Postcoloniality

The French Dimension

Margaret A. Majumdar

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781782387541
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"Postcolonial theory" has become one of the key issues of scholarly debates worldwide; debates, so the author argues, which have become rather sterile and are characterized by a repetitive reworking of old hackneyed issues, focussing on cultural questions of language and identity in particular. Gradually, a gulf has emerged between Anglophone and Francophone thinking in this area. The author investigates the causes for the apparent stagnation that has overtaken much of the current debate and explores the particular characteristics of French global strategy and cultural policy, as well as the divergent responses to current debates on globalization. Outlining in particular the contribution of thinkers such as Césaire, Senghor, Memmi, Sartre and Fanon to the worldwide development of anti-imperialist ideas, she offers a critical perspective on the ongoing difficulties of France's relationship with its colonial and postcolonial Others and suggests new lines of thought that are currently emerging in the Francophone world, which may have the capacity to take these debates.

Chapter 1

French Discourses of Empire

The particular shape and characteristics of French postcolonial discourse today cannot be understood without an exploration of the specific historical legacy of French imperialism and colonialism and the discourses or ideologies through which these processes were articulated and rationalised. This chapter will highlight a number of key issues and contradictions, some of which still have a bearing on present difficulties.

The French Empire did not develop in a steady linear progression, but passed through a number of distinct stages in its history, or rather we should say their histories, in which each stage was marked by a clear setback, a defeat or loss, which, temporarily at least, put a brake on the process of expansion. One can distinguish, broadly speaking, three distinct phases: (1) from the early sixteenth century to the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815; (2) from 1830 (the conquest of Algiers) to 1870 (the fall of the Second Empire); and (3) the period of imperialist expansion under the Third Republic from 1875 to the culmination of the decolonisation process with Algerian independence in 1962. Each of these phases had its own specific features, in terms of the nature of the economic, political and military forces at play and the relations within which they operated. The different historical stages were also characterised by very different rationalisations of the whole imperial undertaking. Thus each phase was characterised by a specific set of discourses or ideologies, which had developed in tune with the times and historical conditions and which were used in the different stages to rationalise, or indeed to oppose, the process of colonial expansion (Girardet 1972; Ruscio 2002).

However, just as there was also an underlying continuum in the historical processes involved in the development of imperialism, in spite of the discontinuities, so too was there a strong element of continuity at the level of the ideas and discourses, in which earlier forms retained their power to influence and shape the new forms of later periods.

The First Phase of Modern French Imperialism
(Early Sixteenth Century to 1815)

The first stage coincided with similar attempts by other European powers at the beginning of the modern period to expand beyond their own borders into the so-called ‘New World’, Africa and the East, to bring back gold, silver, spices and other riches (Ferro 1996). The acquisition of natural resources, extracted minerals, agricultural produce and artefacts through various forms of trade and plunder, characterised by a greater or lesser use of force and deception, soon developed into new forms of agricultural production overseas in some of the territories, particularly in the Americas and the Caribbean. Colonial entrepreneurs of a new type thus took over from the older seafaring adventurers and privateers, with the intention of getting involved in the production process itself and developing it along new lines, through the establishment of vast plantations for the production of tropical or semitropical produce, often of new products that would become crucial for mass consumption back home, such as sugar, cotton and coffee. These new operations in the Americas and the Caribbean depended on the development of the slave trade into an operation of hitherto unheard-of scale and the transportation of slave labour to work the plantations. At the same time, colonial settlement by European settlers was taking place in what were sometimes known as ‘virgin territories’, and therefore seen as ripe opportunities for the enterprising settlers, willing to leave their homeland, often under the pressures of poverty and persecution, to start anew in a strange and foreign land. In this way, vast tracts of the North American continent were colonised by French settlers in what came to be known as ‘New France’.

All of these endeavours were inspired by the sense of opportunities for making money or a better life, opportunities that were there for the taking or creating. There was no shortage of arguments for the validation of such enterprises. In the case of France, the conquests had been carried out in the name of the greater glory of the French king and the development of the earthly reign of Christendom. It was the French king François I who sent the Italian sailor Giovanni da Verrazano, to North America to attempt to find a route through to the Pacific in 1524/25. He also sent off the Breton sailor Jacques Cartier in 1534 to search for the north-west passage to Asia and explore the opportunities for riches in the Americas. Cartier is credited with ‘discovering’ much of Canada, claiming possession of the islands of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon in the name of the French Crown in 1535, for instance. However, attempts in 1555 to establish French settlements in Brazil, at Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere were strongly resisted by the Spanish and Portuguese, and it was not until 1605 with the founding of Port Royal in the territory of Acadia (present-day Nova Scotia), followed by the founding of Quebec in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain, with the support of the king, Henri IV, subsequently to become the capital of French Canada, or ‘New France’, that the French really developed a foothold. Further territory was claimed in what is now the southern United States. The former Jesuit, explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle, famously named Louisiana after Louis XIV in 1682, and a colony was established there in 1699 by Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, born in ‘New France’, but serving as an officer in the French navy. Settlement began on the South American coast, in what is now French Guiana, from 1624 and colonies were founded on the Caribbean islands of Saint Kitts (1627), Martinique and Guadeloupe (1635), Saint Lucia (1650) and Saint-Domingue (1664). In Africa, the French set up trading posts along the Senegalese coast from 1624.

Yet, from the outset, there were certain features that distinguished the form that French overseas expansion was to take from that of other European powers, especially its arch-rival, England. Not least of these was the role that the state, the Church and the armed forces were to play in the colonial enterprise. Where the driving force of British expansion overseas had been the mercantile activity of its entrepreneurs, in France’s case the interests of state and the extension of its political and military battles with other European powers on the European continent and especially with its island neighbour were to prove at least an equally potent factor and possibly reflected in part the relative lack of political influence of the merchant class in pre-Revolutionary France. It was Louis XIV’s minister, Colbert, who founded the French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes Orientales) in 1664, which was to set up colonies on the Indian Ocean islands of the Ile de Bourbon (Réunion) (1664), Ile Royale (Ile de France, now Mauritius) (1718) and the Seychelles (1756), as well as on the Indian mainland, beginning with Chandernagore in Bengal in 1673. Further colonies were established at Pondicherry in 1674, Yanam in 1723, Mahe in 1725 and Karikal in 1739. Missionaries, such as Père Labat, played an active part in the acquisition of territory in Canada, Louisiana and the Caribbean, and the Church worked closely with the organs of state.

The role of the Church in the formulation of the Code Noir by Colbert for Louis XIV in 1685 (later renewed in a second version under Louis XV in 1724) was especially significant.¹ The Code set out the regulatory framework for the institution of slavery and the slave trade, down to the finest detail (Sala-Molins 1987). It claimed in the Preamble, that it was motivated by the need to maintain the authority of the king and the ‘discipline of the Catholic Church’, as well as the welfare of the slaves. The Code Noir proclaimed that all slaves should be baptised and instructed in the Catholic religion (Article 2) and that no other religion would be tolerated (Article 3). Indeed, the very first article orders the expulsion of all Jews from the island colonies. At the same time, it institutionalised the status of the slaves as the property of their masters.

The role of soldier-adventurers in India was also especially significant. Thus, while both British and French attempts to expand were driven forward by the need to establish new trading posts and settlements, the political imperative to score points against their rivals and defeat them in military battles assumed perhaps an even greater significance in the case of the French. The military exploits of La Bourdonnais, a French naval officer and administrator from Saint Malo, who operated in India and the Indian Ocean islands, rivalled those of the man he came to perceive as his enemy, Joseph François Dupleix. As Governor of Chandernagore from 1731, then Governor-General of India from 1742 until his recall to France in 1754, Dupleix vied with the British for control of India, particularly through a policy of local alliances, political manoeuvring and intrigue and scored significant military success in the south.

In spite of their efforts, however, the French did not come out of these various overseas wars well. Acadia was lost to the English and became Nova Scotia, as a result of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, resulting in the traumatic displacement of more than 10,000 French-Acadians, the ‘Cajuns’, to Louisiana in 1755, still a vivid part of the folk memory, although many subsequently returned (Maillet et al. 1984). The French finally lost the battle with the British for the control of India and Canada, as a result of the Seven Years War, which ended in 1763, also the year of the death of Dupleix, who had ultimately been beaten at his own game by Robert Clive. This year also saw the cession of Louisiana to the Spanish, although it was briefly returned to France in 1800. In 1803, however, Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States.

The loss of territory in the ‘New France’ of North America, as well as the loss of India were both felt keenly, though in different ways. There were attempts to find new ways for French colonialism to proceed. Yves Bénot, for instance, has argued that the Abbé Raynal’s Histoire philosophique et politique des deux Indes was probably written to order, commissioned by the Choiseul ministry to assemble a body of knowledge in support of this policy (Raynal (1770)/1981). It is interesting that a section of this work, attributed to Diderot, argued notably for the civilising power of trade:

It was there that, finally, seeing spread out before me these beautiful lands in which science and the arts now flourish, where the darkness of barbarism had for so long held sway, I asked myself: who dug these canals? Who drained these plains? Who founded these towns? Who brought together, clothed and civilised these peoples? Upon which all the enlightened men in their midst replied with one voice: it is trade, it is trade. (Raynal (1770)/1981: 15)

In the case of India, French nostalgia for a mostly mythical paradise lost was to become a long-standing feature of the relationship between France and India, down to the present day (see Chapter 8). Moreover, the subversive character of much of French activity in India, aimed at undermining British power, was to continue to mark a particular kind of French discourse, which presented France as the champion of the colonised underdog and still has its echoes today.

In the North American context, the linchpin was provided by the American Revolution, in which France naturally took the side of the American colonists against the British. Its own Revolution in 1789 was to have an even greater impact on what was left of France’s colonial empire. First, it provided the impetus for the successful revolt of the black slaves in the 1790s in France’s most profitable colony of the time, Saint-Domingue, which went on to become the independent state of Haiti. Secondly, it led directly to the takeover of power by the military leader Napoleon and the establishment of an empire in mainland France itself, which, apart from the Egyptian expeditions and other unfulfilled ambitions, was primarily preoccupied with extending its conquests to other European territories, unlike its British rival, which, as an island power, necessarily focused on the domination of overseas territories, and, moreover, overseas territories that, with the exception of Ireland, were outside Europe. The importance of the Napoleonic system of government and the impact of the First Empire on the overseas colonies, in terms of historical events and processes, but also in terms of the colonial systems of governance and long-lasting ideological effects, have not received sufficient attention to date. We shall return to this question later, as well as to the ideological conflicts that arose during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods in respect of the colonies and, particularly, the institution of slavery – conflicts that were fought through in desperate struggles.

For the moment, suffice it to say that, by the end of the First Empire and Napoleonic period in 1815, the territory and trading posts that France had acquired all over the world had largely been lost, as a result of rivalry and wars, particularly with the British. Napoleon’s defeat on the European continent led to a settlement, with the Treaties of Paris of 1814 and 1815, following on from the Congress of Vienna, in which a small number of its former colonies were restored to France, though this amounted to nothing more than the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, Guiana, the Ile de Bourbon (Réunion) and trading posts in Senegal. Henceforth, these would be referred to as the ‘old colonies’. All that remained of the French presence in India were the five trading posts, ‘les comptoirs de l’Inde’: Chandernagore in Bengal on the river Hooghly, about 30 km north of Calcutta, Pondicherry on the Coromandel coast, 160 km south of Chennai (Madras), Karikal, just south of Pondicherry, Yanam (Yanaoun), further north on the Andhra Pradesh coast, and Mahe, on the western Malabar coast (Sen 1971; Annasse 1975; Association Les Comptoirs de l’Inde/CHEAM 1994; Le Tréguilly and Morazé 1995; Vincent 1995; Weber 1996).

The Second Wave (1830–70)

The second wave began in 1830 with the key conquest of Algiers, leading to the take-over of much of the North African territory. The reasons for the invasion appear to have been fairly ad hoc, to provide something of a diversion for a monarchy in trouble, though a short-term pretext was provided when the Dey of Algiers struck the French consul with a fly-whisk and a longer-term one by the wish to curtail the activities of pirates operating out of Algiers.

Moreover, the brief interlude of the Second Republic (1848–1852) brought the political dimension of the debates once more to the fore, culminating in the second abolition of slavery in 1848, with Victor Schœlcher as Under-Secretary for Colonies, and the institution of universal manhood suffrage in the colonies. These measures, which included representation in the national assemblies of metropolitan France for the colonies, meant that the ‘old colonies’ had been brought into the logic of a process of assimilation, although representation of the colonies did not necessarily mean representation of the colonised for many years to come.² In any event, there were setbacks in the actual implementation of these measures, as a result of the coup d’état of Louis Napoleon and the establishment of the Second Empire.

This led to a resurgence of militaristic colonial ambitions, leading to some further territorial gains, with Cochin China added to the list of conquests. It also led to some notable failures, such as the ill-fated attempt to install a puppet regime in Mexico (1861–67). Under the Second Empire, there was also a reversal of policy on some issues relating to colonialism and modifications to the accompanying discourse. Some of the tensions between the two strands of colonial policy, which were later to develop into the opposition of ‘assimilation’ and ‘association’, have their roots in this period, although in reality it was never a case of either/or, but a recourse to different approaches depending on the particular circumstances.

The new colonial conquests, particularly those in North Africa, opened up the way for new approaches to the administration of these peoples and territories. If there were attempts at the beginning to use traditional structures in a more indirect form of control, these pragmatic arrangements were replaced by the system put into place in 1845, under the Governor, Marshal Bugeaud. The system set up a threefold division of the territory into civil, mixed and military authorities. A key element was the ‘Arab bureaux’, which, under the aegis of the army, devolved a whole slice of administration and tax collection to local functionaries of one type or another. These were abandoned in 1856, largely because of problems of corruption, and the civil authority took over (Girardet 1993). Military authority and influence remained a key element in the governance of Algeria, however. Louis-Napoleon himself harboured ambitions to rule Algeria as an Arab kingdom, in which the Arabs would have the right to their own autonomous territory, from which European settlers would be excluded. In this scenario, he would be Emperor of the Arabs, as well as of the French. These proposals were strongly opposed by the colonial settlers and very little came of the emperor’s attempts to cast himself in the role of ‘friend of the Arabs’ (Spillmann 1981). In any event, the measures that were taken were soon to be overturned by the Third Republic, which took up the policy of assimilation with enthusiastic vigour (Girardet 1993) and implemented measures to give the old colonies representation in France, as well as through local government, though not without retaining their status as colonies.

The Third Phase (1875–1962)

The real expansion took place much later in the nineteenth century, from the 1870s onward, when Britain and France practically carved up Africa between them in a division of spoils sanctioned by the Berlin Conference of 1885. France also increased its hold over Indochina, although it never recovered its earlier influence in India or other parts of the globe. This third stage, which lasted until the decolonisation of the post-war period and early 1960s, marks the real heyday of the French Empire (Andrew and Kanya-Forstner 1981). By 1914, there were sixty million people under French imperial control and over ten million square miles of territory. There were further gains at the end of the First World War, when the French gained League of Nations mandates over the former Turkish territories of Syria and Lebanon, and also acquired African territory, previously controlled by the Germans, in Togo and Cameroon.

The arguments and debates about the empire were not restricted to the realm of politics (Chafer and Sackur 2001). During the course of the nineteenth century, with the development of the modern nation-state and modern forms of French nationalism, the cultural realm became increasingly important, as the notion of the superiority of French culture and civilisation became more and more widespread. Economic arguments also had ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. French Discourses of Empire
• Chapter 2. The European Legacy
• Chapter 3. Race and Resistance
• Chapter 4. The Subversion of Colonial Ideology: Jean-Paul Sartre
• Chapter 5. The Nation in the National Liberation Struggle
• Chapter 6. National Consciousness: History and Culture
• Chapter 7. The Battleground of Language and the Changing Discourse of Francophonie
• Chapter 8. The Loss of Empire: French Perspectives
• Chapter 9. The Postcolonial State: Problems of Development
• Chapter 10. The Other Within
• Chapter 11. Postcoloniality: the French Dimension?
• Bibliography
• Index