1885–1914’, pp. 122–24Google Scholar.

48 On Delcassé's relations with the parti colonial, see Andrew, Théophile Delcassé; Pichon was president of the Comité de l'Orient 1911–12 and a member of seven other colonialist groups; Hanotaux was elected to the Comité de I'Afrique Francaise in 1902 and to the Comiti de I'Asie Française in 1914, as well as belonging to several less important organizations.

49 Politique Colonials, 22 Jun e 1895, citing comments on Chautemps in much of the Paris press.

50 Andrew, and Kanya-Forstner, , ‘Fashoda Strategy’, pp. 69–70Google Scholar.

51 Homberg, O., Les coulisses de l'histoire: souvenirs 1898–1928 (Paris, 1938), p. 94Google Scholar; Messimy, A., Mes souvenirs (Paris, 1937), p. 39Google Scholar.

52 Bulletin du Comité de l'Afrique Française, November 1906.

53 Andrew, and Kanya-Forstner, , ‘War Aims’, pp. 96–100Google Scholar. Simon, like Chautemps, Milliès-Lacroix and others of his predecessors, left the colonial ministry a committed colonialist. In 1924 he became president of the groupe colonial in the Chamber of Deputies.

54 Caillaux, J., Mes mémoires, I (Paris, 1942), p. 221Google Scholar.

55 Andrew, and Kanya-Forstner, , ‘The French “Colonial Party”… 1885–1914’, pp. 111–13Google Scholar; idem, ‘Fashoda Strategy’.

56 Andrew, Théophile Delcassé. Etienne later gained Pichon's support for a scheme to gain German consent for a French Morocco in return for French participation in the Baghdad railway. With Pichon's approval, Etienne put this proposition to the Kaiser in 1907, but without success. Memorandum by Goût, 24 June 1907, Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Goût MS 9.

57 Andrew, and Kanya-Forstner, , ‘War Aims’, pp. 81–86Google Scholar; Picot to Defrance, 24 December 1915, 17 March 1916, Archives du Ministere des Affaires Etrangères, Defrance MS 2.

58 De Caix's role in the peace negotiations will be studied in detail in a monograph on French Colonial War Aims 1914–20 in preparation by myself and Professor Kanya-Forstner.

59 Dépêche Coloniale, 4 April 1912.

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62 Candace, vice-president of the post-war groupe colonial, spoke for many other colonialists: ‘J’ai montré quelle oeuvre mauvaise, quelle oeuvre impie avaient faite les grands établissements de crédit contre l'intérêt supérieur de la France… Au lieu de drainer pour l'étranger notre épargne, ils auraient dû depuis longtemps orienter cette épargne vers nos colonies'. Journal Officiel, Debats Parlementaires, Chambre, 29 June 1920.

63 Dépêche Coloniale, 26 February 1920; Andrew, and Kanya-Forstner, , ‘The groupe colonial’, pp. 843–44Google Scholar.

64 One example is provided by the banner headlines in DépêcheColoniale, 8 October 1924: ‘Une découverte sensationnelle. L'invention du pétrole synthétique rendra à la France, grâce à ses colonies, son indépendance économique’.

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66 ‘En dépit des efforts intensifs faits depuis tant d'années et de tant de côtés pour donner aux Français une opinion maritime et coloniale, on est à chaque instant péniblement impressionné de la somme d'ignorance à laquelle on se heurte même dans les milieux les plus cultivés touchant ces matières’; Mer et Colonies (the official journal of the Ligue Maritime et Coloniale), December 1931. Although the Ligue then claimed a membership of 700,000, almost all were schoolchildren.

67 Henry, P., ‘L'opinion publique française et le problème colonial’, Sondages, 08 1939Google Scholar (duplicated copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale, 40Jo 924). The questions asked in October 1938 and February 1939, though not identical, were, in Henry's view, sufficiently similar to allow ‘une comparaison exacte’.

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69 This paper is based on research conducted jointly with Professor A. S. Kanga-Forstner, directed towards a history of the French colonialist movement.