The French Colonial Empire and the Popular Front Government

Abstract

F ALL colonial empires, past or present, that of France is undoubtedly the most unusual in formation. Colonial expansion is generally, and logically, the result either of the deep and latent desire which nation feels for military glory, conquest, or expansion, or of vital necessity forcing it to seek, and if necessary to take by force, land for settlement and market for its products. Very often these two sentiments are closely linked, as in the history of British colonial expansion after the settlement of the colonists in Virginia; this was also the cause of German efforts before the war, and today these are the arguments used by the Italians to justify their conquest of Ethiopia and by the Germans in demanding the restitution of their former colonies or new allotment of the League of Nations' mandates. The formation of the French Colonial Empire came about differently, especially in the modern period of expansion, since the beginning of the conquest of Algeria in i830. The acquisition of new colonies, and even the consolidation of French occupation in the old colonies, took place without the assent of and even against the clearly defined trend of public opinion. This anticolonial prejudice is not only century old, but, one might say, has always existed, and Voltaire's scornful words concerning Canada, a few acres of snow, have dominated the whole of French thought. The origin of this prejudice is complex and difficult to determine, but the basis of it is the Frenchman's fundamental dislike to expatriate himself. The absence, since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (i685), of an emigration caused by religious persecutions, and the fact that at that time the protestants who fled from France settled in European countries (England, Holland, Germany), also deprived the French colonies of emigrants similar in quality to those of the Mayflower. Only colonies of relatively small importance were settled under the old regime (Martinique, Guade-