French colonialism and its proconsuls

They were undoubtedly driven by high moral purpose. It was not the same as the evangelizing mission of the British in India. It believed in the benefits of civilisation, certainly, but it also believed in the betterment of France itself, and of French youth in particular, through the austere form of service which it held as its ideal. Any reader of Balzac, Zola, Flaubert or Maupassant will realize that it was not an ideal shared by their countrymen. What angered Zola angered Gallieni and Lyautey, above all the materialism, cynicism and corruption of the period. Flaubert and Maupassant were attracted to the Orient for the wrong, usually prurient, reasons. None of these things could be left at home and the tragedy of French colonialism is the tragedy of all others, that is that the few idealists who inspired it and the practical men who made it work were a very small minority. As time went on the habits of the metropolis asserted themselves, the bureaucracy, the indolence, the intolerance, the shortsightedness, the acquisitiveness, the automatic assumption of cultural superiority.

Though in all colonies there were dedicated men and women who rose above these things, who worked far-sightedly and devotedly for the common good, for emancipation in the widest sense, for the extension of knowledge, and who allowed themselves to become permeated by local culture and genuinely appreciative of diversity, they were never anything like enough. The proconsuls had few illusions about the nature of the tasks they set themselves or of the people whom they hoped to liberate. But they were idealists and visionaries, they were in love with the work they had undertaken. Experience taught them not to underestimate the obstructiveness and capriciousness of governments or the malevolence of opponents. But their idealism and high purpose blinded them to the indifference of their fellow countrymen and the ordinary man's attachment to his familiar world. It was failure--business failure, money problems, family troubles--as much as ambition that sent men to the colonies.

All these proconsuls, and Bigeard too, wrote well, in language that inspires and illuminates. They expressed themselves clearly. The reader senses a large and receptive mind at work, animated by a certain sense of wonder at the diversity and beauty of the world and the infinite possibilities open to mankind. Few were able to write like that then, even fewer today. Their feet were firmly on the ground but their eyes were on the stars. Most of us on the other hand must struggle to dot the ies and cross the ts of our daily existence.

It is doubtful if there will ever be a conclusive judgement about colonialism. Today the subject is infected with political correctness. There are very few left now who laboured in the vineyard and if they were to raise their voices they would be dismissed as the voices of the elderly, suffering from amnesia or partial recollection. The aftermath of French colonialism was chaos, in particular in Algeria and Indo-China. In Algeria it was additionally harrowing because it looked at one time that colonialism might create a genuinely new Mediterranean society based on the pieds noirs, the French, Spanish, Italians, Greeks and others who flocked into the colony to work, the kind of people of whom Camus' father was one, from the low level artisan upwards. These freres d'olive would create another society with the local Kabyles and Berbers, departements of France as North Africa was once a great and fertile province of Rome. The legacy of French colonialism today is the Francophone world. Paris is still its centre and it has a vigorous literature. In its piston, pull, influence, its economic, commercial and cultural clout it cannot compete with the Anglophone world, nor with the emerging Spanish-speaking world. In effect there is no need for competition. They are complementary and France will always remain a lodestone.