
Assimilation was a major ideological component of French
colonialism
Colonialism is the control of another territory, natural resources and people by a foreign group. Colonizers control the political and tribal power of the colonised territory. While frequently an Imperialism, imperialist project, colonialism c ...
during the 19th and 20th centuries. The
French government
The Government of France (, ), officially the Government of the French Republic (, ), exercises Executive (government), executive power in France. It is composed of the Prime Minister of France, prime minister, who is the head of government, ...
promoted the concept of
cultural assimilation
Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a society's Dominant culture, majority group or fully adopts the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group. The melting pot model is based on this ...
to colonial subjects in the
French colonial empire
The French colonial empire () comprised the overseas Colony, colonies, protectorates, and League of Nations mandate, mandate territories that came under French rule from the 16th century onward. A distinction is generally made between the "Firs ...
, claiming that by adopting French culture they would ostensibly be granted the full rights enjoyed by French citizens and be legally considered "French". Colonial settlements established by the French, such as the
Four Communes in
French West Africa
French West Africa (, ) was a federation of eight French colonial empires#Second French colonial empire, French colonial territories in West Africa: Colonial Mauritania, Mauritania, French Senegal, Senegal, French Sudan (now Mali), French Guin ...
, were created with the assimilation concept in mind, and while Africans living in such settlements were theoretically granted the full rights of French citizens, discriminatory policies from various French colonial administrations denied most of these rights to "full-blooded Africans".
Definition
The concept of assimilation in French colonial discourse was based on the idea of spreading
French culture to France's colonies in the 19th and the 20th centuries. Colonial subjects living in French colonies were considered French citizens as long as French culture and customs were adopted. That also meant that they would have the rights and duties of French citizens.
The meaning of assimilation has been greatly debated. One possible definition stated that French laws apply to all colonies outside France regardless of the distance from France, the size of the colony, the organization of society, the economic development, race or religious beliefs. A cultural definition for assimilation can be the expansion of the French culture outside Europe.
[Betts page 8]
Arthur Girault published ''Principes de colonisation et de Legislation coloniale'' in 1885, which defined assimilation as "eclectic". Its ideal, he considered "the constantly more intimate union between the colonial territory and the metropolitan territory". He also wrote that all military responsibilities of a French citizen also apply to the natives of the colonies.
Protests against assimilation
Colonial subjects in West Africa devised a variety of strategies to resist the establishment of a colonial system and to oppose specific institutions of the system such as labourers engaged in strike action in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries in Lagos, the Cameroons, Dahomey, and Guinea.
Ideological protests included the banding together of the Lobi and the Bambara of French Sudan against the spread of French culture. Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba founded a movement, Mouridiyya, to protest the establishment of French colonial rule, while numerous
messianic or
millenarian
Millenarianism or millenarism () is the belief by a religious organization, religious, social, or political party, political group or Social movement, movement in a coming fundamental Social transformation, transformation of society, after which ...
or
Ethiopian churches with distinctively African liturgies and doctrines were established to resist the imposition of Western-style
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...
.
[
Meanwhile, a variety of groups formed to protest specific colonialist laws or measures imposed on indigenous populations, such as the Young Senegalese Club and the Aborigines' Rights Protection Society, which used newspapers, pamphlets, and plays to protect themselves from assimilation.][
Despite widespread protests, colonialism was firmly entrenched in the whole of West Africa by World War I.][ Until the abolishing of the colonial rule, Africa had endured many oppressions in relation to religion, tradition, customs and culture.
]
History
The creation of modern France through expansion goes back to the establishment of a small kingdom in the area around Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
in the late 10th century and was not completed until the corporation of Nice
Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one million[Savoy
Savoy (; ) is a cultural-historical region in the Western Alps. Situated on the cultural boundary between Occitania and Piedmont, the area extends from Lake Geneva in the north to the Dauphiné in the south and west and to the Aosta Vall ...]
in 1860. The existing "hexagon" was the result of a long series of wars and conquests involving the triumph of the French language
French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-R ...
and the French culture over what once were autonomous and culturally distinctive communities, especially the Occitan Occitan may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain.
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France.
* Occitan language, spoken in parts o ...
-speaking areas of Southern France, whose language (''langue d'oc''), distinct from French, was banned from official use in the 16th century and from everyday use during the French Revolution. The creation of the French hexagon by conquest and annexations established an ideological precedent for the " civilising mission" that served as a rationale for French colonialism. A long experience of turning peasants and culturally-exogenous provincials into Frenchmen seemed to raise the possibility that the same could be done for the colonised peoples of Africa and Asia.
The initial stages of assimilation in France were observed during the revolution. In 1794, deputies, some of whom were from the Caribbean and from French India, passed a law that declared that "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
Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...
, new laws were created for the colonies to replace the previous universal laws that applied to both France and the colonies. Bonaparte rejected assimilation and declared that the colonies would be governed under separate laws. He believed that if 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 labour". He meanwhile reinstated slavery in the Caribbean possessions.
Even with Bonaparte's rejection of assimilation, many still believed it to be a good practice. On July 24, 1833, a law was passed to give all free colony residents "civil and political rights". Also, the Revolution in 1848 restored "assimilation theory", with colonies again under universal rules.
There were many problems that emerged during colonisation, but those faced with the dilemmas thought assimilation sounded simple and attainable and wanted to spread French culture. Claude Adrien Helvétius, a philosopher and supporter of assimilation, believed that education was essential to assimilation.[
]
Senegal's Four Communes
Examples of assimilation in practice in the colonies were in Senegal's Four Communes: Gorée, Dakar
Dakar ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Senegal, largest city of Senegal. The Departments of Senegal, department of Dakar has a population of 1,278,469, and the population of the Dakar metropolitan area was at 4.0 mill ...
, Rufisque and Saint-Louis. The purpose of the theory of assimilation was to turn African natives into Frenchmen by educating them in the language and culture and making them equal French citizens. During the French Revolution of 1848
The French Revolution of 1848 (), also known as the February Revolution (), was a period of civil unrest in France, in February 1848, that led to the collapse of the July Monarchy and the foundation of the French Second Republic. It sparked t ...
, slavery was abolished, and the Four Communes were given voting rights and granted the right to elect a Deputy to the National Assembly in Paris. In the 1880s, France expanded its rule to other colonies. There was opposition from the French locals and so the universal laws did not apply to the new colonies.
The residents of the Four Communes were referred as " originaires" and had been exposed to assimilation for so long that they had become a "typical French citizen... he was expected to be everything except in the color of his skin, a Frenchman." They were African elite". One of them was Blaise Diagne, who was the first black deputy in the French National assembly. He "defended the status of the originaires as French citizens".[Michael Lambert page 244] During his time as deputy, he proposed a resolution that would allow the residents of the Four Communes all the rights of French citizens, which included being able to serve in the army. That was especially important during World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
, and the resolution passed on October 19, 1915.
See also
*Francization
Francization (in American English, Canadian English, and Oxford English) or Francisation (in other British English), also known as Frenchification, is the expansion of French language use—either through willful adoption or coercion—by more an ...
*Évolué
In the Belgian colonial empire, Belgian and French colonial empires, an (, 'evolved one' or 'developed one') was an African who had been Europeanised through education and cultural assimilation, assimilation and had accepted European values and ...
s
*Affranchi
''Affranchi'' (, ) is a former French legal term denoting a freedman or emancipated slave, but also a pejorative term for free people of color. It is used in the English language to describe the social class of freedmen in Saint-Domingue, and ...
s
*Assimilados
''Assimilado'' or ''assimilada'' (if female), literally "assimilated", was a status assigned from the 1910s to the 1960s to those African subjects of the colonial Portuguese Empire who had reached a level of "civilization", according to Portugues ...
*Ilustrados
The Ilustrados (, "erudite", "learned" or "enlightened ones") constituted the Filipino people, Filipino intelligentsia (Education in the Philippines, educated class) during the History of the Philippines (1521–1898), Spanish colonial period i ...
*Emancipados
Emancipado () was a term used for an African-descended social-political demographic within the population of Spanish Guinea (modern day Equatorial Guinea) that existed in the early to mid 1900s. This segment of the native population had become as ...
* Black Ladinos
* Chinese
References
*Raymond F Betts ''ASSIMILATION AND ASSOCIATION IN FRENCH COLONIAL TERRITORY 1890 TO 1915''. (First ed. 1961), Reprinted University of Nebraska Press, 2005. {{ISBN, 0-8032-6247-7.
*Erik Bleich. The legacies of history? Colonization and immigrant integration in Britain and France. Theory and Society, Volume 34, Number 2, April 2005.
* Michael Crowder. Senegal: A Study in French Assimilation Policy. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
*Mamadou Diouf. The French Colonial Policy of Assimilation and the Civility of the Originaires of the Four Communes (Senegal): A Nineteenth Century Globalization Project. Development and Change, Volume 29, Number 4, October 1998, pp. 671–696(26)
*M. M. Knight. French Colonial Policy—the Decline of "Association". The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Jun., 1933), pp. 208–224
*Martin D Lewis ''ONE HUNDRED MILLION FRENCHMEN:THE "ASSIMILATION" THEORY IN FRENCH COLONIAL POLICY'' Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 4, No. 2. (Jan., 1962), pp. 129–153.
*Michael Lambert ''FROM CITIZENSHIP TO NÉGRITUDE: MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN ELITE IDEOLOGIES OF COLONIZED FRANCOPHONE WEST AFRICA'' Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 35, No. 2. (Apr., 1993), pp. 239–262.
French West Africa
French Senegal
French colonisation in Africa
French nationalism
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