Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:41:10.017Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Mission Civilisatrice’: French Cultural Policy in the Middle East, 1860–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Mathew Burrows
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Mission civilisatnce was one of the bywords of French colonial expansion under the Third Republic. Unfortunately until now there have been few works devoted to its study. Indeed, the notion itself has not been taken very seriously by scholars. As long ago as 1960 when Henri Brunschwig published his seminal work on French colonialism, he stated quite categorically: ‘en Angleterre la justification humanitaire l'emporta’ while ‘en France le nationalisme de 1870 domina’ even if that nationalism ‘ne s'exprima presque jamais sans une mention de cette “politique indigène” qui devait remplir les devoirs du civilisé envers des populations plus arriérées.’ Since then academics both in France and outside have tended to concentrate (in what few works have been written on French colonialism) on the political and economic aspects of the French Empire to the detriment of its cultural components.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 109 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Brunschwig, Henri, Mythes el réaltiés de l'Impérialisms colonial français, 1871–1914, (Paris, 1960), p. 174Google Scholar.

2 While Pierre Renouvin is usually seen as the father of the history of international relations in France, his students have not always been entirely faithful to his broad vision of diplomatic history Pierre Milza virtually admitted as much in a colloquium given on culture and international relations (the proceedings of which were later published in Relations Internationales, no. 24 (hiver, 1980)) ‘Or, si elle (French historical school of international relations) a poussé assez loin l'analyse…en examinant les facteurs économiques, financiers, politiques ou stratégiques, elle a moins bien réussi, semble-t-il, à démêler le faisceau complexe des rapports existant entre la politique internationale et les phénomènes de mentalité.’

Hence, as regards the French mission civilisatnce there have been very few works published. Of those that have been, most all have been articles such as the ones by Shorrock, William I. (‘Anticlericalism and French policy in the Ottoman Empire, 1900–1914’, European Studies Review, VI (1974), 33–56)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Spagnolo, John P. (‘The Definition of a style of internal politics of the French educational investment in Ottoman Beirut’, French Historical Studies, VIII (1974), 563–84)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Thobie, Jacqúes (‘La France a-t-elle une politique culturelle dans l'Empire ottoman à la veille de la premiere guerre mondiale?’, Relations Internationales, no. 25 (1981), 21–40)Google Scholar; there are no books on the specific subject of the ‘mission civilisatrice’. Furthermore, there has been no attempt at a synthesis of its various components. Several works, for instance, exist on the Alliance Israelite unwerselle and the various Catholic missionary orders involved (details below); however, they deal almost exclusively with their own particular history if not legend. The main purpose of this article is to provide some sort of analytic framework for an important though neglected phenomenon in international relations.

3 As a possible guide to the spread of French culture within the French Empire, see the doctoral d' étal by Denise Bouche on French education in French West Africa: L'enseignement dans les territories francais de Frinque occidentale de 1897 à 1920 (2 vols., Paris, 1975)Google Scholar.

4 Cited by Thobie, in ‘La France a-t-elle une politique culturelle?’, p. 25Google Scholar. The evaluation was made apparently by French consular agents.

5 For an analysis of language in the Middle East see introductory section of Thobie, 's massive thesis, Intérêts el impénahsme français dans l' Empire ottoman, (Paris, 1977), pp. 41–4Google Scholar, the section in my thesis, Laiaté and the Levant: French cultural policy at the time of the Separation, 1900–1914, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1983, pp. 11–13, 19–23Google Scholar. For more on the translation bureau and its importance in Ottoman government and policy-making, see Davison, Rhoderic H., Reform in the Ottoman Empire 1856–1876 (Princeton, N.J., 1963), pp. 28Google Scholar 30.

6 This was the case even with the French missionaries Abbe Gregoire in his report to the French government in 1841 stated that the Lazansts still used Greek, Italian and French in their religious services as late as 1831 Ministere des Relations exteneures (hereafter AE) M(emoires) (et) D(ocuments), Turquie 49, ‘Mémoire de l'abbe Gregoire sur la congregation de Lazanstes’

7 In the early 1900s, France became embroiled in a dispute with Turkey over the claims of two of her proteges in the Ottoman Empire Tubini and Lorando Both were of Italian lineage whose families had long served France or French interests in the capacity of business agents or consuls.

8 For a concise history of European-Ottoman relations, see Anderson, M. S.'s still standard work The Eastern question (London, 1966)Google Scholar.

9 Sabry, M., L'empire egyptten sous Mohamed-Ali et la question a'Orient, 1811–1849, (Pans, 1930)Google Scholar, Renouvin, Pierce, Historie des relations intemationales Le XIXe Siecle, I, 114, 25Google Scholar.

10 See below pp 113, 119–20.

11 The standard work on the Capitulations is du Rausas, G. Pehssie's Le regime des capitulations (2 vols., Paris, 1905)Google Scholar. Pélissié du Rausas was head of the French Ecole de Droit in Cairo at the turn of the century. Thobie, Jacques has as well a useful summary on the position of most scholars regarding the Capitulations in the introductory section of his thesis, Intérêts et impénalisme français, pp. 15–16Google Scholar.

12 The case of the foreign communities in Egypt is detailed in Clément's, R.Les Français d'Egyple aux XVWe et XVIIIe sièdes (Cairo, 1960)Google Scholar. The communities actually elected députés who worked in close contact with the foreign ambassadors and Egyptian authorities.

13 Ristelhueber, René, Traditions françaises au Liban (Paris, 1918), p. 119Google Scholar.

14 See Clément for the failure of the various Christian missions in Egypt. Also Père Piolet, J.-B., La France au dehors: Les Missions cathohques françaises au XIXe siècle (4 vols., Paris, 1900–1904)Google Scholar. The first volume is entitled Missions d'Orient and chronicles the French and foreign missions' fluctuating fortunes in the Middle East.

15 Despite the various histories written and published by the orders themselves, the best source in terms of an overview for the missionary situation still remains archival – particularly, for the early nineteenth century, one must consult the dossiers in the Mémoires et Documents series at the Quai d'Orsay: AE MD, Turquie 49, 50, 124, 127, 129, 133.

16 Chevalher, Dominique, La Sociéte du Monl-Liban a l'epoque de la Revolution industnelle en Europe (Paris, 1965)Google Scholar.

17 There has been no real study of nineteenth century French cultural influence to rival Louis Réau's L' Europe franfaise au siècle des lumieres, for instance, for the eighteenth Brunot, Ferdinand (with Charles Bruneau) in his monumental Historie de la langue française does devote several volumes (IX, X, XII, XIII) to the modern period since 1789Google ScholarSalon, Albert in his thesis provides a number of useful indications for the continued strength of French influence throughout the nineteenth century ‘L'Action culturelle de la France dans le Monde’, unpublished doctorat d'etat, 3 vols, Universite de Paris I, 1981Google Scholar.

18 Calculated on the basis of vanous reports in the Quai d'Orsay AE MD, Turquie 127, ‘Rapport sur les Missions du Levant par M de Varenne, secretaire d'Ambassade a Constantinople’ (31 January 1825), AE MD, Turquie 49, ‘Memoire de l'abbe Gregoire sur la Congregation des Lazanstes’ (29 March 1841), AE MD, Turque 50, ‘Note sur les secours alloues sur les fonds de MA E aux Missions du Levant’ (1838), AE MD, Turquie 133, ‘De l'entretien des Etabhssements français en Levant et Barbane’

19 See below pp 120–1.

20 For France's acquisition of the Syrian and Lebanese mandates, see Andrew, C. M. and Kanya-Forstner, A. S., France overseas: the Great War and the climax of French imperial expansion (London, 1981)Google Scholar.

21 ‘Rapport au Roi’, 15 June 1842, AE MD, Turquie 129. Guizot, in fact, cited the following reason in his report to Louis-Philippe for the advisability of increasing the cultural budget: ‘la crise produite par le traité du 15 juillet 1840…les effets en ont été le plus préjudiciables à notre influence’.

22 Raya was the term used to designate an Ottoman Christian.

23 AE MD Turquie 127, ‘Rapport sur les Missions du Levant par M de Varenne, secretaire d'Ambassade à Constantinople’ (31 January 1825).

24 The new strategy to be followed by the French missionaries is enunciated in the Œuvre d'Orient's publication – Bulletin de l'Œuvre des Ecoles de l'Orient (hereafter 00). See particularly ‘Rapport sur les Missions des Lazaristes’. 00, no. 7 (November, 1857), p. 3. Besides the need for Catholic sisters to staff the girls' schools in the Middle East, most Catholic missionary leaders felt that their presence would shock the schismatics and even the Muslims into a realization of the innate goodness of Catholicism: ‘Je voyais (head of Lazarists in Middle East) que par elles (filles de la Charité) seraient renversées ies deux barrières qui empêchaient tout rapport avec les turcs et les hérétiques et l'influence du catholicisme, que leur dévouement et l'éclat de leurs oeuvres présenteraient aux turcs un spectacle nouveau qui ne pouvait manquer de rendre le catholicisme respectable à leurs yeux et que leurs bienfaits opéreraient peu à peu un rapprochement entre les hérétiques et une religion qu'ils ne detestaient que parce qu'ils ne la connaissaient pas.’

25 AE MD, Turquie 49, ‘Mémoire de l'abbé Grégoire sur la Congrégation des Lazaristes’ (29 March 1841).

26 AE MD, Turquie 127, ‘Rapport sur les Missions du Levant par M de Varenne, secrétaire d'Ambassade à Constantinople’ (31 January 1825).

27 The exact number was 3,397 Catholic missionaries in 1904 of which 2,308 were French in nationality. By 1914 there would have been many more as a result of the expulsions in France The figures for 1904 ae to be found in a despatch from Constans to Delcassé, 12 November 1904, AE N(ouvelle) S(érie), Saint-Siège 31.

28 Process related in Chevallier, Société du Mont-Liban, chs. XIII–XV.

29 This refers in particular to the juvénats which trained students for a vocation even before their entry into an order. One usually entered the juvénat at 14–16 which is what technically precluded one from taking any vows – at that age it was illegal under French law to renounce one's individual liberty. It is interesting to note that the importance of the juvénats to missionary recruitment came to light a generation or so after the passage of the Law of Association in 1901. The implementation of the law by Combes resulted in the closure of most monasteries and convents. As early as 1912 the Quai d'Orsay became seriously worried that French recruitment into the missionary orders would be diminished leaving open the possibility that the French religious protectorate could be taken over by another Catholic country. In the 1920s it was the turn of the French intellectual to worry about the future of the French language considering it was mostly the missionaries who were responsible for its propagation outside France. Among those who revised their heretofore anticlerical stance and were prepared to re-authorize the juvénats was Ferdinand Buisson, a member of the original parliamentary commission responsible for the implementation of the 1901 law. For a fuller discussion of the effects of the 1901 and 1904 legislation on French policy abroad, see my thesis Laicité and the Levant, pp. 90–115, 163–201. Buisson, 's reversal of his former position is contained in the Journal Officiel/Documents Parlementaires (hereafter JODocPC), 7 03 1929, p. 461Google Scholar. Finally the famous nationalist writer and deputy, Maurice Barrès, headed a parliamentary enquiry in the 1920s to investigate the state of French missionary activity. The findings were reported in one of the last books published by Barrès: Faut-il autoriser les congrégations? (Paris, 1924)Google Scholar.

30 Reported by Monsignor Kannengieser, A. in his book, Les missions catholiques: France et Atlemagne (Paris, n.d. (1900?))Google Scholar Kannengieser wrote his book in order to explain to a German audience why the Vatican continued to support French control of the Catholic Protectorate in the Middle East: ‘malgré toutes les vexations, tous les impôts, malgré le service militaire des clercs et des religieux, malgré leur appauvrissement indéniable, les Congrégations [French ones] ont continué à se recruter, les couvents à se peupler et le chiffre relevé in 1888 est aujourd'hui largement dépassé…’ What Kannengieser did not foresee at the time he wrote the book was the fatal blow dealt the monasteries by the upcoming legislation of 1901, 1904, 1905.

31 The primary source for the history of the Propagation de la Foi is its own publications: Annales de la Propagation, and Missions catholiques: Bulletin hebdomadaire de la Propagation de la Foi.

32 OO, no. 1 (November, 1857), p. 8.

33 Ibid. ‘Rapport fait au Conseil général de l'Œuvre des Ecoles d'Orient par M. H. Wallon, secrétaire général de l'Œuvre’.

34 Ibid. (Sept. 1863), p. 332.

35 Lavigerie's leadership of the Œuvre d'Orient is put into perspective in Xavier de Montclos' biography of the Catholic cardinal and archbishop: Lavigerie, le Saint-Siège et l'Eglise (Paris, 1965)Google Scholar.

36 For the most part, the sum of 2 millions was collected through the conférences Saint-Vincent-de-Paul which is also how the Œuvre d'Orient recruited so large a membership.

37 It is hard to know exactly how many members adhered to the Mission laïque since after 1905 it stopped publishing any figures. In December, 1905 it had 3,485 members; it perhaps never did attain a much larger membership before 1914.

38 The Mission laïque's was negligible since it depended upon the Quai d'Orsay's subsidies for the operation of its schools. See my thesis, Laïcité and the Levant, pp. 238–260. The Alliance française's budget amounted to 245,000 francs in 1900 of which almost half was raised abroad by its resident committees. See my article, ‘Les Origines de la Mission laïque’, Dialogues, nos. 35–37 (numéro special) (1983), p. 50. Also Salon, , L'Action culturelle de la France, pp. 120–1Google Scholar.

39 Françoise Kempf noted in her article on ‘Les Catholiques français’ after the Second World War that the Œuvre d'Orient was one of the most patriotic organs of all the Catholic journals. This was especially the case at the time of the Algerian War; Kempf quotes from an article in the Œuvre d'Orient's journal in 1957: ‘Mgr Lagier [director of the Œuvre d'Orient] appelle l'armée française à “exterminer” les “panthères venues pour semer la mort” qui sont les fellagha soutenus par les Soviets “apostats”. II s'élève contre la “philosophie voltarienne” qui traite “nos soldats avec mépris”, alors qu’ “en terre de mission un recul de la France entraînerait un recul de l'Eglise catholique”. Kempf's article appeared in Merle, Marcel, Les Eglises chrétiennes et la décolonisation (Paris, 1967), 154–86Google Scholar: citation from p. 176.

40 OO, (1861), pp. 3–9.

41 Again the 00 is the prime source for the Œuvre d'Orient's politics.

42 By and large, those politicians who ascribed to a French interventionist policy for the Middle East tended to adopt the same rhetoric as that of the Œuvre d'Orient.

43 Piolet, , La France au dehors, I, 55–6Google Scholar. Furthermore as early as the seventeenth century a small number of schools had been founded by the missionaries in order to educate future employees of the French embassies and consulates in the region. Their existence however was as precarious as the missions themselves.

44 ‘Mémoire de l'abbé Grégoire sur la Congrégation des Lazaristes’, AE MD, Turquie 49. Chevallier, , La société du Mont-Liban, p. 264Google Scholar.

45 ‘Rapport de M l'abbé Lavigerie’, 00 (July, 1859), p. 13.

46 Ibid. p II.

47 ‘Note sur l'Ecole française medecine de Beyrouth’ (November, 1887), AE MD, Turquie 124.

48 The Quar d'Orsay always felt the instruction was better in the A I U schools than in the Catholic ones They also looked favourably on the A I U's attempts at vocational education.

49 Chouraqui, Andre, L'Alliance israelite universelle et la renaissance juive contemporaine (Paris, 1965), p 161Google Scholar. This included the schools and students educated by the A I U in Eastern Europe, North Africa as well as in the Middle East The Middle East formed however the most important part of as the A I U network, in 1912 the A I U had 115 schools alone in the Ottoman Empire without counting those in Egypt (Chouraqui, p 66) 49.

50 70,000 is the figure used by the Quai d'Orsay in its evaluation of the Catholic strength Catholic missionaries were perhaps responsible for educating even more on an informal and less regular basis.

51 Chouraqui, , L'Alliance israélite universelle, pp. 25–7Google Scholar; Leven, Narcisse, Cinquante ans d'histoire, I, 7Google Scholar. The Mortara case occurred in Bologna in 1858. A Christian nurse had one of the Jewish children under her care baptized. Because the child was of Jewish parentage, it was thought best by the church to abduct the child and raise him as a Catholic. The affair became a rallying point for criticism of the church's temporal powers and a number of European rulers, including Napoleon III, sought to intervene with the pope in order to have the child returned to his parents.

52 Weill, George, ‘Emancipation et humanisme: le discours idéologique de l' Alliance israélite universelle au XIXe siècle’, Les Nouveaux Cahiers, LII (1978), 6Google Scholar. The favourable conditions of the Second Empire for French Jews is detailed in Cohen, David's thesis: La promotion des Juifs en France à l' époque du Second Empire (2 vols., Paris, 1977Google Scholar). Surprisingly, however, Cohen hardly mentions the A.I.U. in his work which certainly forms a gap in an otherwise complete analysis.

53 The assimilationist thesis is perhaps best attested to in the case of Crémieux. Crémieux, besides being an avowed republican, was a distinguished Freemason, being grand-maître of the Grand-Orient in 1869. His children were also converts to Christianity which was one of the reasons according to Chouraqui why Crémieux was kept more or less out of view until his vice-presidency in 1863. The other leaders in the A.I.U. were concerned that the organization might not appear Jewish enough if he presided. In fact, of course, it was only after Crémieux became directly associated with the A.I.U. that the A.I.U. grew in popularity. See Weill, , ‘Emancipation et humanisme’, pp. 1–6Google Scholar and Chouraqui, , L' Alliance israélite universelle, p. 35Google Scholar.

54 Leven, , Cinquante ans d' histoire, 11, 10Google Scholar.

55 Quoted in Weill, , ‘Emancipation et humanisme’, p. 20Google Scholar, from a document in the A.I.U. archives, Irak I C dossier Piat, Loeb à Morris Cohen (directeur de l'école de Bagdad).

56 Leven, , Cinquante ans d' histoire, II, 27Google Scholar.

57 Laskier, Michael M., The Alliance israélite universelle and the Jewish communities of Morocco, 1862–1962 (Albany, New York, 1983), p. 128Google Scholar. Laskier's is the first study to examine the effect of the A.I.U. on the indigenous Jewish culture and society. There is no comparative study for the A.I.U.'s activities in the Middle East.

58 Olliver, Georges, L' Alliance israélite universelle 1860–1960 (Paris, 1959), p. 62Google Scholar.

59 Chouraqui, , L' Alliance israélite universelle, pp. 46–50Google Scholar.

60 The archives dealing with the Ecole ottomane impériale still exist and can be consulted at the Archives nationales (AN) under the file number F(17) 4146.

61 The founding of the lycée impérial de Galata-Séraï is recounted by its first French director, De Salve, , in ‘L' Enseignement en Turquie: le lycée impérial de Galata-Sérai’, Revue des deux mondes (15 10 1874), 836–53Google Scholar.

62 On the growing importance of foreign students to French universities after 1900 see Weisz's, George recent work: The emergence of modern universities in France, 1863–1914, (Princeton, N.J., 1983), pp. 252–69Google Scholar. According to the Bulletin administratif de l' Instruction publique, between 1901 and 1914 when the foreign student population expanded by 500 per cent, the proportion of Middle Eastern students actually dropped from 15 to 8 per cent, this perhaps being an additional reason why the Quai d'Orsay was not too concerned with the universities in its Middle Eastern cultural policy.

63 Up until now no study has been made of the Office national des Universités et Ecoles françaises even though its archives are available (70 AJ) at the Archives nationales.

64 de Saussure, Léopold, Psychologie de la colonisation française dans scs rapports avec les sociétés indigènes (Paris, 1899)Google Scholar; and Le Bon, Gustave, La psychologie politique et la défense sociale (Paris, 1910)Google Scholar.

65 Lamy, Etienne, La France du Levant (Paris, 1900), pp. 125–6Google Scholar.

66 Jules Ferry, for instance, was one of the prime movers behind the establishment of the Jesuit Medical Faculty in Beirut.

67 Gambetta, argued in favour of the retention of French religious interests in the Middle East at the time of the 1876 budget debates: ‘On ne peut méconnaître, quand on vit dans un pays qui a le passé et l'héritage de la France, que ce serait faire une politique détestable que de ne pas tenir un très grand compte, dans les relations de la France avec l' extérieur de ce que j' appelle avec 1 histoire et avec les traditions diplomatiques du pays, la clientele cathohque de la France dans le Monde’ (Journal Official/Débats parlementams Chambre des députés 9 11 1876, p. 8169)Google Scholar Under his grand ministry, Gambetta sought as well to maintain French influence in Egypt by arguing for joint intervention with the British in 1881 Agéron, C.-R, ‘Gambetta et la reprise de l' expansion colomale’, Revue française d'histoire d'Outre-mer (1972), pp 195–7Google Scholar.

68 According to Waldeck-Rousseau, it was Paul Bert and not Gambetta who coined the phrase ‘l'anticlencahsme n'est pas un article d'exportation’ Paul Bert did laud the work of the Catholic missionaries in a speech on his way to Tonkin in Suez In Tonkin, he of course died having been cared for by the Catholic sisters in a Hanoi hospital.

69 The case of Eugène Etienne's leadership of the Mission laique is perhaps the best evidence for the relative unimportance of the mission civilisatnce in early French colonialism Etienne professed to believe in the school, actually he and his colleagues in the parti colonial wanted to use the schools to educate a labour force for the colon interest in Algeria The Mission laique, while stocked with instituteurs and professeurs did not see clear of Etienne's real thinking on the export of the French school and became an instrument in his hands advocating an associationalist educational policy In 1904, Etienne did resign from the presidency of the Mission laique at the request of the other members in the Conseil d' Admmistration The disagreement Etienne had with the other officials was not however over educational policy Rather Etienne favoured the retention it of the missionaries in the short-term and therefore voted against a measure to suppress them See my article, ‘Ongines de la Mission laique’, pp 64–5.

70 The mission civilisatrice as an intellectual tradition has yet to find its historian Salon, Albert in his thesis does cite the principal exponents of the doctrine L' Action culturelle de la France, pp 294–393Google Scholar. It is well to keep in mind that whatever its associations with the ‘grande nation’ and the revolutionary fervour, the mission civilisatrice was equally indebted to Catholic messianism.

71 The origins of the Alliance française are discussed in my article on the Mission laïque: the two organizations – while being established twenty or so years apart – had a common founder: Pierre Foncin. To mark its centenary the Alliance française has published a sort of history, Brueziere, Maurice, L'Alliance française: Histoire d'une institution, 1883–1083, (Paris, 1983)Google Scholar. Unfortunately it is rather sketchy and incomplete as to the reasons for the Alliance française's foundation. For a fuller discussion of the Alliance française and the role of language in French cultural politics, see my ‘Origines de la Mission laique’, pp. 44–52; Laicité and the Levant, pp. 24–56.

72 As Marcel Saint-Germain, one of the key members in the parti colonial wrote: ‘Eh bien, puisqu'il s'agit de faire de la masse des indigènes non des savants mais des collaborateurs miles de nos colons, commerçants, entrepreneurs, industriels, planteurs, contentons-nous de leur donner le bagage restreint mais indispensable qui comblera cette fossé creuse entre les deux races par langage.’ Jaurès himself advised in an early speech to his local branch of the Alliance française that the natives only be taught the three basic tenses. (Speech reproduced in Jaurès, Jean, Textes choisis: Contre la Guerre it la Politique coloniale (ed. Rebérioux, Madeleine), (Paris, 1959), pp. 73–9Google Scholar.) Marc Michel in his doctorat d'état on the force noire during the First World War notes as well that the Senegalese were taught a simplified French – the French authorities not considering it important that their soldiers be able to express themselves in perfect French. L'Appel à I'Afrique (Paris, 1982), pp. 372–3Google Scholar.

73 Immediately after 1870, De Salve who was then still director of the Lycee impérial de Galata Sérai noted that in addition to the French military mission being suppressed by the Sultan, the French also lost some of their other marks of influence ‘il fut decide que l'enseignement de l'ecole de medecine cesserait de se donner en français, I'étude de cette langue disparut dans plusieurs ecoles turques et bien que la langue française fût de temps immemorial employee devant les tribunax civils de Constantinople, on vient de decider recemment, paraît-il, qu'on devra y plaider a l'avenir en langue turque’ Doubtless De Salve exaggerated the situation for French continued to be the most popular Western language way past 1870 France's cultural position was perhaps more tenuous as the perception of her world power status gradually declined.

74 See my thesis, Laicite and the Levant, pp 163–201.

75 The best account of the Jesuits' activity in Lebanon including a discussion of the Medical Faculty which was part of the Jesuits' Joseph, Saint University in Beirut is in Jullien, M., La Nouvelle Mission de la Compagme de Jesus en Syne, 1831–1895 (2 vols, Tours, 1895)Google Scholar The Nouvelle Sene (NS)in the AE also contains a set of archives on the school and the support it received from the French government AE NS, Turquie 125–128.

76 On the commission's findings, see my thesis Laicité and the Levant, pp. 264–7 Relevant documents in AE are: ‘Note de la Commission des Affaires syriennes’ (March, 1913), AE NS Turquie 120.

77 On the roles of Cambon, Paul and Delcassé, , see Laicité and the Levant, pp. 53–4, 84–9Google Scholar.

78 Ibid. pp. 243–53.

79 Salon, , L's Action culturelle de la France, pp. 187–4Google Scholar.

80 ‘Rapport sur la Syrie et la Palestine’, p. 5, AN Flandin MSS (as yet unclassed).

81 JODocPD, ‘Budget de l'exercice 1920’ (1920), p. 855.

82 The article was entitled ‘Lord Kitchener in Egypt’ which appeared in May, 1912 in the Fortnightly Review. The substance of the publication was transmitted by Paul Cambon to Poincaré, 3 May, AE NS, Turquie 116. Poincaré gave his speech in December, 1912 to the French Senate.

83 Three separate censuses were taken of students attending French schools in the Middle East before 1906 – in 1901, 1904 and 1906. Details of all three can be found in ‘Note pour le rapporteur’, 6 September 1906, AE C, Budget 1906, 67. Later in 1913, Louis Marin published new figures in his budget report. JODocPC, 1913 (S.E.), p. 464. Roughly in six years (1906–12) the Catholic sector had expanded by 8,000 pupils from 62,000 to 70,000 with the A.I.U. also reporting big gains in its student population after 1900.

84 The total cultural budget only began to be expanded in 1904 with the creation of the special chapter: ‘Œuvres françaises au Maroc’. Chapter 9 ‘bis’ as it was labelled was one of the most highly subsidized – growing from 310,000 francs to over 900,000 francs in its last year (1912). Its establishment however was entirely due to the French interest in Morocco and soon after Morocco was secured by the Algesiras accord, the budget chapter was abolished and the subsidies transferred to the Moroccan budget.

In terms of other budget chapters relating to French educational institutions outside of the Middle East, 1907 would appear to be the pivotal year. At that point, ‘Œuvres françaises d' Europe’ and ‘Œuvres françaises d'Amérique’ appeared in the budget. However in 1914, together they constituted about 8 percent of the total amount allocated to the French schools abroad.

85 Thobie, , ‘La France a-t-elle une politique culturelle?’, p. 25Google Scholar.

86 See Laïcé and the Levant, pp. 244–9.

87 Salon, , L'Action culturelle de la France, pp. 187–90Google Scholar.

88 This is revealed best possibly in Beirut after 1909 when the Mission laïque school had been founded. The consul was concerned much more that the French interests appear undivided and solidaire than he did about what each one taught. Hence the trouble he took to arrange a meeting between the head of the Jesuit Medical Faculty, Père Cattin and the director of the Misson laïque school, Dupourez in 1911. Dupourez to Aulard, 20 October 1911, AN 60, AJ 118. (Since 1971 the Mission laïque archives up through the 1940s have been deposited with the Archives nationales.)

89 Thobie, Jacques's doctorat d'état on Intérěts et impérialisme français is the authoritarian work for French economic and financial relations with the Ottoman Empire, 1895–1914Google Scholar. According the Thobie (pp. 61–2) in 1893–4 France was third in importing Ottoman goods after England who took the largest share (37.5per cent) followed by the Austro-Hungarians (15 per cent), then France (11.45 per cent). In terms of exports France was in a better position selling 26.85 Per cent of the goods purchased by the Ottoman Empire. England still outdistanced her at 43.25 per cent. Thobie dates the decline in fact from after the Napoleonic defeat in Egypt, although following the Crimean War there was an expansion in French economic activity in the Ottoman Empire and indeed certain regions such as Lebanon came under French dominance.

90 Reported by Foncin, Pierre in the Bulletin de l'Alliance française, 10–12, 1894Google Scholar.

91 Colonna, Fanny, Instituteurs algériens, 1883–1919) (Paris, 1975), p. 49Google Scholar.

92 Agéron, C.-R., Les Algériens musulmans et la France, 1871–1919 (2 vols., Paris, 1968), pp. 317–37, 397–477Google Scholar.

93 ‘Origines de la Mission laique’, pp. 49–50.

94 Only in the urban centres was there a sufficient laique clientele for the Mission laique to survive, hence Beirut, Alexandria, Cairo, Salonika were the sites of the Mission laique's first schools.