Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T04:57:25.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - The Mission Civilisatrice to 1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2023

Leonard V. Smith
Affiliation:
Oberlin College, Ohio
Get access

Summary

The “civilizing mission” gave the French their most coherent explanation of empire since mercantilism. The Third Republic would return France to the front rank of Great Powers through an expanding empire rooted in republican values and capitalist economic development. Evolving race theory provided new means of legitimizing hierarchical difference. Settler republicanism deepened its roots in Algeria, even as European immigration began to decline. The republican imperial agenda dovetailed conveniently with geopolitics in the “scramble for Africa,” leading to the formation of two colonial federations, French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa, each much larger than the Hexagon itself. The agents of republican empire were largely the same as previous incarnations—colonial officials, military officers, missionaries, and capitalists. The “civilizing mission” produced varied results, not least because of the parsimony of the bourgeois regime. Republican schools trained both collaborators and future anti-colonial and postcolonial elites. Railroads built at a horrendous cost in blood and indigenous treasure unified parts of the empire. In the Indochinese Union, the French sought to construct a gateway to influence in Asia that would rival that of British India. Through a state-driven regime of extraction, the Indochinese Union became financially self-sustaining.

Type
Chapter
Information
French Colonialism
From the Ancien Régime to the Present
, pp. 72 - 104
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×