Korssjoen 1

Dana Korssjoen
Esra Bakkalbasioglu
JSIS 200 AM
2 December 2016
The Rivalry Felt Around the World: Why French Colonies Were so French
France and Britain, the major economic powers of the nineteenth century, were both
extremely integrated into the global economy through foreign investment and vast colonization.
While British colonies were integral to the British economy, supplying the majority of the
empires raw goods and cheap labor, French colonies were more significant in spreading the
political and cultural influence of the empire throughout the world. Given that colonization in
both countries was founded on the projection of national power across the world, why did French
colonies display a greater degree of political and cultural integration with their colonizing
country than British colonies? This paper argues that French statesmen deliberately focused on
proliferating their culture overseas because France was already more culturally influential than
Britain, and this influence compensated for its comparative lack of economic power.
Note that this essay devotes some, but not much, discussion to colonies that had high
proportions of British or French immigrants, like North America, because cultural influence
spread rather passively in those areas as a result of European inhabitation. Instead, this essay
focuses on regions under the influence of the two countries that did not see much immigration, as
the expansion of cultural influence there was largely a result of intentional policies on behalf of
the two countries.
The first section of the paper discusses the characteristics of British colonies and Britain
as a whole, the comparative case. The second section discusses how and why French colonies
proliferated their cultural influence overseas. The third section concludes the paper.

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I. British Colonies: a Comparative Case
Two major differences between France and Britain in this period particularly concern the
topic of this paper, one being the administration of their colonies. Unlike French colonies, British
colonies were administered by indirect rule, meaning that the colonial administration preserved
most of the indigenous governing institutions and policies. They combined these institutions with
oversight, though often not interference, by local British officials. In British-controlled Northern
Nigeria, for example, native officials continued to be elected into office by traditional methods
and retained most of the tax revenue destined for the administration of authority (Crowder 198).
This stands in sharp contrast to the direct rule of French colonies, as discussed in Section II.
The other major difference between France and Britain was their economic development.
While both empires were major international economic superpowers in the nineteenth century,
Britain was far more industrialized, possessing over 20,000 spinning jennies to Frances 1,000;
19,000 mule jennies to Frances lack thereof; and 200 Arkwright-style factories to Frances 10 at
the beginning of the century (Lewis 12). Britain also had ample capital to be invested in its rapid
industrialization, while massive sales of large estates during the French Revolution had reduced
the number of possible investors in France, severely retarding its industrialization (Lewis 70-1).
Labor was also far more conducive to industrialization in Britain than in France, as the enclosure
movement in the former had created masses of landless wage laborers willing to work in
factories, while France had far more small subsistence farmers who had no reason to switch to
export crops or wage work in factories. Britain was also predisposed to become a major
industrial power, having ample deposits of coal (the energy source of the Industrial Revolution)

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in geographically fortuitous regions of the empire, allowing it to become a massive processor
and exporter of coal (Pomeranz 283). France lacked these lucky resources.
All of these differences culminated in a British market that was very geared towards the
import of raw materials from its colonies in order to create manufactured goods for export, while
the French market had a lesser capability to process raw materials into manufactured goods. In
fact, what amount of French industrialization that existed often involved finishing semimanufactured goods from Britain (Keyder 78). Because of this difference in their economies,
Britain was more incentivized than France to focus on economic, rather than social or political,
integration of its colonies. Also because of this, Britain became the leading economic
superpower in the world, and France had little hope of surpassing it. If France were to stop being
second to Britain in international power, it would need to project its influence in a different way.
French colonists found that in their ability to project French culture around the world, an ability
they willingly used to their advantage.

II. Origins and Spread of French Colonial Culture

Cultural integration
The republican party has shown that [France] cannot just be a free country; that it
must also be a great country, exercising all the influence it has on the destiny of Europe,
that it must spread this influence in the world, and carry everywhere it can its language,
its customs, its flag, its arms, its genius.
-Jules Ferry, 1883
Jules Ferry, a French statesman of the Third Republic, championed the popular belief that
greatness could be achieved by France only when it had projected its influence around the world.
Not only did this entail the formal domination that is associated with traditional colonization, but
it also required the intentional spread of its language, customs, and flag--instruments of cultural

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influence. This attitude that France ought to project its culture on a global scale motivated their
colonization in a distinctly cultural way.
The French mission civilisatrice, the concept that France, as a privileged nation, ought to
bring civilization to the barbarous masses of Africa, the Americas, and Asia, underlied the
empires concept of colonization. This goal was frequently carried out through state-sanctioned
missions by the Catholic church, to the extent that by the time that France began formally
expanding its dominance in Southeast Asia, French Catholic missionaries of the Socit des
missions trangres de Paris had already been in the region for over two centuries (Daughton
59). In fact, by the 1890s, approximately two-thirds of all Europeans involved in Catholic
missions were French (Daughton 38). The fact that French Catholics represented such a large
proportion of total missionaries reveals that this desire to spread their influence was not simply a
Catholic phenomenon, but a result of the specific political and social culture in France itself.
French politicians were especially interested in preserving their influence in traditionally
Catholic and European-influenced regions, even beyond the independence of those regions. For
example, in Latin America (a term which was likely made popular by French statesman Michel
Chevalier to represent the extent of the Latin rather than Anglo-Saxon influence in the region),
France supported newly independent Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century by endorsing its
emperor and sending French troops to maintain stability (Todd 182). Furthermore, even as a
British protectorate in the late 1800s, Egypt could be considered an informal French colony for
the sheer persistence of French culture and economic systems in the region (Todd 160). In this
way, France preserved its cultural influence beyond just colonial holdings.

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France also sought to expand its influence to new lands, especially Asia, with its lucrative
trade routes. To quote the French minister of the navy said to the governor of Cochinchina
(present-day Southern Vietnam) in 1862 (Emerit 210):
Is it a sort of suzerainty, or sovereignty that we want, with free commercial intercouse,
accessible to all We do not wish to found a colony in the sense given to this word by
our fathers, with European settlers, institutions, regulations, and privileges; no, it is a
veritable empire that we must create.
As evidenced by the quote, French statesmen were far more concerned with extending
their cultural power than simply extracting resources and creating trade networks overseas. This
is probably due to the attitude represented by Jules Ferry, that France would only be great once it
had spread its influence throughout the world, and also due to the matter discussed in Section I
that France lacked the natural resources and labor preconditions to properly threaten Britains
global economy hegemony, so it turned towards augmenting its cultural influence, wherein it
could truly rival Britain. This contrast directly culminated in the difference between French and
British foreign policy in the Americas. Whereas Britain simply sought land to fund its industrial
expansion, leading it to exclude or, where expedient, annihilate the indigenous population,
France consciously sought to perpetuate its culture there--Mirabeau himself coined the term
franciser, or French-ify to describe Minister of Finance Colberts policy of extending French
scholarship, language, and religion to the colonies (Canny 37).
Another potential explanation for why French statesmen were so particularly concerned
with expanding and preserving their cultural influence was the countrys position as a leading
body in scientific and philosophical thought. French institutions like the Collge de France,
Musum dhistoire naturelle, and cole polytechnique, enjoyed immense global prestige to the
extent that the French language was the lingua franca of intellectual, scientific, and financial

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communications throughout continental Europe (Todd 160). While Britain was the clear leading
example of economic innovation, France was the source of much of the cultural change in this
ear, from its contributions to the natural sciences and social sciences, and its liberal education
systems (Hobsbawm 29-30). After all, both the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution
sprung from French colleges and salons. Perhaps French colonists proliferated their culture so
intentionally and powerfully because they wanted to maintain that significant advantage over
Britain.

Political integration
Unlike Britain, France employed direct rule in its colonies, a system wherein indigenous
administrative institutions were subordinated or even deposed as French colonial authority
became central to the function of local government. Frequently, French colonists re-formed
administrative districts to cut across pre-colonial boundaries in order to weaken traditional
sources of power. Even where local chiefs remained in the administration, they frequently had
clearly defined duties and powers and no real autonomy (Crowder 199). Crowder summarizes
the relationship well in saying that the British system depended on the advisory relationship
between the political officer and the native authority, usually a chief, while the French system
placed the chief in an entirely subordinate role to the political officer (Crowder 199).
French colonial authorities experimented with more liberal systems of rule in several
regions. In Pondicherry, certain native subjects were granted suffrage in electing local and
general councils, though suffrage was far from universal, as voting bodies had to remain fifty per
cent European and fifty per cent local (Raffin 528). In Algeria, French authorities took a step
farther, extending both parliamentary representation in Paris and selective suffrage to the colony

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(Todd 175). While this experiment failed to achieve its goals of further integration between
native Algerian culture and French culture, it represented to degree to which French overseas
colonies became part of French political culture. The experiments in both regions illustrate the
fact that even as French colonial administration liberalized, power was still very much in the
hands of French elite, rather than indigenous authorities.
The conscious integration of French power, combined with the consequent weakening of
traditional sources of power, was likely devised to undermine indigenous culture, supplanting it
with French and Catholic norms. As discussed above, France was motivated to augment its
cultural influence around the world by its rivalry with Britain. Disrupting traditional sources of
power not only ensured that French influence took hold in the region, but that it persisted long
after the French left the area in the great decolonization movements of the post-World War I era.

III. Conclusion
The greatest rivalry of the nineteenth century was played out across the world by France
and Britain. They mirrored each other in so many respects, from their economic systems to their
cautiously liberal governments to their patronage of the arts and sciences, so it is surprising that
their treatment of their colonies was so distinct. But upon understanding the differences between
French and British preconditions for industrialization, and the mechanisms through which France
projected its culture, it is clear that the spread of French culture in its colonies was an attempt to
preserve its competitiveness with Britain. Even after imperialism declined, the ideology that the
true measure of a countrys power is in its influence abroad, whether hard or soft power,
remained, continuing to fuel international rivalries and neo-colonial intervention.

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