Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:19:11.843Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

FRENCH EMPIRE ELITES AND THE POLITICS OF ECONOMIC OBLIGATION IN THE INTERWAR YEARS*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2009

MARTIN THOMAS
MARTIN THOMAS*
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
*
Department of History, University of Exeter, EX4 4RJ[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article considers the changing ways in which French political elites understood imperial obligation in the interwar years. It suggests that the economics of imperial rule and disputes over what could and should be done to develop colonial economies provide the key to understanding both the failure of interwar colonial reforms and the irreversible decline in France's grip over its colonies. In making this case, the article investigates four related colonial policy debates, all variously linked to changing conceptualizations of economic obligation among France's law-makers. The first concerns Albert Sarraut's 1921 empire development plan. The second reviews discussions over the respective obligations of the state and private financiers in regenerating colonial economies during the depression years of the early 1930s. The third debate reassesses policymakers' disputes over colonial industrialization. Finally, the article revisits the apparent failure of the investigative studies of economic and labour reforms conceived by the left-leaning Popular Front in 1936–8. The point is to highlight the extent to which senior political figures clashed over concepts of ‘colonial obligation’ viewed less in the cultural terms of ‘civilizing mission’ than in the material sense of economic outlay.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 2009 , pp. 989 - 1016
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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.)

Footnotes

*

Research for this article was supported by the Leverhulme Trust and the Nuffield Foundation. The author wishes to thank Martin Horn, Talbot Imlay, Peter Jackson, Patricia Lorcin, Ann Stoler, and the journal's editors and reviewers for their advice on earlier drafts.

References

1 There is a parallel to be drawn here with the impending Vichy years and the gap between declared policy intentions and actual capacity to effect economic change under the constraints of partial occupation, see Mouré, Kenneth, ‘Economic choice in dark times: the Vichy economy’, French Politics, Culture and Society, 25 (2007), pp. 109–16Google Scholar.

2 Jacques Marseille, Empire colonial et capitalisme français. Histoire d'un divorce (Paris, 1984), p. 370.

3 Alice Conklin shows how ‘civilizing mission’ was rethought after 1918 in her A mission to civilize: the republican idea of empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford, CA, 1997), especially chs. 6–7.

4 Wilder, Gary, ‘Framing Greater France between the wars’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 14 (2001), p. 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also paraphrased in Furlough, Ellen, ‘Une leçon des choses: tourism, empire, and the nation in interwar France’, French Historical Studies, 25 (2002), p. 441CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 For succinct analyses of these intermediaries' roles, see Osborn, Emily Lynn, ‘“Circle of iron”: African colonial employees and the interpretation of colonial rule in French West Africa’, Journal of African History, 44 (2003), pp. 29–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James E. Genova, Colonial ambivalence, cultural authenticity, and the limitations of mimicry in French-ruled West Africa, 1914–1956 (New York, NY, 2004), especially ch. 1; Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Between metropole and colony: rethinking a research agenda’, in Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, eds., Tensions of empire: colonial cultures in a bourgeois world (Berkeley, CA, 1997), pp. 4, 29; Conklin, A mission to civilize, pp. 199–208.

6 William B. Cohen, Rulers of empire: the French colonial service in Africa (Stanford, CA, 1971), and his ‘The lure of empire: why Frenchmen entered the colonial service’, Journal of Contemporary History, 4 (1969), pp. 103–16. Informative French studies of reformist interwar colonial governors include: Daniel Rivet, Lyautey et l'institution du protectorat français au Maroc, 1912–1925 (3 vols., Paris, 1988); Cantier, Jacques, ‘Les gouverneurs Viollette et Bordes et la politique algérienne de la France à la fin des années vingt’, Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, 84 (1997), pp. 25–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Koerner, Francis, ‘Un socialiste auvergnat governeur général d'Indochine: le cas d'Alexandre Varenne (1925–1928)’, Revue historique, 285 (1991), pp. 133–45Google Scholar.

7 Useful works here are Bayly, Susan, ‘French anthropologists and the Durkheimians in colonial Indochina’, Modern Asian Studies, 34 (2000), pp. 581–622Google Scholar; and Francis Simonis, Le commandant en tournée: une administration au contact des populations en Afrique noire coloniale (Paris, 2005); and the two-volume edited collection on The French colonial mind forthcoming with University of Nebraska Press in 2010.

8 Recent additions to this literature are: Pascal Blanchard and Sandrine Lemaire, eds., Culture impériale 1931–1961: les colonies au coeur de la République (Paris, 2004); and Pascal Blanchard and Nicholas Bancel, eds., Culture post-coloniale, 1961–2006 (Paris, 2005), especially Nicholas Bancel and Pascal Blanchard, ‘Mémoire coloniale: résistances à l’émergence d'un débat', pp. 22–41, and Françoise Vergès, ‘Malaise dans la République: mémoires troublées, territoires oubliés’, pp. 69–82. See also Liauzu, Claude, ‘Les historiens saisis par les guerres de mémoires coloniales’, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 54 (2005), pp. 99–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aldrich, Robert, ‘Colonial past, post-colonial present: history wars French-style’, History Australia, 3 (2006), pp. 14.1–14.9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Conklin, A mission to civilize; Gary Wilder, The French imperial nation state: negritude and colonial humanism between the two world wars (Chicago, IL, 2005); Dino Costantini, Mission civilisatrice: le rôle de l'histoire coloniale dans la construction de l'identité politique française (Paris, 2008).

10 ‘M. Albert Sarraut blessé’, La dépêche de Toulouse, 17 Dec. 1918, Albert Sarraut papers, 12j05, Archives Départmentales de l'Aude (ADA), Carcassonne.

11 Wilder, The French imperial nation-state, pp. 83–4. The ‘Sarraut Plan’ sobriquet was itself recognition of the new-style development planning it articulated.

12 For a subtle reading of Sarraut's views on race and cultural difference, see Rosenberg, Clifford, ‘Albert Sarraut and republican racial thought’, French Politics, Culture and Society, 20 (2002), pp. 98–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Emmanuelle Sibeud, Une science impériale pour l'Afrique? La construction des savoirs africanistes en France 1878–1930 (Paris, 2002), pp. 265–6. A member of Edouard Herriot's reformist Cartel des gauches administration, Daladier was on good terms with two of the Institute's three founders, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and Marcel Mauss, and probably with the third, another man of the left, Paul Rivet.

14 Some of these changes were echoed in British universities, the London School of Economics for instance, where a course of lectures in comparative colonial administration began in 1933, see Mair, L. P., ‘Colonial administration as a science’, Journal of the Royal African Society, 32 (1933), p. 369Google Scholar.

15 Benoît de l'Estoile, ‘Rationalizing colonial domination? Anthropology and native policy in French-ruled Africa’, in Benoît de l'Estoile, Federico Neiburg, and Lygia Sigaud, eds., Empires, nations and natives: anthropology and state-making (Durham, 2005), pp. 31–4, 41–2.

16 Sherman, Daniel J., ‘“Peoples ethnographic”: objects, museums, and the colonial inheritance of French ethnology’, French Historical Studies, 27 (2004), pp. 670–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a different view, see Genova, Colonial ambivalence, pp. 99–101.

17 Bayly, ‘French anthropologists’, p. 582.

18 Conklin, Alice L., ‘The new “ethnology” and “la situation coloniale” in interwar France’, French Politics, Culture, and Society, 20 (2002), pp. 29–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bayly, ‘French anthropologists’, pp. 582–4. Regarding the pitfalls of ethnographic constructions of African ‘tribalism’, see Spear, Thomas, ‘Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in British colonial Africa’, Journal of African History, 44 (2003), pp. 8–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Gary Wilder, ‘Colonial ethnology and political rationality in French West Africa’, in Helen Tilley with Robert J. Gordon, eds., Ordering Africa: anthropology, European imperialism, and the politics of knowledge (Manchester, 2007), pp. 337–9; Sherman, ‘“Peoples ethnographic”’, pp. 683–4. Regarding the establishment of the Museum of Man (Musée de l'homme), see Conklin, Alice L., ‘Civil society, science, and empire in late republican France: The foundation of Paris's Museum of Man’, Osiris, 17 (2002), pp. 255–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Wilder, ‘Colonial ethnology’, pp. 353–5.

21 ‘Projet de loi portant fixation d'un programme général de mise en valeur des colonies françaises’, no. 2449, Chambre des Députés, douzième législature, séance du 12 avril 1921, Sarraut papers, 12j163, ADA.

22 Drawing on proposals put forward by an advisory group, the national committee for African railway development, the Sarraut Plan set aside 497 million francs for railway construction in French West Africa alone. The aim was to connect the federation's Sahelian interior with its major coastal ports, see E. du Vivier de Streel, vice-president, Comité National du Rail Africain, to Sarraut, 5 Feb. 1920, 12j163, ADA; Idrissa Kimba, ‘L’échec d'une politique d'intégration: les projets ferroviaires et le territoire du Niger (1880–1940)', in Charles Becker et al., AOF: réalités et héritages: sociétés ouest-africaines et ordre colonial, 1895–1960 (Dakar, 1997), i, pp. 461–2.

23 Sarraut's welfare proposals built on earlier schemes devised by a previous governor of French West Africa, Émile Roume, in the early 1900s, see: Conklin, A mission to civilize, pp. 49–50; Myron Echenberg, Black death, white medicine: bubonic plague and the politics of public health in colonial Senegal, 1914–1945 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 27, 257.

24 Genova, Colonial ambivalence, pp. 62, 100.

25 ‘Considérations dont les représentants de l'Union pourraient s'inspirer’, Union Coloniale memo., n.d., Sarraut papers, 12j162/dossier 2, ADA.

26 ‘Avis de la Commission du commerce et de l'industrie de la Chambre des Députés sur le projet: mise en valeur des colonies françaises’, par Adrien Artaud, Député, n.d. 1922, Sarraut papers, 12j163, ADA.

27 Ghislaine Mathy, ‘Y a-t-il une politique d'infrastructure de l'AOF’, in Becker et al., AOF: réalités et héritages, i, p. 469. Mathy is understandably dismissive of Sarraut's infrastructure planning because the finances were never made available to bring it to fruition.

28 Cantier, ‘Les gouverneurs Viollette et Bordes’, pp. 27–37. Steeg returned to Paris to take up the post of minister of justice in Paul Painlevé's second government.

29 Ibid., pp. 30–3. Duroux owned three Algiers daily newspapers: L'Algérie, Les nouvelles, and, most important, L'echo d'Alger.

30 Viollette letter to Sarraut, 6 Oct. 1927, Sarraut papers, 12j259, ADA.

31 Cantier, ‘Les gouverneurs Viollette et Bordes’, pp. 34–43.

32 For indispensable, contrasting views of Parti colonial membership, see the classic articles: Andrew, C. M. and Kanya-Forstner, A. S., ‘The French “colonial party”: its composition, aims and influence, 1885–1914’, Historical Journal, 14 (1971), pp. 99–128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Abrams, L. and Miller, D. J., ‘Who were the French colonialists? A reassessment of the Parti colonial, 1890–1914’, Historical Journal, 19 (1976), pp. 685–725CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Ageron, Charles-Robert, ‘Les colonies devant l'opinion publique française (1919–1939)’, Revue française d'histoire d'Outre-Mer, 77 (1990), pp. 35–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 See Laffey, John F., ‘Lyonnais imperialism in the Far East, 1900–1938’, Modern Asian Studies, 10 (1976), pp. 226, 241–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar (quote at p. 226); and, more broadly, his ‘Municipal imperialism in decline: the Lyon Chamber of Commerce, 1925–1938’, French Historical Studies, 9 (1975), pp. 329–53.

35 The example of the West African colony of Dahomey is instructive here: the indigenous trader class was economically marginalized in the depression years by a stronger alliance between the colonial administration and the colony's French trading houses, see Bellarmin C. Codo and Sylvain C. Anignikin, ‘Pouvoir colonial et tentatives d'intégration africaines dans le système capitaliste: le cas du Dahomey entre les deux guerres’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 16 (1982), pp. 336–41.

36 A Professor of Biology at Montpellier University, Laurent Perrier was Radical party senator for the Isère and minister of colonies in the third Painlevé cabinet (1925–6), and in Aristide Briand's three coalition ministries from 1926 to 1928. A former inspector of finances in France and Morocco, a national fencing champion, and a prolific writer renowned for his economic expertise, François Piétri served three short terms at the Ministry of Colonies between 1929 and 1933. Another financial specialist, member of the Chamber finance commission, and leading light of the centre-right Alliance démocratique, Paul Reynaud arrived at the Ministry of Colonies in 1931 after a brief spell as finance minister in 1930 during which he attempted to increase the volume of empire trade and stabilize colonial commodity prices. The Socialist Albert Thomas made his name as wartime minister of munitions. His career at the International Labour Organization is discussed in Fine, Martin, ‘Albert Thomas: a reformer's vision of modernization’, Journal of Contemporary History, 12 (1977), pp. 545–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine, ‘Mutation de l'impérialisme colonial français dans les années 30’, African Economic History, 4 (1977), pp. 127–9Google Scholar; and her ‘L'impact des intérêts coloniaux: S.C.O.A. et C.F.A.O. dans l'ouest africain, 1910–1965’, Journal of African History, 16 (1975), pp. 600–8. More generally, see Hubert Bonin, Catherine Hodeir, and Jean-François Klein, L'esprit économique impérial (1870–1970): groupes de pression et réseaux du patronat colonial en France et dans l'empire (Paris, 2008).

38 Daniel Lefeuvre, Chère Algérie: comptes et mécomptes de la tutelle coloniale, 1930–1962 (Paris, 1997), pp. 4–5; Marseille, Empire colonial et capitalisme français, p. 68.

39 ‘Rapport fait par M. Moretti, inspecteur des colonies, concernant la situation financière du budget local de la Cochinchine’, 28 May 1932, no. 36, Mission d'inspection Demongin, 1931–2, Indochine fonds ministériels, FM/INDO/NF2490, Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer (CAOM), Aix-en-Provence.

40 On the centrality of rice production to Indochina's economic survival, see Irene Nørlund, ‘Rice and the colonial lobby: the economic crisis in French Indo-China in the 1920s and 1930s’, in Peter Boomgaard and Ian Brown, eds., Weathering the storm: the economies of South East Asia in the 1930s depression (Singapore, 2000), pp. 201–11.

41 Established in 1875 by two financial concerns, the Comptoir d'escompte de Paris and Crédit industriel et financiel, the Bank originally issued currency only in the colony of Cochin-China and the French Indian enclave of Pondicherry. With the march of French imperial expansion, it extended its currency operations to New Caledonia, Tonkin, Annam, Cambodia, and French Somaliland. By 1896 three other large French banks – Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, Société Générale, and Crédit Lyonnais – had invested in the bank and joined its governing board, making the Bank of Indochina one of the most heavily capitalized institutions in Paris, see: Gonjo, Yasuo, ‘La banque colonial et l’état: la Banque de l'Indochine devant l'interventionnisme (1917–1931)', Le mouvement social, 142 (1988), pp. 45–6, 50Google Scholar, and, more generally, Gonjo, Banque colonial ou Banque d'affaires: la Banque de l'Indochine sous la IIIème République (Paris, 1998); Marc Meuleau, Des pionniers en Extrême-Orient: histoire de la Banque de l'Indochine, 1875–1975 (Paris, 1990).

42 ‘Question de prêts aux planteurs de caoutchoucs’, n.d., probably Mar. 1914, André Crémazy, president of the Indochina rubber planters' association, memo., papiers d'agents Albert Sarraut, 9/PA/15, CAOM.

43 Kham Vorapheth, Commerce et colonisation en Indochine, 1860–1945: les maisons de commerce françaises: un siècle d'aventure humaine (Paris, 2004), pp. 294–5.

44 Direction des affaires politiques ‘Note sur la Banque de l'Indochine’, n.d., 1937, papiers d'agents Marius Moutet, 28/PA/5, dossier 131, CAOM.

45 Vorapheth, Commerce et colonisation en Indochine, p. 375.

46 Section de Centralisation du Renseignement sÛreté générale (Hanoi) to Colonies, Direction des affaires politiques, 8 Oct. 1930, no. 5648, Sarraut papers, 12j301, ADA; Rapports politiques mensuels, janvier 1931–avril 1934, affaires politiques Cochinchine, 1931–4, FM/INDO/NF2649, CAOM.

47 Gonjo, ‘La banque colonial et l’état', pp. 50–5.

48 ‘Programme de mise en valeur et d'intensification de la production coloniale’, n.d., Nov. 1926, Sarraut papers, 12j163, ADA. This proposal detailed the first five-year tranche of Ministry of Colonies spending required to complete the original 1921 development scheme.

49 Gonjo, ‘La banque colonial et l’état', pp. 58–60.

50 Ibid., pp. 61–70.

51 Direction des affaires politiques, ‘Note sur la Banque de l'Indochine’, n.d., 1937, Moutet papers, 28/PA/5, dossier 131, CAOM.

52 ‘Projet de loi portant organisation de l’économie coloniale et intégration de cette économie dans l'économie métropolitaine', draft, n.d. 1933, Sarraut papers, 12j174, ADA.

53 ‘Le problème colonial. Discussion de l'exposé de M. Albert Sarraut présenté au Comité les 10, 17 et 24 Mars 1932’, Comité parlementaire français du commerce, Séance du Jeudi 23 Juin 1933, Sarraut papers, 12j55, ADA.

54 Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine, ‘Colonisation ou impérialisme: la politique africaine de la France entre les deux guerres’, Le mouvement social, 107 (1979), pp. 58–61Google Scholar.

55 Paul Bernard, Le problem économique indochinois (Paris, 1934), and Nouveaux aspects du problem économique indochinois (Paris, 1937).

56 Direction des Finances report on agricultural debt, 15 Nov. 1932, signed by Governor-General Pierre Pasquier, FM/INDO/NF2292, CAOM.

57 Marseille, Jacques, ‘L'industrialisation des colonies: affaiblissement ou renforcement de la puissance française?’, Revue française d'histoire d'Outre-Mer, 69 (1982), pp. 24–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 ‘Rapport fait par M. Moretti, Inspecteur des Colonies, concernant la situation financière du budget local de la Cochinchine’, 28 May 1932, Mission Demongin, 1931–2, FM/INDO/NF2490, CAOM.

59 ‘Note sur les mesures susceptibles d'atténuer les effets de la crise économique en Indochine, notamment en Cochinchine’, Paris, 8 Apr. 1934, FM/INDO/NF2675, CAOM.

60 Hardy, Andrew, ‘The economics of French rule in Indochina: a biography of Paul Bernard (1892–1960)’, Modern Asian Studies, 32 (1998), pp. 812–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Frederick Cooper, ‘The dialectics of decolonization: nationalism and labor movements in postwar French Africa’, in Cooper and Stoler, eds., Tensions of empire, pp. 409–11.

62 Élisabeth Mouilleau, Fonctionnaires de la république et artisans de l'empire: le cas des contrôleurs civils en Tunisie (1881–1956) (Paris, 2000), pp. 145–59, 170–6, 211–18.

63 Brocheux, Pierre, ‘Le prolétariat des plantations d'hévéas au Vietnam méridional: aspects sociaux et politiques (1927–1937)’, Le mouvement social, 90 (1975), pp. 57–63Google Scholar.

64 ‘Incidents chez Michelin (1930–1934)’, FM/INDO/NF1839, CAOM; Brocheux, ‘Le prolétariat des plantations’, pp. 66–71.

65 ‘Aperçu de l’œuvre accompli en Indochine par Alexandre Varenne', Moutet papers, PA/28/4, dossier Varenne/sous-dossier 59, CAOM.

66 ‘Impressions d'Algérie’, Victor Basch article, n.d., but probably Jan. 1937, carton 2, Charles Dumas papers, Institut d'histoire social, Nanterre; Claude Liauzu, Histoire de l'anti-colonialisme en France: du XVIe siècle à nos jours (Paris, 2007), pp. 131–4. The Ligue des droits de l'homme was a major presence in the colonies. During the interwar years its Moroccan section alone included some 1,800 members divided into eighteen sub-groups (although these were only opened to Moroccan membership from 1932).

67 William D. Irvine, Between justice and politics: the Ligue des droits de l'homme, 1898–1945 (Stanford, CA, 2007), pp. 144–5. As Irvine points out, colonial policy was always secondary to more pressing European concerns in interwar League debates about international affairs, despite the efforts of the Ligue des droits de l'homme's few genuine anti-colonialists such as Félicien Challaye; see also Liauzu, Histoire de l'anti-colonialisme, p. 135.

68 This argument is forcefully put in Van Nguyen-Marshall, ‘The moral economy of colonialism: subsistence and famine relief in French Indo-China, 1906–1917’, International History Review, 27 (2005), pp. 237–58.

69 ‘Rapport à M. le Président du Conseil au sujet de la conférence de la France métropolitaine et d'Outre-Mer’, 12 Feb. 1935, F60 747, Tunisie, prime minister's office papers, Archives Nationales (AN), Paris.

70 ‘Réorganisation du Ministère des colonies’, Ministère des colonies, Direction du personnel et de la comptabilité, to minister of finances, 16 May 1935, Moutet papers, 28/PA/5, dossier 142, CAOM.

71 Cohen, Rulers of empire, pp. 98–104; Wilder, The French imperial nation-state, pp. 61–3.

72 Rossiter, Adrian, ‘Popular Front economic policy and the Matignon negotiations’, Historical Journal, 30 (1987), pp. 663–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Julian Jackson, The Popular Front in France: defending democracy (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 168–9, 183–8.

73 Georges Le Beau, Algiers, to Interior Ministry under-secretary, 20 Aug. 1936, no. 3926, Dumas papers, Institut d'histoire social, Nanterre.

74 The fullest evaluation of the Popular Front's colonial reforms is Tony Chafer and Amanda Sackur, eds., French colonial empire and the Popular Front: hope and disillusion (London, 1999).

75 See ibid., part ii, especially Catherine Cocquery-Vidrovitch, ‘The Popular Front and the colonial question: French West Africa: an example of reformist colonialism’, Ghislaine Lydon, ‘Women, children and the Popular Front's mission of inquiry in French West Africa’, and France Tostain, ‘The Popular Front and the Blum-Viollette plan, 1936–1937’, pp. 155–87, 218–29.

76 For an excellent Bourdieu-influenced discussion of pressure for reform from colonial populations, see James E. Genova, ‘The empire within: the colonial Popular Front in France, 1934–1938’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 26 (2001). The sharpest analysis of the relevance of Bourdieu's theories to understanding international policymaking is Jackson, Peter, ‘Pierre Bourdieu, the “cultural turn” and the practice of international history’, Review of International Studies, 34 (2008), pp. 155–81Google Scholar.

77 ‘Politique républicaine colonial’, n.d., June 1936, ministère des colonies note, Moutet papers, 28/PA/1, CAOM; Lewis, James I., ‘The tragic career of Marius Moutet’, European History Quarterly, 38 (2008), p. 67CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This article focuses on Moutet's second term at the rue Oudinot in 1946–7, not on his first in the 1930s.

78 Robert Delavignette, ‘Le Front populaire devant l'Afrique noire’, L'Afrique française, 46 (1936), pp. 252–5.

79 Assemblée nationale, XVIème legislature, AN, carton 15150, Commission de l'Algérie, des colonies et des protectorats, séance du mardi 16 Juin 1936. Nouelle won the commission vote by 18 to 13; Taittinger was duly selected as vice-president. Regarding Nouelle and other Socialist advocates of reform, see Cohen, William B., ‘The colonial policy of the Popular Front’, French Historical Studies, 7 (1972), pp. 368–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 Commission de l'Algérie, des colonies et des protectorats, séance du 6 AoÛt 1936; séance du 6 Novembre 1936, C15150, Assemblée nationale, XVIème Législature, AN. Lagrossillière presided over the Algeria commission, leading an investigative mission to the colony in Mar.–Apr. 1937. But the commission only submitted its preliminary findings on 6 July 1937, almost three weeks after the fall of Blum's first government, ‘Rapport présenté à la commission de l'Algérie, des colonies et des pays de protectorat au nom de la sous-commission d'enquête en Algérie’, 6 July 1937, C15150.

81 Direction des affaires politiques note, 7 Dec. 1936, Moutet papers 28/PA/4, CAOM.

82 ‘Note sur l'action menée aux Ministère des Colonies depuis le 4 Juin 1936’, Direction des affaires politiques, Moutet papers, 28/PA/4, CAOM.

83 ‘Bilan de l'action enterprise au département par le Ministre en matière économique (Juin 1936 – Octobre 1937)’, Direction des affaires politiques 3e bureau, Moutet papers, 28/PA/4, CAOM.

84 René Gallissot, La République française et les indigènes: Algérie colonisée, Algérie algérienne (1870–1962) (Paris, 2006), pp. 107–10, 117–20.

85 Benjamin Stora, Nationalistes algériens et révolutionnaires français au temps du Front populaire (Paris, 1987), pp. 66–82, 86–97 passim; Mahfoud Kaddache, Histoire du nationalisme algérien, i: Question nationale et politique algérienne, 1919–1951 (Algiers, 1993).

86 James McDougall, History and the culture of nationalism in Algeria (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 129–30, 135.

87 SFIO, Fédération d'Alger, Secretary P. Cremadez letter to Interior Minister Marx Dormoy, 5 Dec. 1937, carton 1, Dumas papers, Institut d'histoire social, Nanterre.

88 Kamel Kateb, Européens, ‘indigènes’ et juifs en Algérie (1830–1962) (Paris, 2001), pp. 185–207; Patricia Lorcin, Imperial identities: stereotyping, prejudice and race in colonial Algeria (London, 1999), pp. 217–27.

89 ‘Note sur les famines pour M. Le Directeur des affaires politiques’, 15 June 1936; Direction des affaires politiques, 2e bureau circular to governors of Afrique occidentale française, Afrique equatoriale française, and mandate commissioners, 24 June 1936 (regarding famine avoidance), 28/PA/5, dossier 149, Moutet papers, CAOM.

90 Résident-supérieur au Laos to Governor-General Brévié, Hanoi, 27 Apr. 1937, ‘Mauvaise recolte de riz au Laos’, no. 1431/AG, FM/INDO/NF642, CAOM.

91 Minister of colonies, direction des affaires politiques 2e bureau to colonial governors and commissioners, ‘Réforme de la fiscalité colonial en suite de la conférence des gouverneurs généraux’, 6 Jan. 1937, FM/INDO/NF639, CAOM.

92 ‘Rapport sur la fiscalité colonial’, conférence des gouverneurs généraux draft report, Nov. 1936, 28/PA/5, dossier 130, Moutet papers, CAOM.

93 Stephen L. Harp suggests that this disjuncture was replicated in consumer society; see his ‘Marketing in the metropole: French rubber plantations and French consumerism in the early twentieth century’, in Kevin J. Callahan and Sarah A. Curtis, eds., Views from the margins: creating identities in modern France (Lincoln, NE, 2008), pp. 92–101.

94 Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in question: theory, knowledge, history (Berkeley, CA, 2005), pp. 28–9, 175–6; Wilder, The French imperial nation-state, pp. 124–8.

95 Ageron, ‘Les colonies devant l'opinion publique’, pp. 31–73.

96 Martin Thomas, The French empire between the wars: imperialism, politics and society (Manchester, 2005), ch. 9.