THE COLONIAL POLICY OF FRANCE.

WHOEVER intends to judge France's Colonial policy must never lose sight of the fact that this policy is only twenty years old. Such a statement may astonish Englishmen who remember that a hundred and fifty years ago our two nations were rivals and competitors in two continents-Asia and America, in India, in the time of Dupleix and Clive, in Canada with Wolfe and Montcalm. The statement is, however, exact.

France, of the old régime, twice possessed a magnificent Colonial Empire one under Louis XIV., and another, vaster and richer, under Louis XV.; and about 1750 an impartial spectator would have been puzzled to predict which of the two rivals, France or England, would be the great Colonial Power of the future. The Treaty of Paris, 1763, which deprived France of North America and Southern India, decided in favour of England. And from 1763 to the beginning of the present period, France as a Colonial Power only languished and declined. In 1803, an insurrection cost her the incomparable possession of San Domingo. The same year considerations of prudence made her sell Louisiana to the Americans, an immense and most valuable territory, not merely that belonging to the State in the Union which now bears that name, but the valley of the Mississippi, including ten of the present States. Under the Empire, she saw nearly all her Colonies pass into English hands, and the peace of 1815 left her with only a few fragments of her former splendour, Bourbon, and the two West Indies, Guadeloupe and Martinique; a few factories on the coast, and in the interior of India; the island of Cayenne; and lastly, two or three points on the shores of Senegal. A detail will help us to understand how little her Colonial dominion was worth in those days. Bourbon, Martinique, and Guadeloupe, which, taken together, only now number about half-a-million inhabitants, and are no larger than one of our French departments, were then called, in parliamentary and administrative style, "our three great Colonies." As a matter of fact, France had then become merely a Continental Power. She had neither Colonies nor a Colonial policy, and she seemed scarcely to remember that she had ever had either.

Neither in 1830, when she began the conquest of Algeria, nor in 1842, when she proclaimed her protectorate over the Marquesas and Tahiti, nor in 1853, when she occupied New Caledonia, nor even in 1862, when she obtained the cession of three provinces of

Cochin China, did she decide on this course for any reason or ambition connected with colonial policy. She took Algiers to revenge an insult; she seized Tahiti and New Caledonia, chiefly in the interests of her navy; she dismembered Cochin-China to punish the King Tu Duc, who had massacred our missionaries. She thought so little of profiting by her acquisitions that she neglected to instal herself in New Caledonia. She had so completely lost the sense of the delicacy of colonial problems that she was inclined to treat her colonies as if they had been French soil, and her native subjects like French citizens. It was the period which saw the birth and development of that doctrine so detrimental to a wise administration of the colonies, a doctrine born of generous impulses and the illusions of '89-the doctrine of assimilation.

Nevertheless, though still indefinite in Algeria and Senegal, more noticeable in Cochin-China, the flow of aspiration towards a colonial policy was making itself felt. In Bugeaud's time (1840) a permanent stay in Algeria was decided on, and its colonisation was thought of. Under Napoleon III. the Government tried to interest itself in its Arab subjects, without knowing quite how to set about it. Faidherbe awakened in Senegal (18521861) the embryo of an empire, and the germs of a native policy. In Cochin-China, the admirals who succeeded each other as governors learned from India how an Asiatic possession should be governed, and established an administration which, up to 1879, resembled that of Bengal. But all that is little enough. France had still neither colonial experience, nor a colonial doctrine, nor even a suspicion that such things existed. Those who knew that a colony must be distinguished from a possession were to be counted by units, and those who thought that some difference should be made between a black or yellow subject of Asia or Africa and a citizen of French blood numbered at the most a few hundreds.

So, when in 1871 France had to elect an Assembly to make peace with Germany, the Government of National Defence, heir of the doctrines of the Republic of 1848, which that Republic had inherited from the Revolution, distinctly assimilated the Colonies to the mother country, and without the least hesitation gave nearly all of them the right of sending representatives to the National Assembly. At that moment we may say without exaggeration that France, though very poor in colonies, was still poorer in colonial experience and wisdom.

This state of things went on for nearly ten years longer. During these ten years there was no increase of territory, nor improvement of administration. It cannot even be said that the dense ignor

ance prevailing on colonial questions was dissipated. France was still in favour of assimilation, and yearned to transport to the Colonies the laws and institutions of France. Quite indiscriminately and without being able to appeal to any but the most deplorable precedents, she applied to her Colonies her civil code, and her methods of procedure, and conferred on them the right to send deputies and senators to Parliament, and to elect local Conseils Généraux. And if, in 1875, the privilege of representation was withdrawn from a certain number of them, it was not because the excellence of the system was in any doubt, but as a concession to some exigency of home policy: the Colonies were Republican, and the majority, powerless to re-establish the Monarchy, had a grudge against those colonies which strengthened the Republic. Colonial problems were therefore neither better studied than before, nor better understood. And this lasted until 1881.

1881! Why is this year taken as a landmark? What happened then? Is it a date in the history of France? It is, indeed. School manuals have not yet recorded it, and it is not generally mentioned at Baccalauréat examinations. Yet 1881 is a date, an epoch. It marks the end of colonial darkness and the dawn of the colonial awakening of France. The most notable of her statesmen, Gambetta, Jules Ferry, Barthélemy St. Hilaire, Paul Bert, no longer disdained, but even held themselves bound, to take an interest in the Colonies and in Colonial questions. Under their influence, and thanks to their example, France conquered Tunis in 1881, Tonkin and Anam in 1885. In 1886 she organised the Congo district, which Brezza had been exploring for several years. In 1890-and this was more particularly the work of M. Etienne, who had just made his appearance on the stage, where he was henceforth to rank first—she built up the Colonies of West Africa; to ancient Senegal she added Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and Dahomey, which strikes up far into the interior. In 1895 she asserted and made good her rights over Madagascar, and in 1898 signed the treaty with England which fixed the boundaries of the respective possessions of the two countries in the Soudan, on the Niger, and round Lake Tchad.

Now, for the first time since 1763, it may be said that France has once more a fine Colonial territory; a territory of eight million square kilometres, and a population of fifty million souls. This is the result of uninterrupted work, of conquest, no doubt, but also of exploration, admirable alike for its sagacity, enthusiasm, and tenacity. It is the work of a nation believed to be exhausted by the war, but who never despaired of herself and resolved to remain great. And it is the work of only twenty years,

II.

But this was only part of the task which France had to face, and which she faced. Also it was the easiest part. "Après avoir taillé, il faut coudre." No one doubted that France could annex or protect weak or degenerate nations under the complacent or indifferent eye of Europe. She had always been a mistress of sword play, and it was no great wonder that she should carve out a domain for herself in regions which had as yet no master. But once acquired, would she be able to govern, administer, and work it? For that was the object of all her conquests and explorations, and this art, we must repeat, she had been unlearning for more than a hundred years. She no longer knew either how to govern or how to administer colonies. She would have it all to learn again.

But is "learn again" the right word? Would whatever she may have known formerly be of any use to her now? Formerly she had colonies which she peopled with men of her own nation, creating, here and there, as Richelieu expressed it, a new France in the likeness of the old. Thither her children transported her institutions, her laws, her customs, her religion, the very forms of her society, the feudal system, the guilds, and the system of slavery. She knew nothing about the aboriginal populations, she moulded them, converted them at need, or replaced them by others. And this conception was not peculiar to France, it belonged to the period; England carried it out in her own possessions, even in India, till the time of Hastings. And now this conception had to be cast aside.

France has, and must know that she has, possessions so thickly populated that she can never think of equalling the natives in number or governing them by force. Her only hope and her rightful aim should be to associate them first in her economic enterprises, and later in the work of government, to win them to her by making them happier, a result to be attained by a more exact knowledge of their needs, and a larger spirit of benevolence. But to reach this conception and the results to be expected from it, France must repudiate many errors of colonial policy, and even some dogmas of home policy, which have long been dear to her. She must give up the flattering notion, that for a man of another nation or another race, it is always a piece of good fortune to become a French citizen; that the Civil Code is of universal truth and application; that men are all equal, in spite of the colour of their skin, the form of their skull, or the manners of their ancestors; that education can modify their minds and their consciences all at once; that the same institutions can infallibly confer upon all the same benefits. She must serve an apprentice

ship in climatology and acclimatisation; she must confess that there are regions where the white man can neither work nor endure; she must acknowledge, better still proclaim, the fundamental differences between colonies and possessions, and finally, she must admit that other nations, who have had uninterrupted practice in colonial politics, may know what she has yet to learn, and she must make up her mind to become a pupil in their school. In 1881, France had that courage. She began her colonial education over again, and here is her balance-sheet twenty years after.

As she has, so to speak, no colonies but only possessions, she is aware that her task is no longer one of population. And the recognition of this fact at once destroys all the customary banter on her colonial pretensions. "Colonise? People new regions? A nation whose population is at a standstill? A nation with no natality?" These were the objections raised on all sides. She now answers that she has neither ambition nor obligation to populate. That is not her rôle; she has but to govern.

The only part of her possessions where French settlers can be introduced is North Africa. There, a favourable climate, a sparse native population, and the proximity of France permit her to hope that she might found a Colony within this possession. Indeed, the Colony is already born and beginning to grow. It contains nearly 600,000 Europeans, two-thirds of whom are French. If it be objected that this is not much, I reply that it is enough for the present. For Algeria and Tunis, inhabited by natives, whose number tends to increase under good administration (4,350,000 in 1881 to 5,600,000 in 1903) are not yet prepared to offer hospitality to very many settlers. 600,000 Europeans in the modest area of Tell (the region bordering the Mediterranean) is as much, perhaps more, than five million Anglo-Saxons in the immensity of the Australian Commonwealth. I will add, that France has so far done nothing to quicken the flow of emigration to Algeria, and that when she sets about this task she will reveal an unexpected number of emigrants. For she contains a large potential emigration, though this would take too long to prove, and would lead me into too many sociological developments.

Setting aside North Africa (capable of colonisation), the remainder of our dominions beyond the seas only admit of administration. Indo-China, with its five provinces, Madagascar, West Africa, Soudan, and the Tchad Territories, are possessions. Possessions cannot be colonised, they must be governed and administered. All they ask of their ruler is an administration which recognises their needs, a government which sympathises with their aspirations. France's first duty towards them is to