Colonial Policy - Second Empire Expansion
By 1857 Louis-Napoleon had been persuaded that invasion was the best course of action, and French warships were instructed to take Tourane without any further efforts to negotiate with the Vietnamese. Tourane was captured in late 1858 and Gia Dinh (Saigon and later Ho Chi Minh City) in early 1859. The French navy was in the forefront of the conquest of Indochina. In 1863 Admiral de la Grandiere, the governor of Cochinchina (as the French renamed Nam Bo), forced the Cambodian king to accept a French protectorate over that country, claiming that the Treaty of Saigon had made France heir to Vietnamese claims in Cambodia. In June 1867, the admiral completed the annexation of Cochinchina by seizing the remaining three western provinces. The following month, the Siamese government agreed to recognize a French protectorate over Cambodia in return for the cession of two Cambodian provinces, Angkor and Battambang, to Siam. With Cochinchina secured, French naval and mercantile interests turned to Tonkin (as the French referred to Bac Bo).
Napoleon III. did not understand, any more than did Charles X. or LouisPhilippe, the advantage of a colonial policy. He was drawn, in spite of himself, and by economic necessities which it was impossible for him to avoid, to the Sahara and to mysterious Asia. He went against his will, hesitating to keep the advantages won, and he did not anticipate the great and glorious achievements that his timid and random expeditions would permit his successors to undertake and to carry out. Moreover, the close alliance with Great Britain, which was the main consideration of the first period of his reign, forbade an active competition with his new ally, the mistress of the seas and already an aspirant for commercial supremacy.
In, Africa, Marshal Randon gave a vigorous impetus to the exploration of the Sahara. The capture of Laghuat (1852), soon followed by the capitulation of the Mzab (1853), tne submission and then the cooperation of Si Hamza, who destroyed the sultanate of Wargla in order to hand it over to France, made conditions particularly favorable for commercial undertakings. In the direction of Ghadames, a young explorer, Henri Duveyrier, succeeded in penetrating among the Tuaregs Azdjer, thanks to the protection of the marabut sheikh Othman, whom Si Hamza had succeeded in bringing to Algiers. To try to reap advantage from this trip, the Mircher expedition signed, in 1862, the agreement known as the treaty of Ghadames. There might have been some doubt as to the value of this treaty, which was concluded with subordinate persons whose authority rested only on verbal assurances, and of which the real meaning, in the opinion of the Tuaregs, was to reserve to Khenoukhen and to his successors the collection of tolls upon French caravans. M. Rouher was, therefore, making a bold statement when he asserted that this treaty gave perfect safety to French or Algerian.
The murder of Messrs. Dournaux-Dupere and Joubert was soon to prove the contrary. The question was nevertheless opened, and from 1863 on, all those who were obliged to solve Algerian difficulties must deal with the question of the Sahara. Indeed, from this was derived the whole of French policy in North Africa.
It was not only on the shores of the Mediterranean, but on the Atlantic as well that the African policy of France was working its course aside from direct governmental influence. The little colony of the Senegal, admirably governed by Faidherbe, was increased by Cayor and the country of the Trarza Moors, while the river became French as far as Medine. Regular and moderate tribute was exacted from the native chiefs, and all the rubber trade, the only one then remunerative, was directed to St. Louis. Thus was justified the opinion that was expressed as early as 1802 by Le Brasseur, governor of the African Coast, "The natural course of the rubber trade from the Sahara should be toward the banks of the Senegal, and the masters of this river will always control it, if their conduct be firm, politic, and reasonable." Faidherbe, with a sort of premonition of the future, sent, in 1863, the naval lieutenant Mage to study the country between the Senegal and the Niger, with express orders to establish French posts thirty leagues apart, as future commercial stations and places of protection for the caravans. This was the great commercial route from the Senegal to the Niger, from St. Louis to Bamaku, which Faidherbe was thus opening up for his successors, who, in following out his policy, have finished what he so well began.
The French expedition to China, in 1860, had directed attention to the Eastern questions, and had revealed the immense wealth hidden in the mighty Middle Empire. It had also proved the importance for a commercial nation such as France of having a footing on the continent of Asia and of making sure, if necessary, of trading posts in that region of the world. The Indian ports, crushed and lost in the vast English colonies, were almost useless. If this policy did not appear clearly to the ministers of that time, it was understood by men of initiative and by farseeing colonists such as Admirals La Grandiere and Bonard and the explorer Francis Garnier.
When, as a result of the two expeditions against the Emperor of Annam, France found itself in possession of an immense colony which it had neither desired nor sought, it did not understand the bearing of this result. Napoleon III, badly advised, even thought of giving up the new acquisition, and it must be acknowledged that public opinion, which at that time confused Mexico and Cochin China, crazy expeditions and productive undertakings, would have almost unanimously approved his action, if he had done so. It took nothing less than the energy of Chasseloup-Laubat and Victor Duruy, or the headstrong persistency of Francis Garnier and Rieunier to force the government's hand and to help to hold for France, in spite of France, the colony which was to be the centre of the Indo-Chinese Empire.
"This country adjacent to China," said Admiral Dupre, "will be the natural outlet of the rich southwestern provinces, a question of life and death for the future of the French control and commerce in the Far East." The protectorate established over Cambodia, in 1868, and the exploration of the Mekong by Doudart de Lagree extended French influence and commerce towards the roads to the interior and towards the Chinese frontier. Henceforth the line of expansion in Indo-China was marked out.
Two events had an important influence on the development of French colonies between 1860 and 1870: first, the new trade policy that was outlined by the commercial treaties of 1860, and secondly, the opening of the Suez Canal. The latter event resulted in a narrowing of the boundaries of the world, an increase in the bitterness and activity of commercial competition, and the necessity on the part of European nations of finding in the most remote lands outlets and trading places. This route, thus opened between three worlds so diverse in race, climate, and products, changed the great commercial lines. It directed them from the Atlantic and America towards the Orient where people once had met. The day when ships crossed the Red Sea on their way to the Indian Ocean, the necessity for France of an Indo-Chinese Empire became more evident than ever before, and the conquest of Cochin China was that day justified. Much more, statesmen divined the imperative necessity of not allowing formidable competitors to take possession of this Red Sea passage as had been true of the way by the Cape.
Though an attempt made on the coast of Abyssinia failed for lack of perseverance, though the timidity of political action prevented, at that time, the conquest of Madagascar, and though this same timidity prevented the Empire from asserting indisputable French rights to Sheikh-Said, the occupation, at any rate, of Obok, in 1862, seemed to assure us a useful post at the entrance to the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. However, the direction of colonial policy was changed. Without neglecting Northern Africa, of which Algeria and Senegal placed in her hands the two most useful keys, France was to be drawn into an active policy in Asia and in the Indian Ocean. It is clear that in spite of evident neglect and the desire to refrain from external activity, the colonial policy of the Second Empire was not without its fruits. It even planted, without wishing and without intending it, the first stakes of the future transmarine Empire.
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