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French Colonies

Modern	former	From	To
Algeria		1830	1962
Benin	Dahomey	1883	1960
Burkina Faso	French Upper Volta	1896	1960
Cambodia	Cambodia	1863	1954
Cameroon		1918	1960
Canada	Quebec	1608	1760
Central African Republic	Oubangui-Chari	1894	1960
Chad		1900	1960
Chagos Archipelago		1721	1814
Comoros		1866	1975
Congo Republic	French Congo	1875	1960
Djibouti	French Somaliland	1862	1977
Dominica		1635	1805
Dominican Republic		1795	1809
Egypt		1798	1801
Gambia	Albreda	1681	1857
Gabon		1839	1960
Grenada		1652	1783
Guinea	French Guinea	1891	1958
Haiti	Saint-Domingue	1627	1804
India	The Carnatic	1741	1754
India	Hyderabad	1741	1754
India	Chandernagore	1673	1950
India	Mahé	1721	1954
India	Karikal	1725	1954
India	Pondicherry	1765	1954
India	Yanaon	1816	1954
Ivory Coast	Côte d'Ivoire	1843	1960
Laos	Laos	1893	1954
Lebanon		1860	1943
Libya	Fezzan	1943	1951
Madagascar		1642	1960
Mali	French Sudan	1883	1960
Mauritania		1902	1960
Mauritius	Ile de France	1715	1810
Mexico	Empire of Maximillian	1861	1867
Montserrat		1664	1783
Morocco	French Morocco	1912	1956
Niger		1890	1960
Seychelles		1756	1810
Senegal		1637	1960
St Croix	l'Acadie	1604	1605
St Kitts & Nevis	Saint Christophe	1628	1783
St Lucia	Sainte-Lucia	1650	1815
St Vincent	Grenadines	1719	1783
Syria		1920	1943
Syria	Sanjak of Alexandretta	1920	1943
Tobago		1666	1803
Togo	French Togoland	1918	1960
Tunisia		1881	1956
United States</td>	Louisiana	1682	1804
Vanuatu	New Hebrides	1887	1980
Vietnam	Annam	1883	1954
Vietnam	Cochin China	1858	1954
Vietnam	Tongking	1884	1954
Yemen	Cheik-Saïd peninsula	1868	1869
Current Posessions
Bassas da India		1897	xxxx
Clipperton Island		1711	xxxx
Europa Island		1897	xxxx
French Antarctic		1840	xxxx
French Guiana		1503	xxxx
French Polynesia		1843	xxxx
French West Indies	Guadeloupe	1635	xxxx
	Martinique	1635	xxxx
	St. Barthélemy	1648	xxxx
	St. Martin	1648	xxxx
Glorioso Islands		1880	xxxx
Juan de Nova Island		1897	xxxx
Mayotte		1841	xxxx
New Caledonia		1853	xxxx
Réunion		1710	xxxx
Saint Pierre and Miquelon		1604	xxxx
Tromelin Island		1954	xxxx
Wallis and Futuna		1887	xxxx

France had two colonial empires. These two colonial empires should not be confused with the First Empire and Second Empire, which were domestic political institutions that flourished in the period between the two overseas colonial empires. Bismarck described the colonial positions of the three great Powers in the epigram, "England has colonies and colonists; Germany has colonists but no colonies; France has colonies but no colonists." This last clause accurately represented the case of France. The French colonies formed the happy hunting grounds of political partisans who successfully competed for the administrative posts in the faroff regions which held little attraction for the great mass of the French.

The first colonial empire during the XVIth-XVIIIth Centuries was built by large Royal Trading Companies (such as Compagnie des Indes Occidentales). This empire included most of Northern America, some of the richest Caribbean Islands and a large part of India. Much of this empire was transferred to England as a result of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, and much of what remained fell away at the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

In the 19th century, France resumed its active colonial policy to compensate for its weakening positions in the Old World after its defeat in the Napoleonic wars. This was also driven by the needs of developing French capitalism, which required new raw material resources. From 1830-1847, France conquered Algeria and part of Morocco. In 1842, the French began developing the Ivory Coast (now Côte d'Ivoire). In 1847, Tahiti was recognised as a French sphere of influence.

Napoleon III attempted to take control of Syria and Lebanon but faced resistance not only from the local population but also from Turkey and Great Britain. At the same time, France sought to subjugate Senegal and Madagascar. France was also very active in the Far East and Indochina during this time, bringing Cochinchina (South Vietnam) under its control in 1863 and establishing a protectorate over Cambodia in 1867.

The second colonial empire, largely constructed in the late 19th Century, began in earnest after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. After its crushing defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, France once again focused on the policy of colonial conquest, aiming to complete the division of land between the great powers in a timely manner. Its efforts were concentrated in two main areas: Africa and Southeast Asia. By the early 1890s, France had finally established itself throughout Vietnam (Cochinchina, Annam, and Tonkin) and by 1893 had subjugated Laos. Its new possessions in Southeast Asia were united as French Indochina. The subjugation of Morocco and the establishment of a joint administration with Great Britain over the New Hebrides were the last French colonial acquisitions before the Great War.

This empire rivalled the British empire, and lasted until the 1960s. This colonial empire included Northern Africa, a large part of Western and Central Africa, Indochina and islands all over the world. Many colonial administrator professed a fierce commitment to republicanism and to reshaping the lives of their colonial subjects consistent with the French republican vision. These administrators saw themselves as children of the Enlightenment, embarked upon a crusade to improve the lives the backward and oppressed peoples of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. They were on a mission civilisatrice, a mission to "civilize" their colonial subjects.

After the Great War the colonial domain of France, including colonies, protectorates, and countries for which France has a mandate, covered an area of 10,426,000 sq. km., an area nearly 20 times greater than that of France. The population numbered 55,000,000, nearly one and a half times that of France. The general trade of this colonial empire amounted in 1919 to over 7,000 million francs. In 1918 the figure was about 5,000 million francs. In 1913, the last normal year before war, it only amounted to 3,250 million francs. Exports and imports practically balanced each other.

Although these figures appear small when compared with those of the British Empire, the French colonial empire was the second largest in the world, and its building-up was one of the notablet achievements of the Third Republic. The chief characteristic of these possessions was their variety. It was true that these colonies he almost entirely in temperate or hot countries. Islands as well as vast continental stretches go to form this empire, which includes one of the greatest deserts of the world, the Sahara, as well as some of the greatest rivers, the Congo, the Niger and the Mekong. There are towering mountains, immense forests, and extremely fertile plantations. The produce of these colonies was also varied. It includes rice, sugar, wood, cotton, phosphates, cereals in great abundance, coal (but only in Indo-China), and metals of every kind.

From the ethnic point of view its races include such different types as the Arab and the Berber, the Annamite, and the Congolese and Sudanese. Although dotted over four continents, Africa, Asia, America and Oceania, it consists mainly of two big groups, one in Asia and the other in Africa. It was this latter portion of French colonial possessions which was by far the most important and the most full of promise. The French African empire, leaving Madagascar out of account, stretches in one unbroken sweep from Algiers to Brazzaville, and from Dakar to Abesher. It was formed by three great geographical unities: northern Africa, western and equatorial Africa, which encircles the Sahara and join at the central point of Lake Chad, with coast-line on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The great advantage of these possessions was their territorial continuity, and that some day a trans-Saharan railway will be able to run from Algiers to Brazzaville without leaving French territory.

The gem of all the French colonies was North Africa - Algiers, Tunis and Morocco. There three great advantages existed; the climate was temperate, the country was suitable for colonization by the French and all the other Mediterranean peoples, who acclimatize themselves as if they were in their mother-country, and, above all, these colonies were close to France. This situation was unique, and renders the colonies ten times more valuable. Such are the general characteristics of the French colonial empire.

All that could be obtained from these dominions had not yet been drawn. French colonial policy was open to many reproaches, especially from an economic point of view. The exploitation of these countries had not been pushed forward with enough energy, nor, more important still, with the necessary method. It had been carried on without a general programme, without stability of purpose, by improvisations, by little jerks, a system which led to failures and, which was worse, to delays.

It was only during the Great War that France realized how valuable it was to her. The colonies were drawn on for material resources, and in particular for troops. Soldiers came into field against Germany in hundreds of thousands from the French colonies. Soon after the War, Hitler wrote that for Germany, the ".... idea of bringing black troops into a European battlefield, quite aside from its practical impossibility in the World War, never existed even as a design to be realized under more favorable circumstances, while, on the contrary, it was always regarded and felt by the French as the basic reason for their colonial activity....

"Not only that she complements her army to an ever-increasing degree from her enormous empire's reservoir of colored humanity, but racially as well, she is making such great progress in negrification that we can actually speak of an African state arising on European soil. The colonial policy of present-day France cannot be compared with that of Germany in the past. If the development of France in the present style were to be continued for three hundred years, the last remnants of Frankish blood would be submerged in the developing European-African mulatto state. An immense self-contained area of settlement from the Rhine to the Congo, filled with a lower race gradually produced from continuous bastardization...."

By the beginning of World War II, the French Empire reached its peak, with a territory covering 12.3 million square kilometres and a population of 68.7 million. The colonies supplied France with raw materials such as rubber, anthracite, coal, timber, and cotton, and also served as a market for French-made products.

The decolonisation of French overseas territories began during World War II. After France's defeat in 1940 and subsequent occupation, their ties to France weakened. In many French colonies, the Resistance Movement emerged, led by General de Gaulle, the leader of the Free France movement. The colonies significantly bolstered the army of the Provisional Government of the French Republic and played a crucial role in its liberation and post-war economic recovery.

Some colonies had already sought independence during the war. Syria and Lebanon were the first to do so in 1946. Paris faced the urgent task of implementing profound changes in the colonial system. The 1946 reform granted the population of France's overseas territories French citizenship and equal rights to the residents of France. Under the new Constitution, the Fourth Republic and the former colonies formed a single French Union. However, decolonisation did not halt; in fact, it gained momentum.

From 1951 to 1954, France relinquished five of its possessions in Asia to the Republic of India. In 1954, as a result of the Indochina War (1946-1954), Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia left the French Union. Morocco and Tunisia achieved full independence in 1956. From the end of 1954 until 1962, a fierce anti-colonial war raged in Algeria, culminating in Paris recognising Algeria's independence in 1962. This event symbolised the actual collapse of the second French colonial empire. Even before the end of the Algerian war, President de Gaulle initiated the preventive decolonisation of 12 former French possessions in Africa, including Madagascar in 1960. In the following years, the Republic of Djibouti (formerly French Somali Coast) and the Republic of Vanuatu (formerly the French-British condominium of the New Hebrides) achieved independence in 1977 and 1980, respectively.

Through the Francophonie program, implemented since 1970, France continued to exert a significant cultural influence in most of the countries that were once part of the French colonial empire. Its constituent parts have been transformed into overseas departments and regions, territories and communities: Guadeloupe, Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte, Reunion, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint Martin, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna. New Caledonia was a special administrative-territorial entity, and there was a strong sentiment among the indigenous population (the Kanak people) in favour of full independence from France. French Southern and Antarctic Lands, as well as Clipperton Island, enjoy the status of overseas state private property of France. As of 2021, their combined population accounted for 2.8 million people (four percent of France's population).