French Efforts toward Assimilation

28.3.3: French Efforts toward Assimilation

Assimilation was one of the ideological hallmarks of French colonial policy in the 19th and 20th centuries. In contrast with British imperial policy, it maintained that natives of French colonies were considered French citizens with full citizenship rights as long as they adopted French culture and customs.

Learning Objective

Compare the French policy of assimilation to the manner in which other imperialist powers treated their subjugated populations

Key Points

  • French colonial policy as early as the 1780s was distinguished by the ideology of assimilation. By adopting French language and culture, the indigenous populations under colonial rule could eventually become French, sharing in the equal rights of citizenship.
  • This policy was put most famously into practice in the oldest French colonial towns, known as the Four Communes.
  • During the French Revolution of 1848, slavery was abolished and the Four Communes were given voting rights and the right to elect a Deputy to the Assembly in Paris, which they did in 1912 with Blaise Diagne, the first black man to hold a position in the French government.
  • The promise of equal rights and respect under the assimilation policy was often merely an abstraction, as the assimilated Africans (termed Évolué) still faced substantial discrimination in Africa and France.
  • In addition, in the largest and most populous colonies, a strict separation between “sujets français” (all the natives) and “citoyens français” (all males of European extraction), along with different rights and duties, was maintained.

Key Terms

civilizing mission
A rhetorical rationale for intervention or colonization, purporting to contribute to the spread of civilization and used mostly in relation to the Westernization of indigenous peoples in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Évolué
A French term used during the colonial era to refer to a native African or Asian who had “evolved” by becoming Europeanized through education or assimilation and had accepted European values and patterns of behavior.
Blaise Diagne
A French political leader and mayor of Dakar. He was the first black African elected to the French Chamber of Deputies (1914), and the first to hold a position in the French government.
Four Communes
The four oldest colonial towns in French-controlled West Africa, in which the theory of assimilation was put into practice with the aim of turning African natives into “French” men by educating them in the language and French culture. In 1916, natives were granted full voting rights in these colonies.

Colonial Assimilation

A hallmark of the French colonial project in the late 19th century and early 20th century was the civilizing mission (mission civilisatrice), the principle that it was Europe’s duty to bring civilization to “backward” people. Rather than merely govern colonial populations, the Europeans would attempt to Westernize them in accordance with a colonial ideology known as “assimilation.”

France pursued a policy of assimilation throughout much of its colonial empire. In contrast with British imperial policy, the French taught their subjects that by adopting French language and culture, they could eventually become French. Natives of these colonies were considered French citizens as long as French culture and customs were adopted. This also meant they would have the rights and duties of French citizens.

The initial stages of assimilation in France were observed in the “first French empire” during the Revolution of 1789. In 1794, during the revolutionary National Assembly, attended by the deputies of the Caribbean and French India, a law was passed that declared: “all men resident in the colonies, without distinction of color, are French citizens and enjoy all the rights assured by the Constitution.”

In the early 19th century under Napoleon Bonaparte rule, new laws were created for the colonies to replace the previous universal laws that applied to both France and the colonies. Napoleon Bonaparte rejected assimilation and declared that the colonies would be governed under separate laws. He believed that if the universal laws continued, the residents of the colonies would eventually have the power to control the local governments, which would have an adverse effect on “cheap slave labor.” Napoleon at the same time reinstated slavery in the Caribbean possessions.

Even with Napoleon Bonaparte’s rejection of assimilation, many still believed it to be a good practice. On July 24, 1833, a law was passed that gave all free colony residents “civil and political rights.” In the Revolution in 1848, “assimilation theory” was restored and colonies again were under the universal rules.

Aside from the Four Communes in Senegal (discussed below), for the most part, in the largest and most populous colonies, a strict separation between “sujets français” (all the natives) and “citoyens français” (all males of European extraction), along with different rights and duties, was maintained. As pointed out in a 1927 treatise on French colonial law, the granting of French citizenship to natives “was not a right, but rather a privilege.” Two 1912 decrees dealing with French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa enumerated the conditions that a native had to meet in order to be granted French citizenship, which included speaking and writing French, earning a decent living, and displaying good moral standards. From 1830 to 1946, only between 3,000 and 6,000 native Algerians were granted French citizenship.

French conservatives denounced the assimilationist policies as products of a dangerous liberal fantasy. Unlike in Algeria, Tunisia, and French West Africa, in the Protectorate of Morocco, the French administration attempted to use urban planning and colonial education to prevent cultural mixing and uphold the traditional society upon which the French depended for collaboration, with mixed results. After World War II, the segregationist approach modeled in Morocco had been discredited and assimilationism enjoyed a brief revival.

The Four Communes

The famous “Four Communes” in Senegal are one of the foremost examples of the French assimilation project. The Four Communes were the four oldest colonial towns in French-controlled west Africa. In 1848, the French Second Republic extended the rights of full French citizenship to the inhabitants of Saint-Louis, Dakar, Gorée, and Rufisque. While those who were born in these towns could technically enjoy all the rights of native French citizens, substantial legal and social barriers prevented the full exercise of these rights, especially by those seen by authorities as “full blooded” Africans.

The residents of the Four Communes were referred as originaires. When they had been exposed to assimilation for a long enough period, they would become a “typical French citizen…expected to be everything except in the color of his skin, a Frenchman.” Those few Africans from the Four Communes who were able to pursue higher education could “rise'” to be termed Évolué (‘Evolved’) and were nominally granted full French citizenship, including the vote. They were considered “African Elite.” One of those elites was Blaise Diagne, the first black deputy in the French assembly. He “defended the status of the originaires as French citizens.” During his service as deputy, he proposed a resolution that would allow the residents of the Four Communes all the rights of a French Citizen, which included being able to serve in the Army. This was especially important during World War I. The resolution passed on October 19, 1915. Despite this legal framework, Évolués still faced substantial discrimination in Africa and the Metropole alike.  The Four Communes remained the only French colony where the indigenous peoples received French citizenship until 1944.

A photo portrait of Blaise Diagne

Blaise Diagne, a Senegalese man who attained French citizenship and rose to political prominence during the height of the assimilation movement in colonial France, was the first black African elected to the French Chamber of Deputies and the first to hold a position in the French government.

Attributions