Most of the analysis of French colonization is related to the case of Algeria. There are objective reasons: Algeria was the ideal colony for the French; it even became a French department, it was the porte d’entrée for the colonization of North and West Africa, and the political struggles and ideological battles around this colony have always been terrific, leading to an independence war that caused a change in regime in France. This paper takes a different route and aims to deal with the French colonization in West Africa, and its analysis from the economists. Few historians of economic thought have considered the way French political economy examined the colonization of West Africa. Yet, the colonial legacy has been at the centre of many recent debates in development economics (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012, Easterly, 2007).

From an HET perspective, it could be interesting to look at how the economists conceived colonization, and participated to the colonial debates. This perspective could also interest modern development economists who work on the colonial legacy. More specifically, the present paper will focus on French colonialism in West Africa, and the HET perspective will be pointed on the French economic journals, and especially those which were rooted at that time in the liberal tradition: the Revue d’Economie Politique, l’Economiste Français, the Journal des Economistes.

The first results of our readings led us to organize this paper around three main themes. Firstly, who were the actors? The name of Charles Gide comes automatically when one think of the Revue d’Economie Politique. We will go further and try to identify which liberal economists were concerned, but also what was the role and conception of high civil servants, of publicists, or writers of parliamentary reports. Secondly, what was the role of the State in these liberal journals, especially after the Berlin conference (1885) where occurred a share of Africa between the European nations? Thirdly, how these journals saw was the role of companies, of firms, in the colonization of West Africa? Our paper will show that the Chartered companies were put at the forefront in these economic journals. Finally, the paper will examine how these French economic journals, anchored in a liberal tradition, considered the racial and cultural question, that was crucial in socialist writings on colonization (Zouache, 2009).

References

Acemoglu, D. and J. Robinson, 2012, Why Nations Fail. The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty. London: Profile books.

Easterly, W., 2007, The White Man’s Burden, New York, Penguin Books.

Zouache, A., 2018, “Institutions and the colonization of Africa: some lessons from French colonial economics”, Journal of Institutional Economics, 14 (2), p. 373-391.

Zouache, A., 2009, “Socialism, liberalism and inequality : the colonial economics of the saint-simonians in nineteenth-century Algeria”, Review of social economy, 66 (4), p. 431-456.