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French colonialism and its proconsuls
Contemporary Review, May, 2005 by Allan Ramsay
DR Singer and Professor Langdon have given us an important and timely book (Cultured Force: Makers and Defenders of the French Colonial Empire. Barnett Singer and John Langdon. University of Wisconsin Press. [pounds sterling]29.95/US$ 45.00. 488 pages. ISBN 0-299-19900-2). Important because it broaches a subject of which very little is known in the English-speaking world--and currently somewhat neglected in the Francophone world. Timely because of what is called 'American Imperialism'. The problems confronting President Bush in Iraq or Afghanistan today are the same as those which confronted the proconsuls and colonisers who are the subject of this study. They had to learn on their feet. So must he.
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The book is the fruit of ten years assiduous research by Dr Singer, a contributor to Contemporary Review. Professor Langdon provided more research at a later stage. It is well written--though a purist might find it a little too colloquial in places and feel that the habit of using asides, sometimes with the valid purpose of bringing a particular episode into relief by offering a contemporary example, checks the otherwise smooth flow of the narrative in places. In others there is almost too much detail of relatively small-scale military operations. These faults, such as they are, can be attributed to self-indulgence, surely excusable in a subject of such complexity, as demonstrated by the bibliography and footnotes which are copious and detailed. Indeed the book is worth the purchase price for these alone, as a quarry for future historians with a similar interest. It is clearly printed and nicely produced. The photographs are portraits of the subjects. They look what Dr Singer and Professor Langdon say they were: thoughtful, intelligent and high-minded men who were interested in the fate of the peoples they colonised. They also had to be men of practical ability and experience, gained through having to make things work with few resources and not much encouragement except for their personal vision and the support of loyal adherents. It is no accident that they were all soldiers or that their hardest task was first to excite and then to sustain the interest of successive French governments, doubtful, anxious and distracted by a dozen contending pressures. Finally and most importantly the maps are clearly drawn.
While not denying its downside, the authors' main contention, stated in the first chapter, is that colonisation was by no means an uniformly bad experience for the colonies, or for France itself. The period they deal with is the hundred years from 1850 to the end of the Second World War. As with other things the watershed for French--as indeed for British--colonial history was the Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars that followed. There had been French colonies in India, Canada, and the Caribbean before, but they were lost in wars, mostly to the British. The key to our acquisition was the more effective deployment of seapower and better organisation. There were gifted leaders on both sides but the support of Westminster was more consistent than that of Paris. The restored Bourbons had no interest in colonisation. It was said of them that they had forgotten nothing and learnt nothing in exile. The Restoration was accordingly short-lived. It was with the advent of Louis-Phillipe in 1830 that the second colonial epoch began and subsequently continued through the Second Empire of Napoleon III. Colonies helped to substantiate both new regimes' claim to legitimacy, bringing wealth and prestige. Louis-Phillipe d'Orleans moreover had two able and charismatic sons, the duc d'Aumale and the Prince de Joinville, both of whom participated in the Algerian wars, who helped to invest the new endeavour with a particular cachet. None of this was of any help to him however during the July Revolution of 1848. The sole heir to Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie, the Prince Imperial, was, by a singular stroke of irony, killed fighting the Zulus in a British colony. Colonialism did not come cheap. It was part of its problems, then as now.
The era of the first Napoleon was a watershed not only insofar as the loss and acquisition of colonies were concerned but also in the manner in which future attempts at colonisation were to be approached. Napoleon's example of taking antiquaries, etymologists, epigraphists and naturalists with him to Egypt conferred a cultural dimenson to post-Napoleonic French colonialism which had not been there before. It was not something every expedition could set out with--though the first to Indo-China under Francis Garnier did, albeit not on the same generous scale--but the men whose exploits are recorded here were inspired by intellectual curiousity as well as other reasons. The mission civilisatrice was not only concerned with the exportation of French culture but was a matter of learning and expanding French knowledge to other peoples and places as well.
The authors have chosen Generals Bugeaud of Algeria, Faidherbe of Senegal, Gallieni of Madagascar and Indo-China and Lyautey of Morocco to illustrate their thesis. They have added a short study of General Joffre, the hero of the Marne in 1914, much as an artist might apply a dark tone to emphasise the light. He was not in the others' class either as a soldier or as an administrator. Finally, they give the reader a detailed portrait of General Bigeard, of Indo-China and Algerian fame, as a sort of coda. He was a man of attractive qualities whose misfortune was to be born a hundred years too late. He was not a proconsul but a fine example of the kind of man who turns the dreams of proconsuls into reality, capable of dreams himself but a professional soldier to his fingertips.
