Jules Ferry’s French Colonial Expansion

Jules Ferry (1832-1893):

On French Colonial Expansion

Ferry was twice prime minister of France, from [1880-1881, 1883-1885]. He is especially remembered for

championing laws that removed Catholic influence from most education in France and for promoting a vast extension

of the French colonial empire.

The policy of colonial expansion is a political and economic system ... that can be connected to three sets of ideas:

economic ideas; the most far-reaching ideas of civilization; and ideas of a political and patriotic sort.

In the area of economics, I am placing before you, with the support of some statistics, the considerations that justify

the policy of colonial expansion, as seen from the perspective of a need, felt more and more urgently by the

industrialized population of Europe and especially the people of our rich and hardworking country of France: the need

for outlets [for exports]. Is this a fantasy? Is this a concern [that can wait] for the future? Or is this not a pressing

need, one may say a crying need, of our industrial population? I merely express in a general way what each one of

you can see for himself in the various parts of France. Yes, what our major industries [textiles, etc.], irrevocably

steered by the treaties of 18601 into exports, lack more and more are outlets. Why? Because next door Germany is

setting up trade barriers; because across the ocean the United States of America have become protectionists, and

extreme protectionists at that; because not only are these great markets ... shrinking, becoming more and more

difficult of access, but these great states are beginning to pour into our own markets products not seen there before.

This is true not only for our agriculture, which has been so sorely tried ... and for which competition is no longer

limited to the circle of large European states.... Today, as you know, competition, the law of supply and demand,

freedom of trade, the effects of speculation, all radiate in a circle that reaches to the ends of the earth.... That is a

great complication, a great economic difficulty; ... an extremely serious problem. It is so serious, gentlemen, so

acute, that the least informed persons must already glimpse, foresee, and take precautions against the time when

the great South American market that has, in a manner of speaking, belonged to us forever will be disputed and

perhaps taken away from us by North American products. Nothing is more serious; there can be no graver social

problem; and these matters are linked intimately to colonial policy.

Gentlemen, we must speak more loudly and more honestly! We must say openly that indeed the higher races have a

right over the lower races....

I repeat that the superior races have a right because they have a duty. They have the duty to civilize the inferior

races.... In the history of earlier centuries these duties, gentlemen, have often been misunderstood; and certainly

when the Spanish soldiers and explorers introduced slavery into Central America, they did not fulfill their duty as men

of a higher race.... But, in our time, I maintain that European nations acquit themselves with generosity, with

grandeur, and with sincerity of this superior civilizing duty.

I say that French colonial policy, the policy of colonial expansion, the policy that has taken us under the Empire [the

Second Empire, of Napoleon 1111, to Saigon, to Indochina [Vietnam], that has led us to Tunisia, to Madagascar-I say

that this policy of colonial expansion was inspired by... the fact that a navy such as ours cannot do without safe

harbors, defenses, supply centers on the high seas .... Are you unaware of this? Look at a map of the world.

Gentlemen, these are considerations that merit the full attention of patriots. The conditions of naval warfare have

greatly changed.... At present, as you know, a warship, however perfect its design, cannot carry more than two

weeks' supply of coal; and a vessel without coal is a wreck on the high seas, abandoned to the first occupier. Hence

the need to have places of supply, shelters, ports for defense and provisioning.... And that is why we needed Tunisia;

that is why we needed Saigon and Indochina; that is why we need Madagascar... and why we shall never leave

them! ... Gentlemen, in Europe such as it is today, in this competition of the many rivals we see rising up around us,

some by military or naval improvements, others by the prodigious development of a constantly growing population;

in a Europe, or rather in a universe thus constituted, a policy of withdrawal or abstention is simply the high road to

decadence! In our time nations are great only through the activity they deploy; it is not by spreading the peaceable

light of their institutions ... that they are great, in the present day.

Spreading light without acting, without taking part in the affairs of the world, keeping out of all European alliances

and seeing as a trap, an adventure, all expansion into Africa or the Orient-for a great nation to live this way, believe

me, is to abdicate and, in less time than you may think, to sink from the first rank to the third and fourth.

Source: Sourcebook.