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British and French Colonialism in Africa, Asia and the Middle East pp 1–15Cite as

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Britain and France, Connected Empires

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Abstract

This chapter considers the importance of looking at the interconnections between the British and French colonial empires as opponents, as allies, and, perhaps most commonly, as frères ennemis—frenemies—engaged in competitive collaboration. It discusses the importance of looking at phenomena through an interimperial lens, the emerging historiographic trends encouraging a look at Anglo-French imperial connections, and some of the barriers that remain.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    David Todd, “A French Imperial Meridian, 1814–1870,” Past & Present 210, no. 1 (Feb. 2011): 155–186.

  2. 2.

    Catherine Hall and Sonya Rose, eds., At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) showcases some of the empire-metropole connections now well accepted in British imperial history.

  3. 3.

    This trend includes Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) and “The globalisation of France: Provincial cities and French expansion c. 1500–1800,” History of European Ideas 34, no. 4, 424–430. Gwyn Campbell, An Economic History of Imperial Madagascar, 1750–1895: The Rise and Fall of an Island Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Pier Larson, Ocean of Letters: Language and Creolization in an Indian Ocean Diaspora (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) and in-progress book on the transimperial life and career of Jean René and others in his extended family. Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute, 2012). J. R. McNeill, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1640–1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Alan Greer, La Nouvelle-France et le monde. (Montreal: Editions Boréal, 2009). Eric Jennings, Free French Africa in World War II: The African Resistance. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2015). Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Frederick Cooper and Jane Burbank, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010). Frederick Cooper, Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Martin Thomas, Britain, France and Appeasement: Anglo-French Relations in the Popular Front Era (Oxford: Berg, 1996). Martin Thomas, The French North African Crisis: Colonial Breakdown and Anglo-French Relations, 1945–62 (London: Macmillan, 2000). Martin Thomas and Richard Toye, Arguing about Empire Imperial Rhetoric in Britain and France, 1882–1956 (Oxford, 2017). Martin Thomas, Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and their Roads from Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Martin Thomas, Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750–1850 (New York, 2005). Todd, “French Imperial Meridian.” David Todd, “Transnational Projects of Empire in France, c. 1815–c. 1870,” Modern Intellectual History, 12 (2015). David Todd, A Velvet Empire: French Imperial Power and Economic Life in the Nineteenth Century, book in progress. James R. Fichter, “British Infrastructure and French Empire: Anglo-French Steam Interdependency in Asian Waters, c. 1852–1870,” Britain and the World 5 (Sept. 2012), 183–203 and Suez Passage to India: Britain, France, and the Great Game at Sea, 1798–1885, book in progress. Robert Aldrich and Cindy McCreery, eds., Crown and Colonies: European Monarchies and Overseas empires (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016). Robert Aldrich, Banished Potentates: Dethroning and Exiling Indigenous Monarchs under British and French Colonial Rule, 1815–1955 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017). Julie Kalman’s current book project, on the House of Bacri and Busnach, is provisionally entitled The King of Algiers. François Ternat and Lucien Bély, Partager le monde: rivalités imperials franco-britanniques (1748–1756) (Paris: PUPS, 2015), Claire Fredj “Une présence hospitalière en territoire colonial: les Filles de la Charité en Algérie (1842–1962)” in Matthieu Brejon de Lavergnée, ed., Des Filles de la charité aux Soeurs de Saint-Valence-de-Paul (XVIIe-XXe siècle): Quatre siècles de cornettes (XVIIe-XXe siècle) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2016) 447–474, Claire Laux, Le Pacifique aux XVIIIè et XIXè siècle, une confrontation franco-britannique, Enjeu colonial et rivalité géopolitique de 1763 à 1914 (Paris: Karthala, 2011), as well as the work of David Channu, Fabrice Argounes, David Mokam, N’buéké Adovi Michel Goeh-Akue, Clothilde Houot, Cécile Vidal, Isabelle Surun, and others.

  4. 4.

    Pierre Singaravélou, Tianjin Cosmopolis. Une autre histoire de la mondialisation (Paris: Le Seuil, 2017).

  5. 5.

    In Quebec, where French colonial history became a national history of sorts, interest never died. See, for instance, the work of the French Atlantic History Group at McGill: http://mcgillatl.paquindesign.com/en/core-researchers/.

  6. 6.

    Patrick Boucheron, Nicolas Delalande, Florian Mazel, Yann Potin, Pierre Singaravélou, eds., Histoire Mondiale de la France (Paris: Le Seuil, 2017).

  7. 7.

    See also Valeska Huber, Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond, 1869–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

  8. 8.

    D. A. Farnie, East & West of Suez: The Suez Canal in History, 1854–1956 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), 87.

  9. 9.

    Pierre Nora, “Histoire mondiale de la France, Pierre Nora répond,” L’Obs 2734 (30 Mar. 2017) 68–69. Patrick Boucheron, Nicolas Delalande, Florian Mazel, Yann Potin, and Pierre Singaravélou, “Faire de l’histoire aujourd’hui,” L’Obs 2735 (6 Apr. 2017), 72–73. “‘Histoire mondiale de la France:’ le livre qui exaspère Finkielkraut, Zemmour et Cie,” Le Nouvel Observateur (1 Feb. 2017). Éric Zemmour, “Dissoudre la France en 800 pages,” Le Figaro (19 Jan. 2017), 15.

  10. 10.

    Richard Drayton and David Motadel, “Discussion: The Future of Global History,” Journal of Global History 13, no. 1 (Mar. 2018), 1–21.

  11. 11.

    Nares did evade a partial blockage of the canal but followed L’Aigle. J. E. Nourse, The maritime canal of Suez, from its inauguration, November 17, 1869, to the year 1884. (Washington: 1884). Nares’s escapade is not mentioned in “Obituary: Vice-Admiral Sir George Strong Nares, K. C. B., F. R. S.” The Geographical Journal 45, no. 3 (Mar. 1915), 255–257 or “Vice-Admiral Sir George Nares, K.C.B., F.R.S.” Nature 94 (21 Jan. 1915), 565–567. The incident was not noted in the Times (London) coverage nor by Henry M. Stanley, My early travels and adventures in America and Asia (New York: 1895), 51, nor in Alexander Russel, Egypt: the opening of the great canal (Edinburgh: 1869), 64. Stanley gives Newport as eleventh in procession. Farnie, East and West of Suez, 85–88. Zachary Karabell, Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez, Canal (London: John Murray, 2003), 255, says that the Aigle went in and through first, but that in later years a story emerged via a letter to the Times that a British ship had jumped the queue. He gives no citation. No reference to Nares or Newport appears in a search of the Times Digital Archive.

  12. 12.

    The theme of interimperial relations is of growing interest; the variety of ways to frame this topic leaves many openings for intervention. Volker Barth and Roland Cvetkovski, eds., Imperial Co-operation and Transfer, 1870–1930: Empires and Encounters (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), esp. John M. MacKenzie, “European Imperialism: A Zone of Cooperation rather than Competition?” in ibid., 35–53. Laura Doyle, “Inter-Imperiality: Dialectics in a Postcolonial World History,” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies (Mar. 2013) 1–38. See also recent conference calls for papers. https://networks.h-net.org/node/20292/discussions/174646/between-national-rivalry-and-inter-imperial-cooperation-europeanhttp://www.europe.hku.hk/news/files/Connected%20Histories,%20Mirrored%20Empires%20Conference%20Call%20for%20Papers.pdf both accessed 28 June 2018.

  13. 13.

    Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).

  14. 14.

    Bryan Allen Craig, “The Great 1859–1860 French Invasion Scare in Great Britain” (MA thesis, Kent State University, 1995). Michael J. Salevouris, “Riflemen Form,” the War Scare of 1859–1860 in England (New York: Garland, 1982).

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    James R. Fichter

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    James R. Fichter

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Fichter, J.R. (2019). Britain and France, Connected Empires. In: Fichter, J.R. (eds) British and French Colonialism in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97964-9_1

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