4 - Empire and the World Wars: 1914–45

Summary

In French colonial history, we can read the world wars as a single conflict. The Great War and World War II broke the French empire as it existed in the previous century. The empire contributed substantially in blood and treasure to victory in 1918, though mobilization for that war deepened existing colonial tensions and created new ones. Shifting dynamics pointed to a renegotiation of basic colonial bargains. An ostensibly new colonial doctrine, the mise en valeur, sought to make the empire a more cohesive economic and political unit. Anti-colonial movements became stronger and more articulate throughout the interwar period, though repression and military force had little trouble preserving imperial authority, for the time being. The defeat of 1940 upended imperial relationships. How could the Vichy regime rule an empire when it had very limited authority even in the Hexagon? Yet Free France promised only continued, if reformed, imperial rule. This situation made questions of collaboration and resistance at least as complicated in the empire as in Europe. By 1945, it became clear to the attentive that the French empire would either have to expire or become something else.