Ah, France.
Home to such stories as: Caesars conquest of the Gauls and the Avignon antipope fights!
Good times!
But sometimes, one France just isn't enough...
Then they want New France,
East France
Hot France...
What happens when France wants an entire empire?
Well...
Definitions for French Empire range from a period of about 15 years
from the turn of the 1800s to a full four centuries!
And depending on when, it covered anywhere from two to ten percent of the world's land area. (Impressive, innit?)
It's honestly kinda ridiculous and researching this video reminded me vividly
of how I nearly flopped AP European History way back in high school.
I'm not going to editorialize about the moral implications of colonial imperialism
and the painful legacy of European oppression
But I will, however,
complain bitterly about how freakin annoying it was for me to read through all of this garbage,
as well as make the 50+ maps for this video.
There are way too many plot threads happening all at once!
That's just bad narrative composition.
Tidy that up!
Get an editor!
With colonialism, everybody loses
...including France.
To see why, let's do some history.
Now, colonialism is technically the action,
whereas imperialism is the underlying mindset,
but I'll be using the terms interchangeably because I honestly just don't care (fair enough)
I'm gonna take the long perspective here and just talk about all of French colonization.
So, our story begins very slowly in the 1500s
when half of Europe spent a century trying, and failing to
bandwagon off of Spain's conquest of the new world
In 1608, France settled the colony of Quebec along the St. Lawrence River
and quickly spread west to the Great Lakes to form New France.
But the French were unsurprisingly not the first people to live in North America,
so they started trading furs with a local native populations like the Iroquois Confederacy,
whose word "Kanata", meaning 'village' or 'settlement',
became...
well...
Canada!
Plot Twist, I know.
New France spread down the Mississippi River at the end of the century
creating a second main entry port at New Orléans,
as well as forming a big old wall against the developing English colonies on the coast.
But this had the added benefit of connecting New France to their holdings in the Caribbean
What started with two islands in the Lesser Antilles
grew to include Saint-Domingue in 1664.
and then all of modern Haiti by the end of the century
Unlike the shiny France away from France that was blooming up north,
the Caribbean was all sweltering sugar factories with extractable value
that the colonists had simply earned by right of conquest
The rules of imperialism were harsh, but simple:
hAhAaAaAaA--
Yeah! (exhausted and slightly disgusted sigh)
Now this is obviously HORRIBLE
but it was a genuine mentality of the European colonists.
If it didn't belong to the Spanish, English or Dutch,
it was free real estate (insert funny meme)
And, speaking of enslaving,
it's still a couple centuries before France clumps on to Africa en masse,
but there was still plenty of coastal African outposts to facilitate the notorious Triangle Trade across the Atlantic
The French Empire reached its first peak at the turn of the 1700's,
as New France was a strong and self-sufficient colony
that rivaled Spain's massive dominion of Central and South America.
France next took a page out of Portugal's colonial playbook,
and went east to get rich,
establishing a series of small outposts down and up the African coast
on Senegal, Mauritius and the Seychelles, and over towards India.
Of the European powers that went to India, France was by far the slowest to arrive.
But they made up for two centuries of tardiness by carving a full chunk out of the southeast coast in 1740.
So now that France has this vast and wealthy empire across both hemispheres and four continents,
time to collapse!
Because, much like a small child complaining that their friend has cooler toys,
France's empire earned the jealousy of England, and that meant war.
About seven of them, to be precise.
While all of these wars started for a smattering of different reasons and involve lots of tangential players,
the core, underlying conflict was always France vs. England for the biggest and shiniest empire.
Some historians call this "The Long Eighteenth Century" since this arc starts
In the late 1600's and ends in the early 1800's,
but I also enjoy the more descriptive moniker of "The Second Hundred Years War"
Given most of Canada in the United States speak English,
I won't dally over the details because you kind of know how this one ends.
Now, back to historical terminology for a minute
because I can and will do everything in my power to not talk about French Imperial history.
This era is usually described as
but that name is dumb,
unspecific,
and also not informative in any way.
So, I came up with a better name to describe that nebulous "New World Discovery" to "World War II"
span of about 400 years.
It's topical here on account to the sheer national narcissism inherent and colonialism
But it also encompasses the greater focus on the self after the Reformation
and the development of capitalism, as well as recognizing the larger-than-life
personalities of most European kings and queens between the 15 and 1900's
Three types of vanity in one!
the first act of this era is the discovery of the New World
and the ensuing age of colonialism
The second act is that Hundred Years War I mentioned earlier
along with the Enlightenment going on at the same time.
Act three is the Industrial Revolution and the Scramble for Africa,
and the fourth act, denouement, is decolonization.
Each act displays different characteristics of state-driven personal and royal vanity,
so that's my pitch for naming this nebulous period.
(Thank you for coming to my TED talk!)
Let me know you think, or if you have a suggestion,
drop it in the comments!
Anyway,
the first three of these wars in The Second Hundred Years War involve various coalitions to either beat back France
or fight over who inherited the crowns of Austria and Spain.
Two of which were directly caused by the incestuous literal clusterf*ck that is the Habsburg family,
so I hate it on principle,
but the big one was the Seven Years War, from 1756 to 1763
which started as a skirmish between French and English colonies in America,
and picked up in Europe when Alliances spiraled out into a full-on continental war
(awkward laugh)
Good thing that never happens again...
England's main strategy was to open up fronts on every single French colony
and stretch them out as far as possible
So America, India and the Caribbean all turned into battlefields.
If you want to see more on this, our friend Griffin
The Armchair Historian has a full animated documentary about the Seven Years War.
Definitely worth a watch!
Bottom line for France was that they lost,
and with it they lost nearly all of their overseas colonies.
A couple decades later they supported America in their independance from Britain,
but even this would only prove a dent in the blooming British Empire.
So, in the late 1700's, France was very much on the down-and-out.
The state was broke,
the people were poor and hungry,
the intellectuals were fed up,
all while the nobles and clergy were living large, and not paying taxes.
this exploded into a bloody, guillotine-y mess in the French Revolution,
also known as Exhibit A of France collapsing under the weight of its own failed Empire.
The National Assembly killed a king,
reign of terror
yada-yada-yada and Britain thought this was a PERFECT opportunity
to go double or nothing and kick France while it was down.
And it probably would have worked if not for a clever general
by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte who returned from yoinking to Northern Italy to seize power in 1799.
as Consul of France and eventually Emperor of France in 1802.
and then conquered across mainland Europe like he was a cat laying down across a keyboard.
My favorite part about this last France vs. Britain conflict
is the pure visual comedy between the heads of state
King George of England as a powdered wig and all this royal fance,
but prettyboy Bonaparte was the most powerful dude in Europe,
And he looks like the missing Jonas brother!
Why is the Emperor of France so shonin protagonist?!
At his height, (hah)
All of continental Europe was either Napoleon's ally or vassal,
and he issued a full trade embargo against Britain.
When little Portugal dared to break it,
Napoleon tore through Iberia and forcibly annexed Portugal and also Spain,
since it was just on the way.
This dude did not let up!
Several coalitions tried and failed to topple Napoleon's Grande Armée,
but in the end, only Napoleon could defeat Napoleon.
The big oops came when Emperor Bonaparte pushed his army deep into Russia
without managing to secure their surrender,
so Napoleon had to march back with a fraction of his troops,
and he got soundly defeated by the Sixth Coalition the next year.
Paris was captured,
Napoleon was exiled,
then he came back,
posed, defeated again at Waterloo,
and then he was exiled for good.
And that's the end of the whole Napoleonic story.
Thereafter, Continental France was confined to... France,
and they remained firmly shut out of the western Atlantic.
So they started a new wave of colonization in Africa.
Step 1) was a protracted invasion of Ottoman Algeria in 1830.
that took 17 years and killed 1/4 of the native population
No sweat! (Good Lord...)
Step 2) was Napoleon's nephew installing himself as Emperor after a brief revolution in 1848.
and one Napoleon was already too many,
so I am distinctly not a fan of this.
His big thing was to boost the Navy and colonize more of West Africa,
and also Vietnam.
The means of acquisition for all these are 'highly dubious'
In Asia, the Vietnamese tried in 1864.
to clamp down on the growing French presence,
so the army rolled in and just conquered the place outright in 1883,
and they spread inland to Laos and Cambodia through the early 1900's.
From there, the colonists exported tea, rice, coffee, pepper and rubber back to France.
They didn't plan to make this a serious settlement colony,
but simply extracted wealth through the lands natural resources, because Goods meant value in an industrialized world.
This was a far cry from the old model of opening up a small trading post on some coastal sliver of land from far away
and calling it a day.
Even with the slave trade nominally abolished in 1848,
France had strong reasons to get its paws on Africa,
as it provided more resources,
a convenient place to dump an overflowing population,
and perhaps the biggest factor:
if they had it, then England didn't!
From their main bases in Algeria, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast,
France klomps nearly the entirety of West Africa.
Pro tip: easy way to conquer half a continent - have guns!
Really streamlines that whole process...
And France didn't take slaves. No, no, no!
They simply deprived natives of French citizenship rights,
and force them into low-wage grunt work!
The civilized way! (Good Lord... [x2])
Y'know, kind of undercuts the grand narrative of "We're bringing glorious civilization to these ignorant savages!"
when you go out of your way to deprive them of the rights
to actually participate in that civilisation...
Hubris, dear viewers, is much like a bear trap placed gingerly on the seat of a chair.
It likes to bite people in the ass...
...hard.
*clap*
So, let's watch this all go wrong.
The beginning of the end came in World War II when Germany captured Paris,
and annexed French West Africa while the Japanese Empire conquered Vietnam.
During the war,
France's leader-in-exile and future President Charles de Gaulle decreed that
the post-war Empire would remain firm, with no chance of colonial self-government...
...or autonomy.
SPOILER ALERT!
This will backfire spectacularly!
After the war, Africa tepidly returned to French control,
but the Communist Viet Minh declared full-on independence from France in 1945,
after the Japanese withdrawal.
France was determined to keep their empire and deployed the army to quash the insurgent Vietnamese.
And here to talk about that war is friend of the channel,
Griffin Johnson, The Armchair Historian.
GJ: Hey blue. Thanks for having me here!
What began as a guerrilla resistance,
Became far more complex when communist China supplied weapons and instruction to the Vietnamese Army.
Late in the war, France attempted to lure Vietnamese forces into battle on their terms
at a fort they constructed in the remote village of Dien Bien Phu,
believing their technological and organizational advantages would grant them a decisive victory.
What the French didn't expect, was thousands of Viet Minh soldiers and civilians,
hauling mass amounts of artillery and anti-aircraft guns through the jungle and atop the surrounding hills.
The French position that seemed unassailable swiftly became a death sentence,
as Vietnamese troops with superior artillery support ferociously pushed their way to the centre of the French positions,
forcing a humiliating surrender.
The catastrophic defeat marked the end of French presence in Vietnam,
and ultimately caused the collapse of the French Empire.
Blue: Thanks so much for stopping by Griffin,
and be sure to check out The Armchair Historian channel for his video all about the Battle of Dien Bien Phu
After Vietnam, it was clear to just about everybody
that the French Empire was as good as toasted baguette. (which can incidentally be used as a weapon)
Later that year, parts of French West Africa jumped ship
and Algeria began a bloody eight-year war of independence
The situation was so dire that the French Fourth Republic outright disintegrated under the weight of the crisis,
this being colonial collapse Exhibit B, after which the rest of French Africa noped right the hell out of there
The new fifth republic under de Gaulle was determined to hold on to Algeria,
but eventually gave in and granted independence in 1962, though
France maintained a handful of territories in the Caribbean and Pacific,
the decolonization of Algeria marked the clear end to the French Empire.
And that's the rise and fall,
And rise,
and fall, (Good Lord [x3], stop it France)
and rise, and fall of Imperial France! Though the motives and means change
significantly from one century to another,
the core mindset of imperialism was among the strongest guiding principles
for France throughout The Age of Vanity.
Moral of the story here:
Don't do colonialism!
Everybody loses,
and there is a two-thirds chance that it'll break your government too!
Thanks so much for watching and a huge THANK YOU to
Griffin, The Armchair Historian
for stopping by.
I tell you, the more I learn about Napoleon the more *and* less I grow to respect him.
It is truly an enigma that I just can't crack.
Though honestly,
The monarchical politics of The Age of Vanity are so convoluted in general that I kind of don't care to try, so
stay tuned to my next video for something infinitely more familiar and comfortable for me to discuss. I'll see you then