The Idéologie colonial Frenchwoman is a system of ideas, designs and of Représentation S aiming promoting and at defending the idea of the colony S in France, and which provides a total interpretation of the world implying certain points of view and engaging to standards and directives of action.

The historians consider that it was built gradually, was born, was validated and existed in particular contexts, that one can particularly attach to the evolutions of France in the international relations. It is not thus a question of experiencing the developments which knew the political colonial Frenchwoman, being heard here like the whole of measurements and the decisional orientations of the French authorities in Métropole in bond with the fate of its colony S Outre-mer.

Creation of the colonial Empire

See also: Congress of Vienna

During the immediate time according to the Revolution, the treatment of the colonial questions must in particular include by the prism of the war with the Great Britain (and then the the United Kingdom) starting from 1793 and the concentration of Napoleon on the assertion of the French unit, by the expansion, the extension of the French influence out of the borders and the proclamation of the Empire. Follows the central idea of the design of the nature of the bond between the France and the colonies which is then that of the Assimilation: the colonies are regarded as parts of the French empire. However, the design of empire is not yet that of the colonial empire, but it is related to the Napoleonean expansionist policy in Europe. Actually, overseas, the policy with respect to the colonies, expressing a “will to reach England in all the points of the sphere”, reveals in fact Napoleon who shows man of Old Mode, being opposed to the revolutionary assimilation, restoring the Esclavage. The quasi-disappearance of the French colonial field (British conquests (Canada), abandonment of possessions (sale of the Louisiana in 1803) and revolts with the the Antilles, independence of Haiti in 1804) continues the crisis which is only precipitated in 1815. With leaving the Congrès of Vienna, in fact less the territorial amputations (, both in Europe and overseas, constitutes the principal concern neither of the revolutionary assemblies, nor, after the Napoleonean episode, of Louis {{XVII}}) that the weakening of the presence and the political power Frenchwomen, in Europe and overseas, which give to colonization a new face, a new identity.

The territory: evolution of a design, towards the expansionism imperialist

Whereas French colonization - as the colonization in general - was especially centered on motivations mercantilists until the end of the Restoration, it is an event release which gives to French colonization a new definition, centered on promotion and the support for the political power of the State, and where the territory takes a new importance; it is about the catch of Algiers.

The catch of Algiers and the phase of transition

See also: Conquest of Algeria, French origin

The July 4th 1830, following three weeks of invasion, the Prise of Algiers under the crook of the general of Bourmont and the rendering of the Dey Hussein Hodja (Othoman governor under authority E nominal) did not give the effect that staggering it and very threatened monarchy of Charles {{X}} discounted. It receives the approval of the population little and of the political community, more worried by the internal disorders and the class struggles inside the country, these even as the forwarding of Algiers actually aimed at channeling towards outside, beyond the rather anecdotic reasons for this military forwarding. Forwarding is launched because of a blow of handle of range (or of drive out-fly…) given by the Dey to the Consul of France because of a dark business of non-payment of cargoes of supply dating from the years 1797 to 1800. The dey having refused to address excuses, forwarding embarks on May 23rd, 1830 with on board 37  000 naval men, 91 guns and 457 buildings, which is considerable enough for a “police raid”, as is ironical Jean Martin. Even if with the international plan the conquest of Algiers and coasting harbors threatens as well symbolically as territorialement the British presence and interests on southernmost bank of the the Mediterranean, the the United Kingdom, already engaged in talks altogether rather not very vigorous with France for a dissuasion, and worried in the years 1830 by the larger threats with balance like the revolutions Belgian, Italian and Polish, does not grant any more to Algiers a great diplomatic interest.

This forwarding is transformed after hesitations into war of colonization. Even if one owes that with a certain good grace granted to France at the diplomatic level (see low), considerations of order interns undoubtedly exploited a more important part the course of the events. For the Monarchy of July coldly installed, Algiers constitutes a legacy rather cumbersome and expensive legitimist. The administration of the French possessions in Algiers causes a parliamentary conflict between “colonists”, in favor of a policy of prestige and expansion, and liberal “anticolonists”, , opposed to the colonial expansion. It is the position of the “colonists” which carries it, prevalence carried by the assertion of a will of maintenance and development of the French occupation (1833). Open a transitional period then when the question of the Territoire arises in different terms: Algiers is a region where France and the French must be established and modernize.

The pacification of largest Algeria is however long and difficult. Constantine, in the east, is taken in 1837; the tribe of the large rebel of the west, the emir Abd el-Kader, is taken, opportunely, only the May 16th 1843; the territory itself is subjected only towards 1848, if one does not take account of the pockets of resistance with the neighborhoods of Tizi-Ouzou, however close to Algiers, which are inclined only twenty-seven years after the latter, in 1857. This known as, although long and difficult, this colonization of the Algérie proceeds in a climate of transition where, more and more, one colonizes to settle and develop. It is not simply any more about Commerce, but colonization gradually takes the form of a colonization of settlement, acquisition and establishment of the territories colonized as a real parts of France : “It is this transport of a considerable population, of a farming population, commercial, industrial… it is this transplantation of a male and female population, formant families, villages and cities which I call the colonization of Algeria. ” It is a question of conceiving what one would call a “umbilical bond” between two banks of the Mediterranean, which Algeria becomes an integral part of France. The transition sees also the deterioration of the old colonial system: the West-Indian revolts reinvigorated by the news of the Révolution of July 1830 revive the debate on the abolition of slavery and consequently of the Traite Blacks in 1834, which pushes to be concerned with development of the colonies (concern which takes very important proportions under the Third Republic); one starts to trade on industrial scale with the African counters; there is a profit of interest for the Far East (opening of five ports in China in 1845).

The Second Empire and the phase preimperialist

If the year 1848 evokes the completion of the colonial invasion of Algeria, it represents a turning for the Politique colonial Frenchwoman, and the beginning of the constitution of the compost of famous the Idéologie colonial Frenchwoman Impérialiste. The Coup d'etat of December 2nd and the proclamation of the Second Empire by Napoleon {{III}} (alias Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon 1st) open one era resolutely turned towards the territorial Expansionnisme. “This mode which tripled the extent of the field undoubtedly wrote a decisive page of the French colonial history”, still wrote Jean Martin in 1987. It should be recalled that on the plan of the principles, the expansionism of the Second Empire was not always creditable in its practical application. It does not remain about it less than it is in this period that of the French, however far from setting up an including or clearly identifiable colonial policy, under the supreme authority - because not inevitably command - of Napoleon especially interested by international prestige, arrange themselves to use the internal forces as well as possible - and, less often, international - to conclude the expansionism.

The catholic missions towards the Far East and the Africa play a big role, going useful for forwardings explorers in the terræ incognitæ and intensified as from the years 1850, and are also used to alleviate the relations between Napoleon III and the catholic Parti scrambled on the question the Italian policy. The Ideology of the Saint-Simonians influence political broad outlines of the Colonization, with in particular the weight of Childish Prosper, large inspirer of the Algerian policy of the Second Empire. Childish, moreover, and Ferdinand de Lesseps is at the origin of boring starting from 1854 of the Suez Canal which proves to be a success and gives to France a cultural influence in Egypt (a political influence too large being certainly to displease to the English) which nevertheless weakens in the years 1880. The military support is done without large-sorrow on the internal plan - it is not the same in the relations between France and the Germany bismarck ienne - thanks to the rearmament and with the increase in the quality of the fleets and Canonnière S Frenchwomen, as thanks to the multiplication of naval stations in almost all the areas where France had colonies. Skilful operations started in 1853 allow Joseph Lambert, trading and ship-owner with the Mauritius, and his/her companions, to obtain for France, as of 1860, a great influence on Madagascar - because of changes in the Malagasy policy, this influence lasts only until in 1863 -; the whole in a greatest caution of Napoleon III in his relations with England. The French influence also grows with the the Comoros thanks to a traffic Négrier which was set up, thorough by the requirements in labor (paradoxically, of the needs caused by abolition for slavery), in the years 1860.

This expansion, which is not so much the result of a linked policy, gives nevertheless a “coloring” to French colonialism, despite everything competitor with British colonialism: the developments of French colonialism express a tendency imperialist, in what this one takes place in the search for a decisive influence on a given area, in the form of a reign without division, provided that it does not encroach on the domination of another European power - especially the the United Kingdom.

Economic issue

French colonization in its beginnings was carried out for various reasons, among which the primary reason was without any doubt the Mercantilisme, in particular the triangular Commerce which made the fortune of the ports of the Atlantique. After a change of the economic situation unfavourable with the colonies during the Revolution, it is a change of the world economy (to say it simply, it is about the Industrialization) which does not fail to bring its batch of repercussions on the glance of France on its colonies, colonies that it does not decide to call “colonial Empire” by chance.

The Mercenary attitude, in the Restoration and beyond

In a first parcelled out colonial empire that it remains in France in 1815, the vital character of the colonies for the economy is felt in metropolis. The mode of Exclusive, also named colonial system , which legislatively closes the exterior market of the colonies to the strict exchange with the metropolis, abolished in 1791, is restored since 1801. The design of colonies to the service of the French trade still had beautiful days in front of it, as the Minister for the Colonies in September 1817 pointed out it: “The end which one proposed while establishing of the colonies being primarily to support and extend the trade of the metropolis, it would be a ruinous misinterpretation which nothing to tolerate which can increase the small number of exemptions from the mode of the Exclusive one. ” This idea then makes the quasi-unanimity among the politicians, with the image of the intervention this same year of the Cotton deputy on the need for the colonies as fournisseuses of food products and outlet for the metropolitan products, vis-a-vis so that he saw like a closing of the markets of the European States: “soon the various people will not have anything to provide the ones to the others. The foreign trade will be drawn by same progress from the trade and industry”.

However, it is in this same period as France deals with deep colonial crisis which is reflected on these terms of trade between colonies and Métropole: removal of the draft ruining the counters Senegal board and generating the progressive ruin of the West-Indian cultures ; the Concurrence of the sugar of Betterave on the sugar of canes, combined with a disinterest for slavery as a resource of production, doing nothing but weigh down the burden on the the Antilles; little of emigration towards the colonies which the Rural migration prefers to him in France; all that are only as many factors which give in France the total impression than the colonies are not very useful.

Formatted by the colonial Pact, the Exclusive one is removed in 1861, under the Second Empire, with the great regret of the protectionist which succeed in 1889 giving this mode in force, convainquant the deputies with the fear which economic independence does not push with the Indépendance supplements, and in a different political climate, tending towards the imperialism (see more low). The suppression of Exclusive in 1861 by Napoleon {{III}} returns also testimony of the opening of the theories free-traders to France (already devoted in the treaty of free trade of 1860), which was to open the ways with the great modern capitalist colonization.

Free trade and colonial Capitalism

See also: Industrialization ({{Romanian|XVIII}} {{E}} and {{Romanian|XIX}} {{E}} centuries)

The economic prosperity and the stability of the institutions, the development of mechanization and large the Industrie go accelerating, which makes feel the need for an economic regime change. Napoleon III and his liberal mode take care some without too much of difficulty. “Old the colonial system had become obsolete. ” Already discredited at the time of the abolition of slavery, mercantile colonization is erased behind free-trade, a concept which finds a base ideological not without bond with the colonial Idéologie: commercial freedom is seen like during individual freedom, a step towards the dedication of individual freedom within the framework of the colonial expansion, and incidentally in the continuity of the emancipation of the Blacks which had been the aiming of the abolition of slavery. The Colonisation becomes, it also, little by little carrying noble values…

Why and how colonial expansion before 1871: outline

The French colonial expansion before 1871 is a colonization in becoming , reflection of an internal political situation in France, where the mode is also sought, between two revolutions. This lack of stability causes obviously a lack of total definition of what is or must be the colonial expansion. The reign of Napoleon {{III}} testifies besides owing to the fact that, even if the forces in favor of the expansionism are quite present (economic prosperity, logistic insurance, characters undertaking), the complexity of the situation interns and of the international power struggles (especially with respect to the England) do not allow “colonial activism” framed by the capacity. The transverse observations enable us nevertheless to draw up the report of a colonization changing , worked firstly by the free-trade and the Libéralisme, and secondly by the will of prestige and expansion. These two principal features give only one coarse draft, but it is them which carried to fluctuating degrees the will of the French actors (left and factions, characters, Heads of State) in the colonial expansion of this half-century.

It is necessary to await the fall of the Second Empire to see to take place the shaping of a Idéologie with the direction of “system of ideas, representations, social designs, which expresses interests of categories and social groups, provides a total interpretation of the world such as it is organized and implies from the points of view, the standards of conduits and the directives of action. ”, consecutive with a mobilization directed towards a “colonial activism” on the initiative of Jules Ferry; mobilization also nourished by a claim with the achievement of a mission of the whole population of France, thus marking a final decoupling of with old the Mercenary attitude, and détrônant on the ideological plan, but ambiguously (see low), a colonization carried by private interests.

Of the colonist to the emancipator or the work of the Third Republic

the established order by Vienna had the effectiveness to make the Powers European, and especially France, rather careful in what the threats to the European interests overseas concerned; the cases of the Algeria and Madagascar show it. The things however change with the Third Republic, because of considerations related to the international situation in Europe.

The only great stake geostrategic for the colonial policy of France in the Second Empire is the unification of the colonial possessions; the vastness of the territories to be conquered and a nonhostile colonization with the other European powers makes it possible France to pass for a rather inoffensive colonial power overseas. This impression is reinforced when is put forward connect it military and political weakness French at the time of the Franco-German Guerre of 1870. To tell the truth, little worries about the colonies inside the French territory, and one did not fail to seriously ask for “What good is the colonies? ” - a symptom that CH. - R. Ageron target like a “absence of instinctive motivations and traditions constraining”, and on which rebounds the colonial speech. Far from banks African and Asian, which concentrated much the policies was mainly the Germany and recovery after the demolished of Sedan.

The Demolished of Sedan, French bitterness and the colonial discharge system

The defeat of the French Army with Sedan in September 1870 mark deeply political orientations of France during the 3rd Republic. The Traité of Frankfurt (May 1871) on which the defeat emerges, sealing the fate of the French territory in Europe like that of the Franco-German relations until in 1914, made “German problem” a serious subject of concern for the statesmen. In geographical terms, it was it, Germany, the real one and constant threat. Worse still, its demographic development ensured the Germans an economic development and soldier who competing with the French power continuously.

Especially, in the French public opinion, the annexation of the Alsace-Lorraine is seen like an oppression of the people, an injustice carried out against the wish of the populations. The idea of a revenge present, is legitimated and maintained: “Far from playing the attackers, France would have made only repair one violation of the right by taking again the lost provinces. ”

Although the question of Alsace-Lorraine strongly grows blurred as of the years 1890, it remains a delicate point which does not cease directing the French foreign politics, and makes very difficult a bringing together between the two countries. Indeed, the French mode being founded on the Vote for all, the politicians could not count on an obliteration of this sentimental factor causing the popular hostility of the French with regard to the Germans. The idea of a revenge thus does not die out and, on the contrary, continuous to worry the spirits and gives place to the maintenance of the military effort for a war.

The delay of metallurgical industry French on Germany with a production propelled by the abundance of the basin of the the Ruhr and annexed Lorraine - this constituting a large advantage for the modern war -, combined with a deceleration of the demographic growth vis-a-vis the German maintenance, ends up highlighting the French incapacity to only measure itself with only with the German Empire. By addition, the insulation of France vis-a-vis in Germany bismarck ienne installea the feeling which the policy of revenge drove back France in a dead end. The necessary discharge system to this tilting is found in the Colonialisme. Thus Jules Ferry, “one of the first, understood that the country was to turn to other horizons. The alternative, it was the colonial expansion policy which was to make it possible France to find its role of power. ” It is also the divided opinion in a way more convinced even by Leon Gambetta, opposing republican Union to the preserving S. the conservatives, sometimes royalist but especially clerical, is not particularly anticoloniaux: the line of fracture is actually among the republicans, out of colonial matter, between a radical tendency, that of Ferry , requiring immediate solutions with the questions, and an “opportunist” tendency (Jean Ganiage), that of G {{Romanian|ambetta}}, which estimates that colonial forwardings must launch out as soon as opportunity arises some. It goes without saying that the constitution of a colonial Doctrine only becomes more difficult about it to release. It is by play of persuasion and speech colonialists orchestrated by the means of the media of mass - it acts above all of the press, going up forces some -, that a Idéologie is constituted. Carried by this tendency, French colonization gradually marries the form which the political elites want to give him; colonization became before any business of Député S and elites, and not really the business of the Peuple. Arises during this time all the importance of the forces Parlementaire S - like, in comprehensible manner, the forces élitiste S - during the realization of this “work of the Third Republic”.

Colonial speech with the colonial ideology

We on the occasion to note that the colonial speech French had already led the Conquête of Algeria, as well as the Algerian policy of France afterwards. With the news gives Franco-German since 1871, the colonial speech is directed definitely more resolutely towards the Colonialisme. But the colonialism of IIIe République is of nature different from that to which the Parliament had dealt with the days of the French victory in Algeria. The progression of the ideas colonialists among the members of Parliament is carried here: firstly , by the constitution of a colonial reality Left , grey matter of the speech colonialist representing an identifiable social category; secondly , by a popular provision with military revenge vis-a-vis in Germany.

On this second observation, one would tend to say that the construction of the Idéologie colonial Frenchwoman, who follows a situational diagram on the whole, was carried out on a pathological backdrop , comparable to a complex of inferiority with respect to Germany, and incidentally conferring an apparent feeling of exiguity in the borders of the Hexagon. Regions to be colonized as Western Africa incidentally became - and incidentally only - arenas to regild the French blazon when it was tarnished on the Old continent.

This remark wants to be used as a basis for the following argument: although Jules Ferry, become president of the Council in 1880, is today still one of the figureheads of the colonial expansion under IIIe République, it is surprising that its personality and its political course had been able to allot as much parliamentary force to him. The mode of democracy imposed a certain popular base on an expansionist policy, which would become imperialist. One, so to speak, is thus forced to think that this sudden colonial resolution of France lets consider in filigree a “reversal of the public spirit” which would have met the interests of a Ferry whose leadership was marked by prestige and the great policy. It is with this popular, important base when one thinks of a Idéologie, that it is interesting to be focused. Which was it?

The “colonial Left” or the fashioner ideology

According to Charles-Robert Ageron, the colonial Parti is “a committee the notable ones directed by members of Parliament and endeavouring to exert a political action. But this party was original in what it recruited in all the families of thought and which it did not have of electoral ambitions. ”

The colonial party does not fail to feel like sourness the German superiority. The intellectual main motor of the colonial party is consisted the geographical movement (animated by the members of the companies of geography) which then conquers successfully “a whole people of modest readers”. Indeed, the geographical movement which attracts the interest of the public in particular to be parvenu to make Géographie in 1872 a school matter, is quite naturally stimulated by the colonial will: “It is the North-West of Africa which we must choose for the principal theater of our research and our explorations”, in 1873 was already written. Only, with the idea at the head that had to be reformed the manner of making of the geography to make it more practical, and thus more popular for the support for the colonial expansion. Thus,

“the German superiority in its approach of sciences was seen like part of the reasons subjacent with their victory, and the science of the geography, in particular in the practical direction of its description of the ground, of the resources, and of topography, seemed to have an obvious application in time of war. Popularization and the praticity became the watchwords of the reformers whereas they sought to remake their science, that they saw as having become too theoretical, academic, and heavy. ”

Highly active in promotion, the crowning and the popularization of the explorers, the geographical movement champignonne in a form resulting from this reform, that of the “commercial geography”. The movement comes from there to be marked deeply by the economic interests of the colonial expansion; thus one observes a recasting in adhesion at several large geographical companies, going until 66  % of members coming from a commercial context with Bordeaux between 1872 and 1879. Beside that, the political slope of the movement hoods, the such French company of Colonization which is “a fire of straw trained in the discredit of the colonial idea which followed the fall of Jules Ferry”. There thus remains only the importance of the “Lobby” which form the colonial party, fed in ideas by the members of the geographical companies.

This dependence of the colonial speech with respect to the situational interests does not cease being checked. The thing is certainly not new, if one keeps in mind that in fact very often the trading S of the the Mediterranean (mainly Marseilles) were more the activists in colonialism since the beginning of the 19th century. The difference is exploited here the republican drive of the values are in the will colonialist of the colonial party, from now on tinted Capitalisme and of “company spirit”.

Of the colonist to the emancipator: “republican colonialism ”; which translation in political terms?

It would be convenient to lean here in some lines on the ideological validation of renewed French colonialism, as well as the extensions which followed in the facts and the International relations.

The important influence of the colonial party, having married the Républicanisme, returns to him necessary to popularize its ideas to validate a Idéologie inside the borders. The republican values of freedom, equality and fraternity between the people are called upon. Conditions for a Ideology - within the meaning of Me Bokolo: social category, interpretation of the world, points of view, standards and directives of action - are joined together.

The Idéologie is adapted to the situation to be validated. Thus the Liberté of the people hoists above French colonialism the banner of the release of the oppressed people , release due to the assertion of the fraternity between the people, old woman one completed era old Napoleon ienne; the ideal of release made quiver the preserving powers in Europe since at least the beginning of the century. But France did not have anything to fear, it acted of the Africa. The colonial claims related to yet only territories which were considered LMBO nullius , Tunisia, Senegal, and soon the Upper Volta, Guinea, Coast-D' Ivory, Dahomey, Gabon, French Congo and of many other territories which for the majority formed until 1914 the French Western Africa and the French equatorial Africa, and constitute today the majority of the French-speaking countries of Western and equatorial Africa. The cases of the Morocco and current the the Western Sahara are of exception. The other powers were not explicitly threatened. No need was not, in addition, to seriously establish that the African people were oppressed: the treatment, even treacherous, of the reports of the explorers seemed to be enough to convince the members of Parliament of the cogency to the will French liberator. It however often arrived that the explorers bring back accounts attesting worked out political organizations, in which the oppression of the people by an arbitrary form of tyranny was by no means marked). Various authors attach this method to a traditional rhetoric of war aiming at discrediting the adversary - adversary which the people in question were indeed, at the time of the colonial wars

The establishment and the effective annexation of the territories “released” by the French authority are another question: why colonize equal alleged people? The answer is simple, but is surely atypical republican rhetoric French: they were not equal people, but lower people. The scientific opinions - soaked social Darwinisme - with the support, massive popularization, in the media, people and companies exotic but lower than the White, still covered France of a more beautiful mission, if beautiful that she convinces the Parliament of the need for a colonial company under the Tricolor: emancipation of the people . France releases not only the people of the yoke of tyranny, but the émancipe to make citizens of them, citizens who they were surely not, and aspired certainly to becoming. The emancipation of the people is the carry-standard of a colonization with human face, by distinction compared to the European competitors - which however also had, in the colonial Idéologie S, their Marianne. At the time of the Conference of Berlin on the division of the colonies in Africa, in February 1885 - testifying to the survival of a system in the concert in decrepitude -, this presumption of superiority, in contradiction with the human rights and the principle of equality of the men and the people, bases even of the identity of republican France, posed problem in the French parliamentary enclosures seriously and put at evil the unit of position which France was to express with the Conference; it was thus carefully avoided. There is a dilemma, which is not new (see low), but which injected a problem of an existential nature in the Idéologie colonial Frenchwoman.

“the uneven idea of a natural primacy of the White, qualified “higher race” compared to the Blacks, Jaunes and other “savages”, being badly put up with the assertion to the human rights, they are not while being based primarily on a theoretical argumentation that the defenders of such a counterfeit succeeded in imposing it. Their demonstration holding of sophism, the only manner of reaching that point was to suggest that this hierarchy is of a so bright obviousness which one does not have even need to show it. It is by circumventing the debate of 1885, well badly engaged for them, that holding them of this theory could make so that it ends up seeming an obvious truth. ”
The economic slope of the colonization, to which the colonial party held much (see higher), makes re-appear various questions and completes to transform the economic model for the French colonies. A Exclusif of a new kind is recreated, with the progression at the beginning of the 20th century of the concept of “development” of the colonies, sacrilizing free-trade like economic mode. The method of establishment in Western Africa concentrates on a replication of the Algerian example (see higher), with an installation, a Modernization and an exploitation of the ground. The discordance between the interests of the French colonialists, mainly economic, and the proposed ideals, those of the republicanism dominating, is manifest. Gilles Manceron summarizes rather well this contradiction in the chief of the colonial party:

“Made up, on June 15th, 1892, to forty-two deputies, it counts a hundred and twenty year following of it and, while a similar group is formed with the Senate in 1898, nearly two hundreds in 1902. During all the Republic, this group, which provides, between 1894 and 1899, five of the seven Ministers for the Colonies, will count the politicians more for mode, recruited without exclusive in all the political parties, out the Communists. He marries, obviously, the republican speech dominating, but with the manner of these colonists of the Massiac club under the Revolution, whose Milscent said in 1794, in the patriotic Creole , which they have “the language of the republicanism on the lips” to propose the “subversion of the principles and the conservation of the privileges”. ”
Thus, the colonist becomes emancipator, but also contractor. The importance of the economy in the French colonial expansion, accentuated by the economic kind of lobby that constitutes, for a great part, the colonial party, is really at the origin of the colonial conflicts, especially between France and England in the west of Africa and with Germany in central and equatorial Africa. One can undoubtedly consider this parameter among the origins of the First World War.

A paradox, a dilemma… A colonization which “does not turn out badly”

One can try, with the brevity which falls, to risk with a critical evaluation of dominant features of the Idéologie colonial Frenchwoman with the developments which have occurred in the French colonial policy. We retain two features.

Initially, the paradox enters, on the one hand, colonialism free-trader, carried out on the ground by the “” and promotion development of mutual companies, an individualistic process defender of values S; and in addition, the opening to a colonization émancipatrice, defendant of values universalists (by definition transcendent with the private interests). One could only too much see a correspondence with what characterizes the Idéologie according to the definition that we chose, namely, that the points of view implied in the colonial Idéologie inevitably express interests of categories and social groups, and not a republican universalism .

But there is more than one simple character of paradoxical incompatibility between the known as one and the fact. One is not long, either, in conceiving certain a faintness between the concepts of republican France and French colonialism. Following the realistic Paradigm which in the field of the theory of the International relations theorized the Dilemme of the gun and the identity, it is necessary for us here to give an account of what us should call the dilemma of colonization and of the identity . A first expression of this dilemma in the French history is to us bleat given by Gilles Manceron, which points out the sales battle, parliamentary and of public opinion which opposed the “colonists” of the Revolution and the first members of Parliament holding mordicus with the abolition of slavery and the abandonment of colonialism, at the end of the 18th century. The slogan which animated the anticolonists, “perishes our colonies rather than a principle” , represented well this fundamental contradiction between the principle of colonization and the principle of the Republic to the Frenchwoman. It is not difficult to see that this contradiction continued France until today, and, although she does not constitute the prerogative of the “Fatherland of the human rights”, catalyzes the Panafrican movements and antifrançais vis-a-vis the traces left by the Idéologie colonial Frenchwoman directed towards material spoliation, the economic exploitation, the political and cultural domination and the Racisme.

The right and the left French and the colonial ideology

The line was initially anticolonialist

Contrary to the generally accepted ideas, the right French, in the years 1880-90, savagely was initially opposed to the colonial company in Africa. For it, France was to choose between the " Revanche" , patriotic requirement, and the colonial expansion, dream diverting the French of the " blue line of Vosges". Energies which would be dissipated in the colonial adventure were to be directed towards the lost provinces. This nationalist anticolonialism was incarnated by Paul Déroulède. For him, never the colonies could not offer a compensation to the loss of the Alsace and Lorraine and it is in this direction that he answered Jules Ferry: " I lost two sisters, and you offer twenty domestiques" to me; . A few years before, in 1884, in front of the Senate, the duke of Broglie, senator monarchist orleanist and old President of the Council affirmed vis-a-vis the postulates of Jules Ferry that " the colonies weaken the fatherland which founds them. Well far to strengthen it, they tap its blood and its forces to him. "

The left was colonialist a long time

July 25th, 1885, Jules Ferry declares in front of the Room: " It should be said openly that the higher races have a right with respect to the lower races. I repeat that there is for the higher races a right, because there is a duty for them. They have the duty to civilize the lower races. ". Forty years later, Leon Blum affirmed for its part, always in front of the Room: " We admit the right and even the duty of the higher races to attract with them those which did not arrive at the same degree of culture, and to call them with made progress graces to the efforts of science and industry ". These citatitions are as many evidence of a tendency which will have lasted until the end of IVe République.

Survivals of the colonial ideology

Whereas France lost the majority of its colonies, its colonial culture contributes to a certain difficulty in establishing a true memory work over this period. Survivals of this colonial ideology also influence the reports/ratios which France draws up with the former colonized people, in particular in Africa as the speech of Nicolas Sarkozy in Dakar in 2007 seems to show it.

See too

  • To read quotation on the colonialism and French colonization, of Ferry with Césaire.

Related articles

  • French Colonialism

  • Colonial

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