On 2 March in Gabon, West Africa, President Macron declared that ‘the days of France-Afrique are over’. Since the early nineteenth century the African continent has emblazoned France’s aspiration to international power status.
Like any empire it provided natural resources. It also provided manpower. Unlike other imperial powers with surplus domestic populations to deploy, France’s demography was stagnant at 40 million from the 1840s until the 1940s. Africa provided troops for her armies (tirailleurs sénégalais) to compete with Germany’s demography and growing forces. Even after the troubled decolonisation in the 1960s Africa continued to provide cheap labour to a thriving French domestic industry.
France’s Francophone African empire – combined with its south-east Asian colonies – allowed her proudly to proclaim her position as the world’s second largest colonial power. Unlike other imperial powers France deployed her universalist values to colonial conquests as part of a ‘civilising mission’.
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