France's Modernising Mission: Citizenship, Welfare and the Ends of Empire (St Antony's Series)

This volume explores how France’s ‘modernising mission’ unfolded during the post-war period and its reverberations in the decades after empire. In the aftermath of the Second World War, France sought to reinvent its empire by transforming the traditional ‘civilising mission’ into a ‘modernising mission’. Henceforth, French claims to rule would be based on extending citizenship rights and the promise of economic development and welfare within a ‘Greater France’. In the face of rising anti-colonial mobilization and a new international order, redefining the terms that bound colonised peoples and territories to the metropole was a strategic necessity but also a dynamic which Paris struggled to control. The language of reform and equality was seized upon locally to make claims on metropolitan resources and wrest away the political initiative. Intertwined with coercion and violence, the struggle to define what ‘modernisation’ would mean for colonised societies was a key factor in the wider process of decolonisation. Contributions by leading specialists extend geographically from Africa to the Pacific and to metropolitan France itself, examining a range of topics including education policy, colonial knowledge production, rural development and slum clearance. Front Matter ....Pages i-xli Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 Conflicting Modernities: Battles Over France’s Policy of Adapted Education in French West Africa (Tony Chafer)....Pages 3-30 Institutional Terra Non Firma: Representative Democracy and the Chieftaincy in French West Africa (Liz Fink)....Pages 31-57 Decolonisation Without Independence? Breaking with the Colonial in New Caledonia (1946–1975) (Benoît Trépied)....Pages 59-84 Front Matter ....Pages 85-85 Rule of Experts? Governing Modernisation in Late Colonial French Africa (James McDougall)....Pages 87-108 From Tent to Village Regroupement: The Colonial State and Social Engineering of Rural Space, 1843–1962 (Neil MacMaster)....Pages 109-131 Shantytowns and Rehousing in Late Colonial Algiers and Casablanca (Jim House)....Pages 133-163 Front Matter ....Pages 165-165 Promoting ‘Harmonious Cohabitation’ in the Metropole: The Welfare Charity Aide Aux Travailleurs D’Outre Mer (1950–1975) (Ed Naylor)....Pages 167-197 Protests Against Shantytowns in the 1950s and 1960s: Class Logics, Clientelist Relations and ‘Colonial Redeployments’ (Françoise de Barros)....Pages 199-224 Colonial Legacies: Housing Policy and Riot Prevention Strategies in the Minguettes District of Vénissieux (Abdellali Hajjat)....Pages 225-250 Back Matter ....Pages 251-258 In the aftermath of the Second World War, France sought to reinvent its empire by transforming the traditional 'civilising mission' into a 'modernising mission'. Henceforth, French claims to rule would be based on extending citizenship rights and the promise of economic development and welfare within a 'Greater France'. In the face of rising anti-colonial mobilization and a new international order, redefining the terms that bound colonised peoples and territories to the metropole was a strategic necessity but also a dynamic which Paris struggled to control. This book explores how France's 'modernising mission' unfolded during the post-war period and its reverberations in the decades after empire