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Colonial or Continental Power? The Debate over Economic Expansion in Interwar France, 1925–1932

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2017

JOSEPH BOHLING*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Portland State University, PO Box 751, Portland, OR 97207; jbohling@pdx.edu

Abstract

In the 1920s various French elites argued that the nation state was not viable in an increasingly interdependent world economy dominated by ‘continental blocs’ such as the United States and the Soviet Union; instead, they hoped to expand French economic power through larger political structures, whether France's existing empire or a federal Europe. French foreign minister Aristide Briand called for the organisation of Europe at the same time that other elites advocated the consolidation of the French empire. Although imperial rivalry would trump European cooperation in the interwar years, the 1920s created a framework for post-1945 debates about whether France would achieve economic growth and maintain political independence through colonial development, continental cooperation or some combination of the two. Conventional narratives locate the origins of European integration in the devastations of the Second World War and the crisis of empire. This article argues that integration was conceived within and in tension with, not outside of, an imperial framework.

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 Archives du Ministère des Affaires étrangères (hereafter AMAE), Y639. Discours prononcé à Genève, le 5 septembre 1929 par M. Aristide Briand, Président du Conseil, Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, devant la 10me Assemblée de la Société des Nations (Paris: Imprimerie des Journaux Officiels, 1929), 7.

2 Archimbaud, Léon, La Grande France (Paris: Hachette, 1928)Google Scholar, 37.

3 Recent work on these topics include Clavin, Patricia, Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920–1946 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Manela, Erez, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Mazower, Mark, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (New York: Penguin, 2012)Google Scholar; Pedersen, Susan, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Tooze, Adam, The Deluge: The Great War, America, and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931 (New York: Penguin, 2014)Google Scholar.

4 Among the first to write at length about the new continental threats was Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard in Pan-Europa (Vienna: Pan-Europa-Verl., 1923)Google Scholar.

5 Albert Sarraut, ‘Nationalisons l'idée coloniale’, Europe nouvelle, 1 May 1926, 580.

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7 Frederick Cooper has made this point in numerous of his recent works, among them ‘Reconstructing Empire in British and French Africa’, Past & Present supplement 6 (2011), 197–9.

8 Archives of the International Labour Office (hereafter ILO), CAT/6A/6. Joseph Barthélemy, ‘Rapport sur le problème de la souveraineté des Etats’, 2–4 June 1930, 17 bis.

9 I borrow the idea of an ‘empire state’ from, among others, Frederick Cooper. For an analysis of France acting more as an empire state than as a nation state from the French Revolution to the crisis of empire in the 1950s, see his ‘Provincializing France’, in Stoler, Ann Laura, McGranahan, Carole and Perdue, Peter C., eds., Imperial Formations (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2007), 341–77Google Scholar. The notion of the imperial nation state belongs to Wilder, Gary in The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

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14 Pioneering economic historians of empire who leave this impression include Marseille, Jacques, Empire colonial et capitalisme français: Histoire d'un divorce (Paris: Albin Michel, 1984)Google Scholar and Thomas, Martin, The French Empire between the Wars: Imperialism, Politics, and Society (New York: Manchester University Press, 2005), 93124 Google Scholar.

15 Scholars have examined French economic interests in overseas empire and continental Europe, but less has been said about the relationship between the two. For French economic interests in empire, see, for example, Bonin, Hubert, Hodeir, Catherine and Klein, Jean-François, eds., L'esprit économique impérial (1830–1970): Groupes de pression & réseaux du patronat colonial en France & dans l'empire (Paris: Publications de la SFHOM, 2008)Google Scholar; Hodeir, Catherine, Stratégies d'Empire: Le grand patronat colonial face à la décolonisation (Paris: Belin, 2003)Google Scholar and Saul, Samir, Intérêts économiques français et décolonisation de l'Afrique du Nord (1945–1962) (Geneva: Droz, 2016)Google Scholar. For French economic interests in Europe, see, for example, Badel, Laurence, Un milieu libéral et européen: le grand commerce français (1925–1948) (Paris: CHEFF, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bussière, Eric, Paribas, l'Europe et le monde, 1872–1992 (Antwerp: Fonds Mercator, 1992)Google Scholar and Bussière, Eric and Dumoulin, Michel, eds., Milieux économiques et intégration européenne en Europe occidentale au XXe siècle (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 1998)Google Scholar.

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17 For example, Xavier Daumalin looks at the ways in which business interests in Marseilles took an interest in colonial electrification projects in Le patronat marseillais et la deuxième industrialisation (Aix-Marseilles: Université de Provence, 2014).

18 Most histories of France's interwar pan-European movement have focused on the diplomatic relations of the Great Powers as nation states instead of empire states, or on the economic and ideological milieus that gave rise to Briand's European project. Some notable works include Badel, Laurence, ‘Les promoteurs français d'une union économique et douanière de l'Europe dans l'entre-deux-guerres’, in Fleury, Antoine and Jílek, Lubor, eds., Le Plan Briand d'Union fédérale européenne (Brussels: Peter Lang, 1998), 1729 Google Scholar; Boyce, Robert, ‘Aristide Briand: Defending the Republic through Economic Appeasement’, Histoire@ Politique. Politique, culture, société 16 (Jan.–Apr. 2012), 122 Google Scholar; Bussière, Éric, ‘La France et les premiers projets d'organisation économique de l'Europe, 1925–1930’ in Bariéty, Jacques, ed., Aristide Briand, la Société des Nations, et l'Europe, 1919–1932 (Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2007), 300–9Google Scholar; Chabot, Jean-Luc, Aux origines intellectuelles de l'Union européenne: L'idée d'Europe unie de 1919 à 1939 (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2005)Google Scholar; Fischer, Conan, ‘The Failed European Union: Franco-German Relations during the Great Depression, 1929–1932’, The International History Review 34 (2012), 705–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keeton, Edward David, Briand's Locarno Policy: French Economics, Politics, and Diplomacy, 1925–1929 (New York: Garland, 1987)Google Scholar and Pitts, Vincent J., France and the German Problem: Politics and Economics in the Locarno Period, 1924–1929 (New York: Garland, 1987)Google Scholar.

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20 This is changing, but here too scholars tend to write off the late 1920s. See, for example, Cooper, Frederick, Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945–1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 202–10 and 263–78; Garavini, Giuliano, After Empires: European Integration, Decolonization, and the Challenge from the Global South, 1957–1986 trans. Richard R. Nybakken (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Kim, Seung-Ryeol, ‘France's Agony between “Vocation européenne et mondiale”: The Union Française as an Obstacle in the French Policy of Supranational European Integration, 1952–1954’, Journal of European Integration History 8 (2002), 6184 Google Scholar; Kottos, Laura, ‘A “European Commonwealth”: Britain, the European League for Economic Co-Operation, and European Debates on Empire, 1947-1957’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies 20, 4 (Dec. 2012), 497515 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Montarsolo, Yves, L'Eurafrique, contrepoint de l'idée de l'Europe: Le cas français de la fin de la deuxième guerre mondiale aux négociations des Traités de Rome (Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l'Université de Provence, 2010)Google Scholar; Ollivier, Anne-Laure, ‘Entre Europe et Afrique: Gaston Defferre et les débuts de la construction européenne’, Terrains et Travaux 8 (2005), 1433 Google Scholar and White, Nicholas J., ‘Reconstructing Europe through Rejuvenating Empire: the British, French, and Dutch Experiences Compared’, Past & Present, supplement 6 (2011), 211–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Ageron, Charles-Robert, ‘L'idée d'Eurafrique et le débat colonial franco-allemand de l'entre-deux-guerres’, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 22, 3 (July–Sept. 1975), 446–75Google Scholar.

22 Hansen, Peo and Jonsson, Stefan, Eurafrica: The Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)Google Scholar.

23 Hansen, Peo and Jonsson, Stefan, ‘Bringing Africa as a “Dowry to Europe”’, Interventions 13,3 (2011), 444–5Google Scholar.

24 On the post-war settlement, see, for example, Marks, Sally, The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe, 1918–1933 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Steiner, Zara, The Lights that Failed: European International History, 1919–1933 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 For an analysis of Germany's colonial and continental strategies before 1914 and their relationship to Nazism, see Eley, Geoff, ‘Empire by Land or Sea? Germany's Imperial Imagination, 1840–1945’, in Naranch, Bradley and Eley, Geoff, eds., German Colonialism in a Global Age (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 1945 Google Scholar.

26 On the rising tide of protectionism in the late 1920s and League responses to it, see Clavin, Securing the World Economy, 39–46.

27 French investment in the colonies jumped fourfold between 1914 and 1940; see Andrew, Christopher M. and Kanya-Forstner, A.S., The Climax of French Imperial Expansion, 1914–1924 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, 248. For French investment and trade in Central and Eastern Europe, see Teichova, Alice, ‘East-Central and South-East Europe, 1919–1939’, in Mathias, Peter and Pollard, Sidney, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. VIII (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 887983 Google Scholar.

28 Sarraut, Albert, La mise en valeur des colonies françaises (Paris: Payot, 1923)Google Scholar, 17.

29 Quoted in Roberts, Stephen H., The History of French Colonial Policy, 1870–1925 (London: Frank Cass, 1963, 1929)Google Scholar, 609.

30 Ibid., 613.

31 Régismanset, Charles, François, Georges and Rouget, Fernand, Ce que tout Français devrait savoir sur nos colonies (Paris: Émile Larose, 1918)Google Scholar; Megglé, Armand, Le domaine colonial de la France, ses ressources et ses besoins: guide pratique de l'Algérie, des colonies, des pays de protectorat et territoires à mandat (Paris: F. Alcan, 1922)Google Scholar; Sarraut, , La mise en valeur des colonies françaises Google Scholar; Homberg, Octave, La France des cinq parties du monde (Paris: Plon, 1927)Google Scholar; and Archimbaud, , La plus grande France Google Scholar.

32 Quoted in Sarraut, La mise en valeur des colonies françaises, 82.

33 Candace, Gratien, ‘Le régime douanier de la France et ses colonies’, Revue politique et parlementaire 160 (10 July 1934)Google Scholar, 71.

34 More work needs to be done on the politics of France's colonial tariff regimes. For an overview, see Candace, ‘Le régime douanier de la France et ses colonies’, 58–75 or, more recently, Aldrich, Robert, Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion (New York: Palgrave, 1996), 169–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Persell, S.M., The French Colonial Lobby, 1889-1938 (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1983), 137–9Google Scholar.

36 It is worth noting that tensions between metropolitan and colonial producers would continue into the 1930s. On this topic, see Saul, Samir, ‘Milieux d'affaires de l'Outre-Mer français et Grande Dépression des années 1930’, French Colonial History, 10 (2009), 209–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar and his more recent ‘Les pouvoirs publics métropolitains face à la Dépression: La Conférence économique de la France métropolitaine et d'Outre-Mer (1934-1935)’, French Colonial History, 12 (2011), 167–91.

37 For examples of the asymmetries within the French empire, see, for example, Burbank and Cooper, Empires in World History and Lewis, Mary Dewhurst, Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881–1938 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 For example, Régismanset, François and Rouget, Ce que tout français devrait savoir sur nos colonies, 139–62.

39 Roberts, The History of French Colonial Policy, 608.

40 Cornevin, Robert, ‘La France d'outre-mer’, in Sauvy, Alfred, ed., Histoire économique de la France entre les deux guerres, vol. 3 (Paris: Fayard, 1972)Google Scholar, 292.

41 Thomas, The French Empire between the Wars, 104.

42 Roberts, The History of French Colonial Policy, 61.

43 Ibid., 608.

44 Charles Régismanset, ‘La mise en valeur des colonies’, Europe nouvelle, 1 May 1926, 586.

45 Persell, The French Colonial Lobby, 155.

46 Sarraut wanted more state involvement in the colonial enterprise. See Thomas, Martin, ‘French Empire Elites and the Politics of Economic Obligation in the Interwar Years’, The Historical Journal, 52, 4 (Dec. 2009), 9891016 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Roberts, The History of French Colonial Policy, 611.

48 As observed by Léon Perrier, the Minister of the Colonies, in ‘La France et ses colonies sont solidaires’, Europe nouvelle, 1 May 1926, 578.

49 Archimbaud, La plus grande France, 50.

50 Ibid., 13.

51 Ibid., 7–8.

52 To gain a more thorough understanding of the place of empire in French public opinion, see Ageron, Charles-Robert, ‘Les colonies devant l'opinion publique française (1919–1939)’, Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, 77, 286 (1990), 3173 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Chafer, Tony and Sackur, Amanda, eds., Promoting the Colonial Idea: Propaganda and Visions of Empire in France (New York: Palgrave, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 For more on how the threat of communism influenced Sarraut's plans for colonial economic development, see Thomas, Martin, ‘Albert Sarraut, French Colonial Development, and the Communist Threat, 1919–1930’, The Journal of Modern History 77, 4 (Dec. 2005), 917–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Quoted in Birebent, Paul, Hommes, vignes et vins de l'Algérie française (1830–1962) (Nice: Editions Jacques Gandini, 2007)Google Scholar, 132.

55 For an understanding of association in West Africa, see Conklin, Alice L., A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, especially 174–211.

56 Albert Sarraut, ‘Nationalisons l'idée coloniale’, L'Europe nouvelle, 1 May 1926, 580. Interestingly, in this newspaper, which promoted European collaboration and peace, Sarraut does not refer to European collaboration in the French colonies.

57 Callahan, Michael D., A Sacred Trust: The League of Nations and Africa, 1929–1946 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2004)Google Scholar, 27.

58 Homberg, La France des cinq parties du monde, 64.

59 Ibid., 291.

60 Archimbaud, La plus grande France, 64.

61 On this topic see, Ageron, ‘Les colonies devant l'opinion publique française’, 45–54.

62 Ibid., 48.

63 Quoted in Ibid., 49.

64 Metzger, Chantal, L'Empire colonial français dans la stratégie du Troisième Reich (1936–1945), vol. 1 (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2002), 2930 Google Scholar.

65 AMAE, B27/47. ‘Les vingt-quatre plus grands clients à qui la France achète et vend dans le monde entier’, 1928.

66 Homberg, La France des cinq parties du monde, 7.

67 AMAE, B27/47. Quoted in Lucien Coquet, ‘Lettre ouverte aux conseillers du commerce extérieur de la France à l'occasion du congrès national d'Alger’, 1930, 3.

68 On the variety of this literature, see, for example, Chabot, Aux origines intellectuelles de l'Union européenne, 14.

69 Riou, Europe, ma patrie, 119.

70 AMAE, Y640. Mémorandum sur l'organisation d'un régime d'union fédérale européenne, 6.

71 Ibid., 128. Also see Richard, Anne-Isabelle, ‘Competition and Complementarity: Civil Society Networks and the Question of Decentralizing the League of Nations’, Journal of Global History 7, 2 (July 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 243. It should be pointed out, however, that I see more tension between Briand's federal Europe and the French empire than Richard's article suggests.

72 Quoted in Schmokel, Wolfe W., Dream of Empire: German Colonialism, 1919–1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964)Google Scholar, 83. Also quoted in Hansen and Jonsson, Eurafrica, 49.

73 Quoted in Archimbaud, La plus grande France, 57.

74 Léon Perrier, ‘La France et ses colonies sont solidaires’, 578. Perrier apparently made this comment before the Chamber of Deputies.

75 This contradiction had been exposed at the League of Nations. See Marie-Renée Mouton, ‘La Société des Nations et le Plan Briand d'Union européene’, in Fleury and Jílek, eds., Le Plan Briand d'Union fédérale européenne, 245–6.

76 Archimbaud, La plus grande France, 35.

77 AMAE, Y629. Incoming telegram from Serruys in Geneva, 5 Nov. 1927.

78 On this topic, see Clavin, Securing the World Economy, 45.

79 AMAE, Papiers 1940, Léger, 3. Pietro Stoppani, Mémorandum relatif à l'idée d'un accord collectif pour une meilleure organisation des relations économiques internationales en Europe, 11 Oct. 1929, 27.

80 On this topic, see Pedersen, The Guardians, 195–286.

81 AMAE, SDN/IJ/1428. ‘Note pour Monsieur Massigli’, 17 Oct. 1929.

82 AMAE, Y631. Incoming telegramme from Flandin in Geneva, 11 Mar. 1930.

83 ILO, CAT/6A/6. ‘Etats-Unis d'Europe’, 9, no date but likely 1930. For more on the ILO's view of European unification, see Guérin, Denis, Albert Thomas au BIT, 1920–1932: De l'internationalisme à l'Europe (Geneva: Institut européen de l'Université de Genève, 1996)Google Scholar.

84 Siegfried, André, ‘Les marchés étrangers et notre action diplomatique’, in de Jouvenel, Henry, Serruys, Daniel, et al., eds., Notre diplomatie économique (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1925)Google Scholar, 223. Laurence Badel has shown the importance of European markets compared to colonial markets in Un milieu libéral et européen, 109–30.

85 Delaisi, Francis, Les Deux Europes (Paris: Payot, 1929)Google Scholar, 200.

86 Ibid., 205.

87 For the relationship between population growth and the French economy, see, for example, Kemp, The French Economy, 1913–1939, 165.

88 Marseille, Empire colonial et capitalisme français, 229.

89 Thomas, The French Empire Between the Wars, 97.

90 Quoted in Marseille, Empire colonial et capitalisme français, 265.

91 Ibid., 263.

92 Ibid., 268.

93 Georges-Henri Soutou has argued that French security interests in Eastern Europe motivated its economic imperialism in the region in ‘L'impérialisme du pauvre: la politique économique de gouvernement français en Europe Centrale et Orientale de 1918 à 1929’, Relations internationales, 7 (1976): 219–39. Among works that examine Franco-German rivalry in Eastern Europe are Gross, Stephen G., Export Empire: German Soft Power in Southeastern Europe, 1890–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); esp. 4867 Google Scholar and 107–38 and Kaiser, David E., Economic Diplomacy and the Origins of the Second World War: Germany, Britain, France, and Eastern Europe, 1930–1939 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), esp. 356 Google Scholar.

94 Dannie Heineman, preface in Delaisi, Les Deux Europes, 16–9.

95 AMAE, B27/47. Premier congrès d'Union douanière européenne, Aug. 1930, 6.

96 League of Nations Archives (hereafter LoNA), SCE/II/PV4. Committee on Industry, International Economic Conference, ‘Provisional Minutes of the Fourth Meeting’, 10 May 1927, 8.

97 AMAE, Y630. See, for example, Telegram from Ristelhueber in Kovno, 11 Feb.1930.

98 Quoted in Wandycz, Piotr Stefan, The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 1926–1936: French-Czechoslovak-Polish Relations from Locarno to the Remilitarization of the Rhineland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 191.

99 AMAE, Y630. See, for example, incoming telegram from Vienne in Budapest, 8 Feb. 1930.

100 Hoover Institution Archives (hereafter HIA), Loucheur Papers, Box 7, Folder 7, ‘Discours de M. Louis Loucheur’, Romania, no date but surely late May 1930.

101 For more on Loucheur's Eastern European investments, see Keeton, Briand's Locarno Policy, 82.

102 AMAE, Y630. Incoming telegram from Tripier in Warsaw, 29 Nov. 1929.

103 Quoted in Wandycz, The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 187.

104 For example, No. 189: ‘Memorandum on M. Briand's proposal for a European Federal Union [W5585/451/98]’, Foreign Office, 30 May 1930, in Woodward, E.L. and Butler, Rohan, eds., Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1947)Google Scholar, 328.

105 Quoted in Stirk, Peter M.R., A History of European Integration since 1914 (New York: Pinter, 1996)Google Scholar, 37.

106 AMAE, Y653. André Chaumeix, ‘Le projet d'union européenne’, Le Figaro, Aug.1930 (the exact day is unclear on the document).

107 Even if Franco-German dialogue did not come to halt. See Fischer, ‘The Failed European Union’.

108 Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard, ‘Afrika’, Paneuropa 5, 2 (1929), 318 Google Scholar.

109 On the link between the Berlin Conference and Eurafrica, see Whiteman, Kaye, ‘The Rise and Fall of Eurafrique: From the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 to the Tripoli EU-Africa Summit of 2010’, in Adebajo, Adekeye and Whiteman, Kaye, eds., The EU and Africa: From Eurafrique to Afro-Europa (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 2343 Google Scholar.

110 For various instances of pre-First World War efforts at Franco-German collaboration, see Andrew, Christopher M., Théophile Delcassé and the Making of the Entente Cordiale: A Reappraisal of French Foreign Policy (New York: St. Martin's, 1968), esp. 158–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Poidevin, Raymond, Les relations économiques et financières entre la France et l'Allemagne de 1898 à 1914 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1969), esp. 411611 Google Scholar.

111 Cited in Morton, Patricia A., Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000)Google Scholar, 314.

112 Léon Archimbaud, ‘Le Quai d'Orsay et nos colonies’, Les Annales coloniales, 23 July 1931.

113 Sarraut, Grandeur et servitude coloniales (Paris: Éditions du Sagittaire, 1931), especially 216–85. For Sarraut's views of Eurafrica, see Montarsolo, Yves, ‘Albert Sarraut et l'idée d'Eurafrique’, in Bitsch, Marie-Thérèse and Bossuat, Gérard, eds., L'Europe unie et l'Afrique: De l'idée d'Eurafrique à la Convention de Lomé I (Brussels: Bruylant, 2005), 7795 Google Scholar.

114 Sarraut, Grandeur et servitude coloniales, 240.

115 Ibid., 280.

116 Rochelle, Pierre Drieu La, L'Europe contre les patries (Paris: Gallimard, 1931)Google Scholar, 138. Refer to the footnote on this page, which indicates that this quote comes from Genève ou Moscou in 1928. On Drieu La Rochelle's continental Europeanism, see Shurts, Sarah, ‘Continental Collaboration: The Transition from Ultranationalism to Pan-Europeanism by the Interwar French Fascist Right’, French Politics, Culture, & Society 32, 3 (Winter 2014), 7996 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

117 Sarraut, Grandeur et servitude coloniales, 12.

118 Georges Valois, ‘L'Afrique chantier de l'Europe’, Cahiers bleus, 27 June–4 July 1931, 7.

119 Valois, ‘L'Afrique chantier de l'Europe’, 7.

120 Bertrand de Jouvenel, ‘Un plan de valorisation colonial et de collaboration européenne’, Cahiers bleus, 28 Mar. 1931, 16.

121 Ibid., 29.

122 Ibid., 29.

123 Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard N., Paneurope, trans. Philippe Simon (Paris: Editions Paneuropeennes, 1927)Google Scholar, 139.

124 Eugène L. Guernier, ‘Les grands courants modernes des migrations humaines: L'Afrique, champ d'expansion de l'Europe’, La Quinzaine coloniale, 25 Nov.1930. Guernier elaborated on his ideas in L'Afrique, champ d'expansion de l'Europe (Paris: Armand Colin, 1933).

125 On the German colonial lobby's efforts to reassert its authority over its colonies, see Schmokel, Dream of Empire, 77–8.

126 For an understanding of the German demand for a return of Germany's colonies and of the broader German claim on French colonies, see Metzger, L'Empire colonial français dans la stratégie du Troisième Reich (1936–1945), vol. 1.

127 Quoted in Ageron, ‘Les colonies devant l'opinion publique française’, 40.

128 LoNA, CEUE/23. Conseil d'administration du Bureau international du travail, ‘Extrait du procès-verbal de la huitième séance’, 22 Apr. 1931, 16.

129 LoNA, CEUE/43. Unemployment Committee, CEEU, ‘Draft Resolution’, 10 July 1931, 2.

130 Hansen and Jonsson, Eurafrica, 63–8; Dutter, Gordon, ‘Doing Business with the Nazis: French Economic Relations with Germany under the Popular Front’, Journal of Modern History 63 (June 1991), 296326 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

131 Marseille, Empire colonial et capitalisme français, 503.

132 Hansen and Jonsson, Eurafrica, 14.

133 For details about Eurafrica in the mid-1950s from two different perspectives, see Cooper, Citizenship between Empire and Nation, esp. 263–70 and Hansen and Jonsson, Eurafrica, 147–238.