Overseas Empire Research Articles

The French Overseas Empire, by Frederick Quinn

<i>The French Overseas Empire</i>, by Frederick Quinn

How the United States Sold its Soul to Win the Cold War

Distinguished Research Professor of History at Montana State University. This is a slightly amended version of an address delivered to women historians at the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), Toronto, June 2000.AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, the United States had an opportunity to take stock and shoulder responsibility not just for the future but also for some of the less savoury aspects of the last fifty years of American foreign policy. Unfortunately, this honest and systematic re-evaluation has yet to take place - in part because American diplomacy for most of the last century was characterized by a mercurial assortment of unilateral and collective actions that I first described in the 1970s as 'independent internationalism.'Independent internationalism does not, however, refer to the ideology that imbued United States diplomacy by 1900, but rather to the modus operandi of the country's foreign affairs. Most simply, it means that when the United States cannot, or does not want to, solve a particular diplomatic problem through unilateral action, it seeks co-operative methods to pursue its goals. In these short-lived and usually opportunistic times of co-operation, the shibboleths of self-determination or self-government, wrapped in the rhetoric of democracy, prevail in American foreign policy discourse. But the country's first inclination for most of the last century was to act unilaterally whenever possible and to co-operate with other nations only when absolutely necessary.(1)With the cold war over, it should be possible for American foreign affairs experts and scholars to reassess traditional strategies for controlling nation-state anarchy between (and sometimes inside the poorest) nation-states and to devise a less erratic and arbitrary way of implementing them, other than independent internationalism, to serve the best interests of the United States and the world. (Of course, to do so realistically, they must now factor in the 'irreversible effects' of modern information technology, not only on capitalism but also on the nation-state system.)The trend towards independent internationalism can be seen as early as 1933 when a presidential commission reported to Herbert Hoover that the postwar diplomacy of the United States in the 1920s had alternated 'between isolation and independence, between sharply marked economic nationalism and notable international initiatives in cooperation moving in a highly unstable zigzag course.'(2) The United States continued to follow this 'highly unstable zigzag course' in the 1930s, again after the Second World War when its power was unprecedented, and yet again in the post-cold war era. The latest, largest, and nominally co-operative effort took place during the 1990-1 GulfWar. Its most recent unilateral action, taken much to the consternation of Russia and the European allies of the United States, was the decision to construct an anti-missile defence system in violation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. (An earlier unilateral action that had disconcerted the same countries was the insistence of the administration of President Bill Clinton on expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.) The foreign policy of George Bush junior in the first six months of his presidency has been almost completely along unilateral lines.Prior to 1933, the stage had been set for the independent internationalist course that the United States would follow for most of the twentieth century. By the time of the 'splendid little' Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino war (1900), the United States not only acquired an overseas empire and tried to assert itself unilaterally into the affairs of the world for economic gain with 'dollar diplomacy' under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, but also had developed a foreign policy ideology - all the while refusing to use the word ideology because of its leftist taint. …

The French Overseas Empire

The French Overseas Empire

Theodore Roosevelt, Congress, and the Military: U.S. Civil-Military Relations in the Early Twentieth Century

Someone should kick ... Rosevelt [sic], complained one naval officer about the assistant secretary of the navy in 1898 (Davis 1898). Hunter Davis disliked Theodore Roosevelt's efforts to end the squabbling over status between the navy's line and engineering officers in the late nineteenth century. Davis's protest foreshadowed the sentiments of many officers toward Theodore Roosevelt, once he became their commander in in September 1901. Although Roosevelt was one of the best friends of the military services ever to reside in the White House, civil-military relations were not always harmonious during his presidency. In fact, he presided during a period of notable stress, uncertainty, and adjustment in civil-military affairs, and his actions--and sometimes inaction--prompted considerable debate and tension.(1) A confluence of factors at the turn of the twentieth century made Roosevelt's presidency, and those of his immediate successors, a time that tested old boundaries and established new ones in civil-military affairs. The period itself, the Progressive Era, brought transition and adjustment in American life. Reformers attacked the myriad problems associated with urbanization and industrialization; a new, post-Civil War generation assumed the mantle of political leadership; and the United States solidified its newly asserted status as a great power and protector of a modest overseas empire. During this period of rapid change, stress was inevitable, and military affairs were not immune. Tensions in military matters became especially great around the turn of the twentieth century because four elements that went straight to the heart of civil-military relations managed to converge at the same time. The new brand of overseas expansionism in American foreign policy generated an emotional political debate and questions about resources and missions for the military services. In addition, jealousy over constitutional prerogatives flared as the executive branch under Roosevelt challenged congressional influence over the organization of the War and Navy Departments and the development of military policies. Officers, for their part, split into alliances (often self-serving) with members of the executive or legislative branches. At the same time, a generational shift in both people and values complicated the picture and divided loyalties. Those Americans raised in a largely preindustrial, preurban nation--and forged into a distinct generation by the fires of the Civil War--were gradually making way for a new crop of leaders, although without a complete surrender of the older values that they represented. Finally, the press added an extra dimension to the traditional civil-military troika of president, Congress, and uniformed military in the form of mass circulation newspapers and national magazines. Participants in civil-military disputes could sometimes find a ready ally in the press, or sometimes they found it to be an independent agent that, through the force of public opinion, brought new emphasis to the civil side in civil-military relations. Theodore Roosevelt represented the principal axis around which civil-military relations turned in the first decade of the twentieth century. He assumed several roles, some official and others unofficial, that frequently made him the focus of civil-military debates. Officially, Roosevelt served, of course, as commander in and functioned, as well, as diplomat, but he also behaved as what could best be termed chief dilettante, for he frequently dabbled in detailed aspects of military technology, training, planning, and operations (Oyos 1993). His expansive view of executive authority and his talent at generating publicity also contributed to his active role in remolding the civil-military architecture. All in all, across the range of military affairs, Roosevelt helped define debates, fuel controversies, solve problems, and focus expectations, although his ideas sometimes created more difficulties and disappointment than resolution and satisfaction. …

The French Overseas Empire

Introduction The 16th Century: The Fishermen's and Sailors' Empire The 17th Century: The Traders' Empire The 18th Century: The Settlers' Empire The 19th Century: The Military's and Missionaries' Empire (Part I) The 19th Century: The Military's and Missionaries' Empire (Part II) The 20th Century: The Expanding Empire The 20th Century: The Receding Empire Index

The German National League in Britain and Ideas of a German Overseas Empire, 1859-67

The German National League in Britain and Ideas of a German Overseas Empire, 1859-67

Senghor's Rise to Power 1948–1951. Early Roots of French Sub-Saharan Decolonisation

The historiography of the decolonisation of the French overseas empire offers its students a highly mixed picture. While the atrocities committed during the independence wars in Indochina and Algeria belong to the black pages of contemporary French history, the decolonisation of the French sub-Saharan territories is presented in a much more positive light. In 1960, France ‘gracefully’ agreed to the independence of fourteen of its African territories, after which close relations with the regimes of nearly all those states were nurtured until at least the 1980s. This smooth transfer of power is all the more remarkable when one compares it to the much more problematic British and Portuguese decolonisations in black Africa. How did the French do it? Or should one say: how did the Africans in the French territories do it? In this paper, I will attempt to unveil some of the critical political processes that took place in Senegal at the end of the 1940s, because this period was crucial in the formulation of die relation between French policymakers and an upcoming African political elite. In many ways, die processes that took place in Senegal during this period would determine die course of French policy towards all of its African possessions. A study of this period seems therefore more than justified.

VIII. Lisbon: Between Spices and Diamonds, 1500 to 1755

N court was so completely altered by the Age of Discoveries as that of Portugal. Vasco da Gama's historic journey around the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 proved to be the catalyst in the founding of an overseas empire that extended from Brazil to the Far East. As a result, the city of Lisbon was suddenly transformed into a metropolis of international fame. In 1505 Manuel I, who reigned from 1495 to 1521, made the decisive move to transfer the royal residence from the medieval palace of Alca~ova, situated on the site of a former Moslem fortress high above the city, down to the waterfront bordering on the Tagus river. The ribeira became the hub of Lisbon where shipyards, customs and warehouses (the Casas da India and Guine) for international trade were established. The entire area was redesigned to accommodate a square, known as the Terreiro do Pafo, with new administrative offices from which the empire was governed and which adjoined Manuel's new royal palace, the Pafo da Ribeira. It was a move deliberately intended to enhance the reputation both of Lisbon and of the Portuguese crown. This waterfront plaza was framed on the western side by the royal palace built on a north-south axis, the focus for maritime activities, and the secular and religious ceremonies of the crown and government. Adjacent to the palace and square was Lisbon's emporium, the lower streets (Baixa), where overseas goods were sold. The Tagus river, with its governmental and commercial complex in the heart of Lisbon, thereby became the centre of the Portuguese world. Portuguese monarchs were inspired by military triumphs in India and the Far East to emulate ancient imperial ideologies that promoted them as rulers of a new Roman empire in Lisbon, Portugal's new Rome (Nova Ronla), flourished as the capital of a global empire that stretched to Goa, her Indian counterpart. In this context, the Lisbon palace, with its fortified tower that jutted out into the Tagus river, symbolised the power and prestige of Portuguese monarchs. Lisbon, as queen of the seas, was transformed by Manuel I into a regal symbol of a new era. It was repeatedly illustrated in contemporary manuscript illuminations and panoramic paintings and engravings as the royal city par excellence, an image that embedded itself in the Portuguese psyche. Contemporary panegyrics and treatises eulogise Lisbon as the jewel of all cities, in order to glorify Portugal's rise to world power. The humanist and scholar, Damiao da GOlS (1502-1574) euphorically relates in his Urbis olisiponis descriptio (Evora 1554), translated by R. Machado, Lisboa dos quinhentos-descripfiio de Lisboa (Lisbon 1937), how the Tagus reigned over the world. Francisco de Holanda's Da Fabrica que falece a Cidade de Lisboa (Lisbon 1571), published in facsimile by J. Segurado, Francisco d' Ollanda. Da sua vida e obras (Lisbon 1970), reminded Manuel I's great-grandson, Sebastian (ruled 1562-1578), of the antiquity and nobility

Eugenics in Japan: Some Ironies of Modernity, 1883–1945

Japanese eugenic discourse and institution building contrast sharply with comparable movements elsewhere. As a social-intellectual phenomenon, Anglo-American eugenics considered the Japanese racially inferior to Western peoples; yet eugenic ideals and policies achieved a remarkable popularity in Japan. Most of mainstream Japanese genetics was derived from orthodox Mendelian roots in Germany and (to a lesser degree) the United States. But French-style Lamarckian notions of the inheritability of acquired characters held surprising popularity among enthusiasts of eugenics. Japanese eugenicists could condemn the actions of foreign eugenicists like Charles Davenport in the United States for their efforts to forbid Japanese immigration in the 1920s, yet appeal to these same eugenicists as a source of legitimacy in Japan. These paradoxes can partly be explained against a background of relative isolation in a period of profound social change. Few Japanese eugenicists had close personal contact with foreign eugenicists, and most of their knowledge was acquired through reading rather than direct exposure. The eugenic ideal of ethnic purity was attractive to a society long accustomed to monoracial self-imagery. The need to defend national independence in an era of high imperialism seemed to require the most up-to-date policies and ideas. And Japan's own acquisition of an overseas empire seemed to demand a population management philosophy ostensibly based on scientific principles. These and other forces supported the implementation of eugenic policies and prescriptions among the Japanese people in the first half of the twentieth century.

Elites, Enterprise and the Making of the British Overseas Empire, 1688–1775

Elites, Enterprise and the Making of the British Overseas Empire, 1688–1775

‘White woman's country’: Ethel Tawse Jollie and the making of White Rhodesia

Until recently, the role of European women in the expansion and consolidation of the British colonial empire has been largely ignored by both historians and women's studies scholars. This is an analysis of one such woman who played a leading role in the development of the British Empire in south‐central Africa, Ethel Tawse Jollie (1875–1950), formerly Ethel Colquhoun. In partnership with her first husband, Archibald Ross Colquhoun, explorer, writer and Cecil Rhodes's first Administrator of Mashonaland, she became steeped in the philosophy of the Edwardian ‘Radical Right’, the post Anglo‐Boer War reaction to imperial decline, and she played a prominent role in the opposition to the women's suffrage campaign before the Great War. As a member of the Legislative Council of Southern Rhodesia, she became the first woman parliamentarian in the British overseas empire. She was a prolific writer on imperial affairs and a leading intellectual of her political generation and, as the founder and principal organiser of the Rhodesian Responsible Government Association (RGA) (1917–1922), she imported from Britain a singular political philosophy shaped by the Edwardian ideology of ‘National Efficiency’. She played a central role in the achievement of responsible government in Southern Rhodesia in 1923, which set the territory's separate course outside the Union of South Africa. No other Rhodesian politician had achieved such prominence in the metropolis, or possessed such a thoroughly formed and comprehensive ideology, or the propaganda skills necessary for a simultaneous confrontation with the imperial and South African governments, local capitalists and the ruling British South Africa Company. During her parliamentary career she sought to promote European settlement and improve the educational, health and communications infrastructure of Southern Rhodesia. She paid particular attention to the development of a strong local identity which would attach the settlers more closely to their community and to the British Empire at large.

Genoa &amp; the Genoese, 958-1528

In this comprehensive history of Genoa, Steven Epstein traces the city's transformation from an obscure port into the capital of a small but thriving republic with an extensive overseas empire. His story bridges six centuries of medieval Renaissance history, interweaving political events, economic trends, social conditions, and cultural accomplishments. Profiling the ordinary men and women of Genoa as well as the nobles and merchants who governed the city, Epstein seeks to capture the full richness and eclectic nature of the Genoese people during their most vibrant centuries.

Elites, enterprise and the making of the British overseas empire, 1688-1775

Preface - Abbreviations - PART 1: CONTEXTS AND CONTOURS - Historians and the Eighteenth-Century Empire - The Dynamics of Expansion - PART 2: METROPOLITAN ELITES AND THE OVERSEAS EMPIRE - Gentlemen and Entrepreneurs: Landowners, Merchants, and Bankers - Investment in Empire - PART 3: OVERSEAS ELITES IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE - Imperial Ties and the Anglicization of the Overseas Empire - Merchants, Planters, and the Gentlemanly Ideal - PART 4: A NEW IMPERIAL ORDER, 1750-75 - The End of the English Empire - Enterprise and Expansion: Drawing a Line - Afterword - Bibliography - Index

Greater France: a history of French overseas expansion

List of Maps - Preface - Introduction: Writing about the Colonies - The First Overseas Empire - The Conquest of Empire: Africa and the Indian Ocean - The Conquest of Empire: Asia, the Pacific and the Australia Regions - Ideas of Empire - The French Overseas - The Uses of Empire - The French and the 'Natives' - Colonial Culture in France - Colonial Nationalism and Deconolisation - After the Empire - Notes and References - Bibliographical Essay - Index

The Making of Portuguese Democracy

This vividly written book is the first comprehensive assessment of the origins of the present-day democratic regime in Portugal to be placed in a broad international historical context. It is written with the benefit of a long-term vision of Portuguese history, and it emphasizes the significance of Portugal's new European orientation after centuries of global and oceanic preoccupations. After an account of the collapse of the old regime in 1974, the book studies the complex revolutionary period that followed, and the struggle in Europe and Africa to define the future role of Europe's poorest country. These events also had international repercussions which transformed the balance of forces in southern Africa, following the collapse of Europe's last overseas empire. The consequent actions and reactions of the European powers and the United States are examined, and telling comparisons are also drawn with later developments in Eastern Europe, and with the wider collapse of the communist movement.

Channel Tunnel Visions, 1850-1945: Dreams and Nightmares.

The idea of a Channel Tunnel has always aroused strong emotions in Britain. It has been supported by those wanting closer political, economic and cultural links with Europe but opposed by believers in Britain's island identity and overseas empire. In contrast, the French have been almost unanimously in favour. This is an account of attempts over a century to build a link with France. Early schemes, some owing more to Heath-Robinson than to sound engineering practice, were succeeded by serious proposals based on scientific surveys of the sea-bed carried out in the 1860s. After describing the major entrepreneurs and their plans, the author goes on to show the reactions of successive British governments. On several occasions the decision on whether or not to go ahead was a very close-run thing. He quotes the views of Prime Ministers from Gladstone to Ramsay MacDonald; of Foreign Secretaries including Grey and Curzon; and of admirals and generals ranging from Fisher to Wolseley, French and Henry Wilson. Their fears of sabotage, invasion and a future political rift with France were set against hopes of economic advantage. They also saw an enhanced ability to respond quickly to future German aggression.

Lyautey and the French conquest of Morocco

Lyautey and the French Conquest of Morocco, by William A. Hoisington, Jr. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. xi + 207 pages. Notes to p. 253. Bibl. to p. 263. Index to p. 276. $45. Reviewed by Julia Clancy-Smith Historical memory of France's colonial moment in Morocco inevitably evokes the figure of Marshal Louis-Hubert Lyautey (1854-1934), the first resident general named to that country after the 1912 imposition of the French Protectorate. Indeed, Jacques Berque, the noted scholar of all things North African and a former colonial officer himself, opens his personal reminiscences, Memoires des deux rives, with an anecdote about General Lyautey presiding over commencement exercises at an Algerian lycee in 1907.' Lyautey's career and life have been the object of numerous books, articles, dissertations, and studies, including hagiographic accounts by French military writers and officers, who lionized the man as France's overseas empire began to crumble after World War II. And Lyautey himself wrote extensively about his own exploits and campaigns long before he was appointed resident general of Morocco, in April of 1912, by the French president, Armand Fallieres. The abundance of written and other kinds of historical data on Lyautey has rendered the historian's task rather more difficult, not least because what the Marshal preached or advocated as colonial policy was frequently very different from practice. A paradoxical individual who sincerely admired many aspects of North African Arab culture, studied Arabic, fretted over the corrosive effects of European civilization upon the Maghrib, and yet relied upon force majeure when faced with opposition to French Lyautey presents his biographers with not a few intractable problems of interpretation. It is greatly to William Hoisington's credit as a scholar and historian that he has grappled so skillfully with the personality, real and legendary, of Lyautey, effortlessly weaving the colonial officer's own story into a much grander, more complex narrative of fin-de-siecle France, the culture of the military establishment, and French imperialism world wide. Hoisington's study is the first truly scholarly full-length biography of Lyautey in English, and it rivals the recent three volume work in French by Daniel Rivet.2 It is the product of years of painstaking research in at least six major archival collections, including the protectorate archives in Rabat, which have not been used extensively by scholars. It draws together numerous other sources of documentation that will be mined eagerly by those studying the French empire. Morocco at this critical juncture in time is treated in a systematic and sympathetic fashion, so that the Moroccans, and other North African figures and leaders, emerge fully as actors in the unfolding drama. Such a treatment is the mark, once again, of mature historical analysis, since Hoisington is able to deal with both sides of the colonial equation without consigning the colonized to a shadowy existence as mere supernumeraries. This is really a biography about two Lyauteys-the soldier-administrator who advocated the novel idea of peaceful penetration and indirect rule, and a second, somewhat more elusive figure, who rashly proposed in 1891 that the army in the Metropole assume the role of a vast field of social action (p. 4), and later engaged the famous urban planner, Henri Prost, to safeguard Islamic Rabat's cultural patrimony against the inroads of modernity. To flush out the multiple dimensions of his life and thought, the author follows Lyautey in the first chapter from his early years at St. Cyr (1873), through his first encounters with L'Algerie Francaise in the 1870s and 1880s, and subsequent posting to French Indochina in 1894, followed by five years in Madagascar. These years and experiences solidified his views on the nature of empire as well as his definition of French colonialism's mission, which also coincided, as Hoisington shows, with the elaboration of a vocal colonial lobby in France supported by a parti colonial in the French legislature. …

Power from Wind: A History of Windmill Technology by Richard L. Hills

692 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE trates on gristmills and space heating and gives less attention to oil lamps than to the “poorly paid, wearying, and dangerous way of life” of whalers (p. 124). When he discusses standards of living in modern society, he alludes to household appliances as “electrical gadgets” (pp. 203, 220), and his primary source for the electrical redemption of the household is Robert Caro’s 1982 biography of Lyndon Johnson. In treating this and other topics, Smil seems unaware of key works by well-recognized scholars: Ruth Cowan, here, Reynold Wik on ag­ ricultural technology, Donald Worster on hydraulic societies, Louis Hunter on the history of industrial power, Terry Reynolds on the waterwheel, and Dolores Greenberg on energy in 19th-century America. Even had he not specifically cited them, one would expect to find their works in his list of suggested readings. Despite its flaws, Energy in World History is a useful addition to Westview Press’s Essays in World History series. Both teachers and students will find it is a good introduction to energy history, and even seasoned investigators may learn something new. For teachers seeking a nice visual way to link big ideas, particularly for those drawn to cycles in history, Smil’s coupling of energy evolution and the har­ nessing of new prime movers to long-wave business cycles and innova­ tion clusters in technology from 1800 to the present (pp. 240—41) will provide an intriguing and challenging segue into thoughtful dis­ cussion. Perhaps this is enough to ask of any essay. James C. Williams Dr. Williams teaches at De Anza College. His study of Energy and the Making of Modem California is forthcoming in the University of Akron Press’s Technology and the Environment series. Powerfrom Wind: A History of Windmill Technology. By Richard L. Hills. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. ix + 324; illustra­ tions, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. $59.95. Richard L. Hills, an industrial archaeologist and museum profes­ sional, has given us a valuable resource for understanding the tech­ niques of windmilling from their origins to their use in modern tur­ bines for generating electricity. Focusing primarily on Scotland, England, the Netherlands, and the United States, he not only inte­ grates into his study the efforts of molinologists such as John Shaw, Rex Wailes, Jannis C. Notebaart, and T. Lindsay Baker, but also includes the results of his own investigation of sources such as the early English patents, the records of the Bedford Level Corporation, and many Dutch works unavailable in English. Taken as recently as March 1992, his excellent photographs of the internal and external mechanisms of windmills that still exist or have appeared only re­ cently provide impressive examples for his narrative. Although he is cautious in presenting possible causes for historical change, his TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 693 hypotheses are provoking. He suggests, for example, that the lack of a braking mechanism around the principal gearwheel of the post mill may have been responsible for the tardy acceptance of the machine during the first half of the 13th century. Preceding the Scientific Revolution, Dutch millwrights of the 16th century appear to have perfected the design of the twisted windmill sail on a strictly empirical basis. Hills proposes that this aerodynamic innovation may have laid the foundation for the beginning of a form of industrial revolution at the turn of that century, particularly on the promontory of the Zaan, north of Amsterdam, where, to support Holland’s overseas empire, numerous windmills were constructed for sawing wood; for manufacturing oil, rope, and paper; and for hulling grain and barley. Hills’s technological discussions are both detailed and informative. This is especially the case when he analyzes the events leading to the late-19th-century development of the self-regulating windmill in which William Cubitt’s system of controlling the sail’s shutters by bell cranks attached to a weight-driven rack and pinion (1807) is com­ bined with Edmund Lee’s fantail that automatically turns the mill into the wind (1745). This analysis, along with an earlier examination of the appropriate wind forces for activating and sustaining a wind­ mill, sets the stage for Hills...

From the Sea.

From the Sea Mark R. Shulman (bio) George W. Baer. One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890–1990. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. 532 pp. Notes and index. $49.50. Jack Shulimson. The Marine Corps’ Search for a Mission, 1880–1989. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993. xii 274 pp. Photographs, notes, bibliography, and index. $35.00. Just over a century ago, the United States became a sea power, changing its basic strategic orientation in the course of a few years. Already a world-class agricultural and industrial producer, the United States joined the great power ranks only when it developed a military force capable of projection across the seas. That capability quickly helped to create an overseas empire and then played pivotal roles in both world wars. This fundamental shift has been explained by “realist” or “revisionist” historians as a continuation of the zeal to fulfill a manifest destiny, variously to spread democracy or capitalism. Still, it is only recently that historians have attempted to understand the lever of that shift. Put bluntly, the U.S. Navy — more than any other single institution — has altered the world’s destiny, and yet it has received less careful historical study than have the villages of eastern Massachusetts. Baer and Shulimson go a long way toward rectifying the relative neglect of the U.S. Navy and its adjunct Marine Corps. Jack Shulimson, head of the histories section at the Marine Corps Historical Center, has written several histories of the corps’ experience in the Vietnam conflict. In The Marine Corps’ Search for a Mission, 1880–1898, he looks back at the professionalization of the Marine Corps in the era between Appomattox and the new century. From the late 1700s, the corps had provided ships’ guards for naval vessels and honor guards for legations across the globe. As the U.S. Navy professionalized in the 1880s, the status of the corps came under close scrutiny. Navy officials came to see the marines as redundant enforcers — which they were — and attempted to have the corps abolished. In terms of quality, the corps was on shaky ground. By law, the number of officers was already limited to seventy-five, and it was only in the 1880s that [End Page 277] naval academy graduates were included among them. As late as 1894, the promotion rate was so slow that some officers petitioned the secretary to support legislation “that would permit the promotion of captains who had forty-one years of service” (p. 138). The marines had done themselves no favors. Their ranks were filled with the lowest elements of maritime society: illiterates, liars, drunkards, and ne’er-do-wells — and these were the officers. Shulimson describes the predicament of the unsavory second-ranking officer. In 1894, Col. James Forney “stood trial before a general court-martial, charged on four accounts, from embezzlement, to lying, to using and issuing false papers, and finally to ‘culpable inefficiency in the performance of duty.’ Despite Forney’s foibles,” Shulimson writes, “he still held the sympathy, affection, and even a modicum of respect of many of his contemporaries” (p. 137). The enlisted men were far less reliable, and annual desertion rates generally ran to about 25 percent. Far more damning for the corps, however, was its lack of mission. During the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, it had proven poor at policing labor — a role for which the militia was far better suited and situated. On board ships, naval officers found that sailors policed themselves at least as well as marines could. Furthermore, naval officers would only allow their marines to man the secondary guns, securing the adored main batteries for the sailors. Then, in what should have been the final insult added to injury, even the beloved bandmaster John Philip Sousa left the Marine Corps Band in 1891. To keep the corps alive, to preserve and possibly even enhance their positions, some officers started to carve a niche within the emerging imperial navy’s power projection mission. After all, they said, marines had landed on the shores of Tripoli in 1805. Eighty years later, they assaulted Colombia’s Panamanian isthmus to quell a rebellion. But it was...

Needs and Opportunities in French Colonial History

If anything is clear to the student of the history of the early modern French colonial enterprise, it is the need for a general overview to equal Boxer's and Parry's fine volumes on the Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish seaborne empires, or George Winius' volume in the Minnesota series. Not that such volumes on the French colonies do not exist, in French. Indeed, there has not been a decade since the 1920s without some such publication. None of them, however, appears to me to be wholly satisfactory. The glorification of the French ‘mission’ characterizing the earlier works nowjars; the more recent works are more balanced, but still, on the whole, too descriptive. This is particularly the case for the Histoire de la France coloniale, des origines à 1914. While the authors responsible for the period which interests us, Jean Meyer and Jean Tarrade, have produced distinguished works on the French overseas empire, their survey remains somewhat uncritical and, at least for the seventeenth century, very thin. As to the treatment of New France, it draws on a rather unreliable series of monographies.