Ideological change was a major component of the change of the world after World War Two as nations became states and empires fell, rotting out from within. This was a change that could have taken place after World War One, but instead empires chose to hold onto their colonial holdings for as long as they could, rightfully seeing them as efficient money-makers and their citizens as necessary troops to defend and support the empire. France, for example, held onto many colonies after WW1 but lost nearly all of them in the decades following WW2 due to uprisings and ideological changes surrounding what it meant to belong to an empire.
Seeing that the old model of empires, those seen before WW1 and WW2, would likely lead to another world war, the imperial government of France opted for a new colonial strategy of inclusion. According to Cooper, the French Union, the new name for the French Empire, shied away from the old model of colonial hierarchy and strived toward a new model of inclusion and citizenship among colonial holdings. The model most familiar to Americans is a unilateral one where the state at the head of the empire creates all the laws and taxes with no say from the colonies. What made this new method of imperialism different was that it wanted to create an empire of contentment, where colonies had representation and a political voice; “representatives from the colonies would have to help write a new constitution (Cooper, 200).”
Although this new model allowed for concessions from the ruling state, such as representation in government and the ability to help write a constitution, it did not elevate non-French citizens of the Union to the same status as the French. According to Cooper, these non-French peoples “would now have the ‘qualities’ of French citizens (200),” meaning they were protected by the French constitution. This new structure was a more equal and fair empire but was still unsustainable as many nations rose up for independence and sovereignty, breaking off from France.
As seen in the above map, France had colonial holdings all over the world before WW2, in East Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Africa. The decolonization movement after WW2 was so strong that the French Empire, an economically and militarily powerful conglomerate, lost almost all of its colonial holdings by the 1970’s. As more nations and peoples began considering independence, colonial powers in western Europe lost much of their clout and became smaller, stable countries not driven by a need to expand influence and power, as they saw the folly of Germany’s WW2 ideologies.
Great post! It’s important, in my opinion, to see all that France lost when pursuing territorial and global power. To compare it to the German’s conquest is an accurate parallel since the motives behind the conquests of both the Germans and the French were for more prestige, power, and territory. Pretty selfish if I do say so myself!
Was the new system truly unsustainable? Or was it simply not given enough time to prove that it was sustainable due to the weakening of European nations after the war and the continued rise of independence movements across colonies. Given that the colonized peoples now had more rights and inclusiveness than ever before, would they have potentially been integrated into the European nations in some way similar to how Hawaii was integrated into the United States?
I feel that, as France and other European countries had lost much military power, large colonial holdings were becoming unsustainable. It is much easier to subdue, assimilate, or erase the culture, history, or people on a small island nation such as Hawaii or the Falkland Islands than it is to hold onto and work with another separate nation with a strong culture and large population. Also, as a large nation, Algeria holds the potential for independent greatness without needing to fall under the umbrella of another nation, unlike small island nations that do not hold as many natural resources or population (Japan being an obvious exception from this time).