Colonization
France has won and lost two colonial empires during the last 500 years. The first was acquired mainly in the Americas, beginning in the 16th c., as well as in the Indian Ocean and the Indian subcontinent during the 17th and 18th c. By the beginning of the 19th c. the bulk of these territories had been ceded to Great Britain as a consequence of French military defeats in Europe or overseas. France built up a second colonial empire during the 19th and early 20th c. in Africa, Indo-China, and Oceania; most of these colonies were to gain their independence after World War II.
France's earliest efforts at overseas expansion were concentrated in North America. Dispatched by François Ier in 1534, Jacques Cartier discovered the St Lawrence River and advanced up it as far as Hochelaga (Montreal). It was not until the beginning of the following century that a serious attempt was made at settling La Nouvelle France, as Canada was called at that time [see Quebec]. Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1608, explored the Hudson River to the south, and pushed as far west as Lake Huron. The Mississippi basin was claimed for France in 1682 by Robert Cavelier de La Salle, who named it Louisiana in honour of Louis XIV. Effective colonization was slow, however: the number of settlers living in French North America is thought never to have totalled more than 80, 000.
There were almost as many settlers in the much smaller but more productive territories held by France in the Caribbean. Guadeloupe, Martinique, and the western part of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) were among the most important West Indian islands to pass under French control from 1625 onwards. A colony was also created on the South American mainland, in French Guiana. Sugar and other commodities produced in the Caribbean accounted for most of the trade generated by the French empire. The labour needs of the Caribbean islands were dependent on African slaves, who out-numbered white settlers by more than ten to one [see Slavery]. The slave-trade was supported by trading posts such as Saint-Louis and Gorée on the coast of Senegal, in West Africa.
Island colonies acquired by France in the Indian Ocean during the 17th and 18th c. included Île Bourbon (Reunion), Île de France (Mauritius), the Seychelles and, for a brief period, small parts of Madagascar. Among the trading posts established on the Indian coast from the 1660s onwards were Pondichery, Chandernagor, and Mahé. French expansion into the interior was carried furthest by Joseph François Dupleix, who by 1754 had established a French protectorate over a large part of the Indian subcontinent.
This marked the high-water mark of France's first overseas empire, which at that stage covered an area of approximately 10 million square kilometres with an estimated population of 30 million. Most of this, including eastern Louisiana, was lost to Britain as a consequence of the Seven Years War (1756-63). The remainder of Louisiana was sold to the United States in 1803. There were further losses during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-15), at the end of which France retained only a few Caribbean possessions together with a handful of territories situated for the most part around the rim of the Indian and North Atlantic oceans.
The beginning of France's second colonial empire was marked by the conquest of Algeria, which was initiated in 1830 and largely completed by the middle of the 19th c. under the command of Marshal Thomas Bugeaud. From their bases on the coast of Senegal, French forces led by General Louis Faidherbe began pushing into the West African interior. Cochin-China (southern Vietnam) was annexed in 1859, and Cambodia was made a French protectorate in 1863. In the Pacific Ocean, where explorers such as Bougainville had made initial contacts the previous century, France established a protectorate over Tahiti in 1842 and annexed New Caledonia in 1853.
The major phase of expansion came under the Third Republic. Under the premiership of Jules Ferry, France gained protectorates over Tunisia as well as over Annam and Tonkin (central and northern Vietnam). French Indo-China became complete with the creation of a protectorate over Laos in 1893. Madagascar was annexed in 1896 and French control in North Africa was extended through a protectorate over Morocco in 1912. The biggest territorial gains came in sub-Saharan Africa. By the beginning of the 20th c. France held sway over most of West and Central Africa, where her territories were grouped together respectively as Afrique Occidentale Française (AOF) and Afrique Équatoriale Française (AEF). France's final acquisitions came after World War I with the defeat of Germany and the Ottoman Empire, whose colonies were redistributed among the victorious powers under the aegis of the League of Nations; in this way, France gained mandates over Syria and Lebanon in the Middle East and over the West African territories of Togo and Cameroon.
At its height, between the World Wars, this new French empire was second only to that of Great Britain. It covered more than 12 million square kilometres and contained a population of nearly 70 million, almost twice that of metropolitan France. Indo-China accounted for more than one-third of all the inhabitants. Sub-Saharan Africa contained similar numbers, but they were more thinly spread across a much larger area. There were in all one- and-a-half million settlers. The great majority of these were in the North African territories, particularly Algeria, which constituted the only colonies de peuplement among the newly acquired empire. The remainder served as colonies d'exploitation, where economic development was directed by relatively small European élites.
The long-term goal often claimed by colonial propagandists was assimilation, i.e. the wholesale re-creation of the overseas territories and their inhabitants in the image of French civilization. In practice, the empire was designed to support, rather then duplicate, the economy of France; native peoples were denied political rights, and educational facilities (an essential prerequisite for cultural assimilation) touched only a minority of the population. By the early 20th c. French colonial practice had been rationalized into a new doctine known as association, according to which colonizers and colonized would each retain their separate cultural identities while collaborating for the mutual benefit of all concerned. Ironically, the small native élites who passed through the French educational system were to play a leading role in pressing for decolonization.
Three categories of writers may be distinguished in the literary mediation of the colonial experience. Some wrote about the overseas territories without ever visiting them, a tradition which goes as far back as Rabelais in Pantagruel and Montaigne in the essay ‘Des cannibales’. Others, such as Fromentin or Loti, visited the colonies and, in describing their experiences, contributed to French travel writing. A third body of literature was produced by the permanent inhabitants of colonies, particularly where there were substantial numbers of settlers, as in Algeria. While writers of French descent were initially to the fore among those based overseas, members of the French-educated indigenous élites became increasingly prominent during and after decolonization.
The literatures of the French territories overseas are discussed in entries for specific regions or countries.
[Alec Hargreaves]
Bibliography
- X. Yacono, Histoire de la colonisation française (1969)
- M. A. Loutfi, Littérature et colonialisme: l'expansion coloniale vue dans la littérature romanesque française, 1871-1914 (1971)
- J. Meyer, et al., Histoire de la France coloniale, 2 vols. (1991)
