By Way of Comparison: French Relations with Former Colonies

Abstract

The Commonwealth is a unique post-imperial phenomenon. France’s relations with her former colonies, nevertheless, do present some points of comparison, helping to establish what is unique and, alternatively, what is simply part of a basic and virtually inescapable relationship, modified by the colonial legacy, between advanced and developing societies. The French comparison beckons far more obviously than that which might be made with other former colonial powers; but the French experience is, itself, in many ways unique, and to examine it with the British experience as a model, searching, structure by structure, for parallels and divergencies would distort and mislead. What follows, therefore, after a brief and necessary historical excursion, is an examination of the post-colonial period within the very broad comparative framework of cultural, economic, security and political relationships.