Abstract
This article builds on the concept of linked ecologies to present a study of the occupational careers of French colonial governors between 1830 and 1960. We consider empires as the by-product of social entities structuring themselves. Specifically, we analyse the process of empowerment of this emerging group with respect to other professional groups within the imperial space and the French metropolitan space. Using data on the career of 637 colonial governors between 1830 and 1960, we examine how variations in the recruitment of these high civil servants actually reflect the empowerment of this social entity. We rely on optimal matching technique to distinguish typical sequence models and identify ten common career trajectories that can be grouped in four main clusters. We further compare the share of each clusters in the population of governors over time and show that the rise of the colonial cluster during the Interwar period corresponded to the peak of the administrative autonomy in the colonial space. We argue that this process is consistent with the empowerment of the governors’ corps, which is embodied by a common career within the colonial administration and a collective identity as a group.
Highlights
Ernest Roume was born in Marseille in 1858 the son of a merchant
Using data on the career of 637 colonial governors between 1830 and 1960, we examine how variations in the recruitment of these high civil servants reflected the evolution of autonomy this entity conquered
We show that the rise of the colonial cluster during the Interwar period corresponded to the peak of the administrative autonomy in the colonial space, which is consistent with the broader history of French colonisation
Summary
Ernest Roume was born in Marseille in 1858 the son of a merchant. He entered the Council of State (Conseil d’État) after graduating from École Polytechnique. The career of Carde is very different: he did not graduate from a prestigious university and began very low in the hierarchy of the colonial administration, with no such support from his corps as Roume.. The career of Carde is very different: he did not graduate from a prestigious university and began very low in the hierarchy of the colonial administration, with no such support from his corps as Roume.3 He reached the most prestigious and powerful post in the Empire, the governorship of Algeria. From Roume’s governorship of French West Africa to Carde’s, the colonial administration experienced a radical transformation in its recruitment We posit this transformation reflects the empowerment of the Empire as a social space, or at least of its administration. Our hypothesis is that the autonomy governors attained at one period is crucial to understand the autonomy of the Empire from the metropolis
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