‘The British Empire was often violent, but so are all nation-states,’ the Oxford theologian Nigel Biggar once wrote. This new book by the French economic historian Denis Cogneau takes similar claims about the French Empire seriously – and deconstructs them in the process.
Empire, he writes, is a ‘generally mediocre’ affair. Only tiny minorities of French people directly benefited from its imperial possessions while millions suffered at a distance from metropolitan France. The reigning view at home was one of indifference: until the liberation wars in South East Asia and Algeria after the Second World War, French military spending on its Empire was never higher than one per cent of the national income. The costs of the colonial state were borne by colonized peoples. And, as the price of empire increased in blood and treasure, French public opinion turned rapidly against its continuation.
