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Did France's Colonial Empire Make Economic Sense? A Perspective from the Postwar Decade, 1946–1956

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Edward Peter Fitzgerald
Edward Peter Fitzgerald
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario KIS 5B6, Canada.
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Extract

Aggregate trade data appear to support the mercantilist position that colonial markets were very important for the French economy after 1945. After summarizing and then criticizing arguments based on these data, this article concludes that the economic utility of the empire to France was in fact more spurious than real.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 1988 , pp. 373 - 385
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1988

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References

1 Woytinsky, W. S. and Woytinsky, E. S., World Commerce and Governments: Trends and Outlook (New York, 1955), pp. 664–65.Google Scholar

2 Ministère de l' Economie et des Finances, Service des Archives Economiques et Financières [hereafter SAEF], box 5 A 68, trade tables, 1925–48.Google Scholar

3 Marseile, Jacques, “La politique métropolitaine d'investissements coloniaux dans l'entre-deux guerres,” in Lévy-Leboyer, M., ed., La position internationale de la France (Paris, 1977), pp. 388–89.Google Scholar

4 Bank for International Settlements, Fifteenth Annual Report (Basel, 1945), p. 13.Google Scholar

5 For various approaches to planning in this period, see Kuisel, Richard F., Capitalism and the State in Modern France (Cambridge, 1981), chaps. 7–8,Google Scholar as well as the essay by Caron, François and Bouvier, Jean in Histoire économique et sociale de la France, vol. IV/3, Années 1950 à nos jours (Paris, 1982), esp. pp. 1101–8.Google ScholarBloch-Lainé, François and Bouvier, Jean, La France restaurée 1944–1954: Dialogue sur les choix d'une modernisation (Paris, 1986), is a valuable detailed account of postwar planning, written in part from an insider's perspective.Google Scholar

6 Calculated from Ministère de l' Economie et des Finances, Statistiques et études financières, Supplément rètrospectif, 123 (03 1959), pp. 362–63;Google Scholar and Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques [henceforth INSEE], Annuaire stat istique de Ia France, 1966. Résumé rétrospecrif (Paris, 1966), p. 351, table 3A. The averages for 1945 to 1958 are calculated from percentages given by Jacques Marseille, “Empire colonial et capitalisme français” (Thèse d'état, Université de Paris 1, 1984), vol. 4, pp. 1108–10, 1134–36. This thesis is held in the Sorbonne library and should not be confused with the abridged version published under the same title in 1984. My percentages for individual years work out much the same as Marseille's except for 1946, where there is a significant (and unexplained) discrepancy for the proportion of French imports coming from the colonies: Marseille says it was 13 percent, but I make it to be 20.1 percent.Google Scholar

7 INSEE, Les co, nptes de la nation, 1949–1959 (Paris, 1964), pp. 46–47.Google Scholar

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9 See Baum, French Economy and the State, table 12, pp. 82–83,Google Scholar for the figures in dollars; and Ministère de l' Economie et des Finances, Staristiques el études financières, Supplément rétrospectif, 123 (03 1959), pp. 362–63, for the figures in francs. There are discrepancies that go beyond the usual difficulties of currency conversion, and there is an obvious error in the Finance Ministry's figures for 1950.Google Scholar

10 Calculated from INSEE, Les comptes de la nation, pp. 46–47. values are expressed in constant 1956 francs.

11 Mjlward, Alan S., The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–51 (London, 1984), pp. 19–43, discusses France's problem in a general European context.Google Scholar

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26 Carré, Dubois, and Malinvaud, French Economic Growth, p. 398.Google Scholar

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30 The Comité d' Etudes de l' Intégration Economique de la Métropole et des Pays d' Outre-Mer. Set up in May 1954, this committee was chaired by Gen. Edouard Corniglion-Molinier, the number-two man in the Planning Ministry. Members were drawn from the upper echelons of the civil service and the nationalized industries. Much of what follows is based upon the records of this committee (Archives Nationales, boxes 8OAJ 71–72), as well as Ministère des Affaires Etrangéres, “Les liens économiques.”Google Scholar

31 For the emergence of liberal attitudes toward trade within the Finance Ministry, the Bank of France, and the Foreign Office, see Bonin, Histoire économique de la IVe République, p. 190.Google Scholar

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34 For example, the founding treaty of the European Coal and Steel Community stipulated that preferential tariff rates enjoyed by any member state in its overseas territories be extended to all member states in the product lines covered under the agreement.Google Scholar

35 “Soft” social overhead investment like schools and hospitals generated annual recurrent costs as high as 20 percent of the initial capital outlay. Bloch-Lainé, La Zone franc, p. 120.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., p. 144. This figure does not include the cost of price supports for colonial exports nor forgone interest on 106 billion francs of concessional lending to the colonies that year.

37 “Les liens économiques,” p. 64.Google Scholar

38 “Note Laure/Mafart,” pp. 32–33, Archives Nationales, box 80 AJ 72.Google Scholar

39 Introduction to the Third Modernization and Development Plan (1957), as quoted by Gauron, André, Histoire économique et sociale de la Cinquiètne République, vol. 1: Le temps des modernistes (Paris, 1983), p. 60.Google Scholar