France’s experience of colonialism in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries: an overview
Defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 represented a significant blow to the prestige and status of
France as a major power. Yet, paradoxically, or perhaps as a direct response to such a setback, France
signalled a determination to regain its colonial and imperialist status. In 1830, Algeria was conquered
- thus beginning a relationship that would have a profound impact on French concepts of nationality in
later decades. Tahiti and the Marquesas were annexed in the 1840s, French control of Senegal was
expanded in the 1850s and the conquest of Indo-China commenced in 1858-9.
As the nineteenth century wore on, developments in European technology, commercial trade and
industrialisation quickened the pace of European expansion in Africa and Asia, which was also fuelled
by growing imperialist rivalries between the major European powers. By 1914, Europe had assumed
control of 90% of the African continent as well as large tracts of Asia. As in 1815, French military
defeat in 1870 - this time at the hands of the Prussians - seemed to add impetus to France‟s desire for
imperialist conquests in an effort to restore prestige. At the outbreak of World War I, the French
empire had grown by nearly 10 million square kilometres and 47 million people.
Despite her traumatic experience during the 1914-18 conflict, France’s colonial holdings were
bolstered after the war by the acquisition of former Ottoman and German dependencies in the form of
League of Nations mandates. France assumed control of Syria and Lebanon, and shared trusteeship
with Britain over Togoland and German Cameroon. However, in the early 1920s, the imperialist
powers began to face challenges from within their territories by emerging nationalist movements.
While such nationalist sentiment challenged British rule most notably in India and Ireland, the growth
of nationalism in French holdings was also pronounced in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.
However, the severe impact of the Wall Street Crash in 1929 and the onset of the resultant Great
Depression provoked severe domestic political and economic crises in France. Harsh social and
economic reforms triggered much unrest and sparked the radicalisation of communist and anarchist
groups. Despite such domestic upheaval, France firmly suppressed nationalist unrest in Indo-China in
the 1930s, but could not eradicate anti-imperialist feeling, realised most dramatically in the formation
of the guerrilla organisation, the Viet Minh, by Ho Chi Minh in 1941.
The upheaval of the Second World War added further impetus to the nascent nationalist groups
emerging in the colonised world prior to the outbreak of conflict. Wartime Anglo-American
occupation of French colonies revitalised independence movements, culminating in French retreat
from its Far Eastern colonies in Vietnam and Cambodia following its humiliating defeat in 1954 to
Vietnamese communists at Dien Bien Phu after a long and costly war. This defeat heralded the decline
of French colonial influence globally. Tunisia and Morocco secured independence in 1956 following
violent resistance to French rule; in the same year, French credibility was severely damaged in the
Suez crisis. The process of French disengagement from Algeria, which culminated in 1962 following
eight years of bloody conflict involving the French army, Algerian nationalists, French settlers and
Islamic insurgents, even threatened civil war in France itself and led to the return to power of de
Gaulle. The chastening experience of Algeria also precipitated France’s sudden withdrawal from its
other African colonies in 1960.
By the beginning of the 1970s, the age of European empire was effectively over. However, the impact
of European imperialist intervention would be long lasting, with the nature of the historical
relationship between coloniser and colonised evolving over succeeding decades. In particular, tensions
caused by increased immigration of people from former colonies to their erstwhile mother countries
in Western Europe raised profound questions about the very definition of nationhood and citizenship.
Such tensions were particularly acute in France in the 1980s and are the subject of the enquiry that
follows: Why did the issue of race relations spark controversy and violence in France in the 1980s?