French colonial empire

France rebuilt a new empire mostly after 1850, concentrating chiefly in Africa as well as Indochina and the South Pacific.

French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China) (French: Indochine française; Vietnamese: Đông Dương thuộc Pháp), officially known as the Indochinese Union (French: Union indochinoise; Vietnamese: Liên bang Đông Dương) from 1887 and the Indochinese Federation (French: Fédération indochinoise) after 1947, was a grouping of French colonial territories in Southeast Asia.

The main competition included Spain, Portugal, the Dutch United Provinces and later Kingdom of Britain.

As the King of Spain was also King of Portugal, Portuguese colonies became the subject of attacks by three rival European powers hostile to Spain: the Dutch Republic, England, and France.

Republicans, at first hostile to empire, only became supportive when Germany after 1880 started to build its own colonial empire.

Claiming much of the left-over uncolonized areas in the Scramble for Africa, Germany managed to build the third largest colonial empire at the time, after the British and French.

At its apex, it was one of the largest empires in history.

The French constitution of 27 October 1946 (Fourth Republic), established the French Union which endured until 1958.

The French Union (Union française) (1946–1958) was a political entity created by the French Fourth Republic to replace the old French colonial system, colloquially known as the "French Empire" (Empire Français).

In 1884, the leading proponent of colonialism, Jules Ferry, declared; "The higher races have a right over the lower races, they have a duty to civilize the inferior races."

Two important works are associated with his administration: the non-clerical organization of public education, and the major colonial expansion of France.

Early French attempts to found colonies in Brazil, in 1555 at Rio de Janeiro ("France Antarctique") and in Florida (including Fort Caroline in 1562), and in 1612 at São Luís ("France Équinoxiale"), were not successful, due to a lack of official interest and to Portuguese and Spanish vigilance.

The French colonial empire in the New World also included New France (Nouvelle France) in North America, extending from Canada to Louisiana, and for a short period (12 years) also included the colony of Antarctic France (France Antarctique, in French), in present-day Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

In 1699, French territorial claims in North America expanded still further, with the foundation of Louisiana in the basin of the Mississippi River.

The earliest settlers of Upper Louisiana mostly came from French Canada, while Lower Louisiana was colonized by people from all over the French colonial empire, with various waves coming from Canada, France, and the French West Indies.

France began to establish colonies in North America, the Caribbean and India in the 17th century.

To strengthen the colony and make it the centre of France's colonial empire, Louis XIV decided to send single women, aged between 15 and 30 known as the King's Daughters or in French, les filles du roi, to New France, paying for their passage and granting goods or money as a dowry.

Local resistance by the indigenous peoples resulted in the Carib Expulsion of 1660.

This followed the French invasion in 1635 and its conquest of the people on the Caribbean island that made it part of the French colonial empire.

Colonies were also founded in the Indian Ocean, on the Île de Bourbon (Réunion, 1664), Isle de France (Mauritius, 1718), and the Seychelles (1756).

Isle de France (Île de France in modern French) was the name of the Indian Ocean island which is known as Mauritius and its dependent territories between 1715 and 1810, when the area was under the French East India Company and part of France's empire.

France's repurchase of Louisiana in 1800 came to nothing, as the success of the Haitian Revolution convinced Napoleon that holding Louisiana would not be worth the cost, leading to its sale to the United States in 1803.

The Haitian Revolution (Révolution haïtienne ) was a successful anti-slavery and anti-colonial insurrection by self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign nation of Haiti.

At the close of the Napoleonic Wars, most of France's colonies were restored to it by Britain, notably Guadeloupe and Martinique in the West Indies, French Guiana on the coast of South America, various trading posts in Senegal, the Île Bourbon (Réunion) in the Indian Ocean, and France's tiny Indian possessions; however, Britain finally annexed Saint Lucia, Tobago, the Seychelles, and the Isle de France (now Mauritius).

Envious of the great wealth these empires generated, England, France, and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia.

Also ceded to the British were Grenada and Saint Lucia in the West Indies.

Following several unsuccessful attempts by Europeans to colonise the island due to resistance from the Island Caribs, French settlement and colonisation began in 1650 and continued for the next century.

France's repurchase of Louisiana in 1800 came to nothing, as the success of the Haitian Revolution convinced Napoleon that holding Louisiana would not be worth the cost, leading to its sale to the United States in 1803.

In 1800, Napoleon, then the First Consul of the French Republic, regained ownership of Louisiana as part of a broader project to re-establish a French colonial empire in North America.

Napoleon III doubled the area of the French overseas Empire; he established French rule in New Caledonia, and Cochinchina, established a protectorate in Cambodia (1863); and colonized parts of Africa.

Napoleon III doubled the area of the French overseas empire in Asia, the Pacific and Africa, however his army's intervention in Mexico, which aimed to create a Second Mexican Empire under French protection, ended in total failure.

Reaching into the Niger valley, Senegal became the primary French base in West Africa and a model colony.

French West Africa (Afrique occidentale française, AOF) was a federation of eight French colonial territories in Africa: Mauritania, Senegal, French Sudan (now Mali), French Guinea, Ivory Coast, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Dahomey (now Benin) and Niger.

To carry out his new overseas projects, Napoleon III created a new Ministry of the Navy and the Colonies, and appointed an energetic minister, Prosper, Marquis of Chasseloup-Laubat, to head it.

Justin Napoléon Samuel Prosper de Chasseloup-Laubat, 4th Marquis of Chasseloup-Laubat (29 May 1805, Alessandria, Department of Marengo, French Empire – 29 March 1873, Paris, France) was a French aristocrat and politician who became Minister of the Navy under Napoleon III and was an early advocate of French colonialism.

He built a new port at Dakar, established and protected telegraph lines and roads, followed these with a rail line between Dakar and Saint-Louis and another into the interior.

Following the abolition of the slave trade and French annexation of the mainland area in the 19th century, Dakar grew into a major regional port and a major city of the French colonial empire.

The economy had largely been based on the slave trade, carried out by the rulers of the small kingdoms of the interior, until France abolished slavery in its colonies in 1848.

Though anti-slavery sentiments were widespread by the late 18th century, the colonies and emerging nations that used slave labor continued to do so: Dutch, French, British, Spanish and Portuguese territories in the West Indies, South America, and the Southern United States.

The slaves, led eventually by Toussaint L'Ouverture and then, following his capture by the French in 1801, by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, held their own against French and British opponents, and ultimately achieved independence as Empire of Haiti in 1804 (Haiti became the first black republic in the world, followed by Liberia in 1847).

The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was a slave revolt in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the elimination of slavery there and established the Republic of Haiti.

In World War II, Charles de Gaulle and the Free French took control of the overseas colonies one-by-one and used them as bases from which they prepared to liberate France.

The colonies (Algeria was officially a part of France, not a colony) were given the choice between immediate independence and the new constitution.

France's most important Caribbean colonial possession was established in 1664, when the colony of Saint-Domingue (today's Haiti) was founded on the western half of the Spanish island of Hispaniola.

Saint-Domingue became known as the "Pearl of the Antilles" — one of the richest colonies in the world in the 18th-century French empire.

In 1858 the Vietnamese emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty felt threatened by the French influence and tried to expel the missionaries.

During its existence, the Empire was gradually absorbed by France over the course of several decades.

In 1854, Napoleon III named an enterprising French officer, Louis Faidherbe, to govern and expand the colony, and to give it the beginning of a modern economy.

Explorers had, however, made known the riches and possibilities of the Niger regions, and Faidherbe formed the design of adding those countries to the French dominions.