Myopic Grandeur

The Ambivalence of French Foreign Policy Toward the Far East, 1919-1945

John E. Dreifort

• Éditeur: The Kent State University Press
• Année: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781612774824
• Sujet: History
• Sous-sujet: World History

General Charles de Gaulle once said, "France cannot be France without greatness."

France's effort to maintain its presence as a great world power is the subject of Myopic Grandeur, the first major study of French foreign policy initiatives in the Far East from World War I until the conclusion of World War II. France emerged from World War I as the dominant power in Europe and one of the great imperial powers of the world, yet policymakers there faced a dramatic disparity between its great power aspirations and decreasing resources. The challenges presented by German, Italian, and Japanese expansion caused France to resort to diplomatic maneuvering to defend its substantial interests in the Far East and salvage its status as a major player in the region. In their attempt to reduce growing tensions in the Far East, French policymakers vainly sought support from potential allies: the isolationist United States was unconvinced of a Japanese threat, and Britain's frequently contradictory actions and vacillating policies further complicated the situation. Despite French initiatives, the handling of the Far Eastern situation prior to World War II was characterized by a lack of coordination and missed opportunities.

Based upon extensive multi-archival research, John Dreifort provides clear evidence that France was not as pro-appeasement toward the Japanese as conventionally thought, and that French policymakers frequently had clearer insight into the dangers and opportunities which exited in the Far East than did statesmen of other major Western powers in the area.

Notes

1. FRENCH INTERESTS IN THE FAR EAST

1. Foreign Ministry memorandum, 21 June 1921, FMAE, E–22–1: 7, p. 81.

2. Samuel M. Osgood, “The Third French Republic in Historical Perspective,” 60–61.

3. Quoted in John F. Cady, The Roots of French Imperialism in Eastern Asia, 107. As John Cairns has noted (France, 88), “nothing was so useful to imperial purpose as dead missionaries.” Ferry forcefully argued, “It must be openly stated that the superior races have rights in relation to the inferior races … I repeat that they have rights because they have obligations—the obligation to civilize the inferior races” (Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, “Changes in French Foreign Policy since 1945,” 313).

4. Raymond Betts has suggested that the Empire, like the American frontier, “did afford the space, the atmosphere, and the isolation in which self-styled men of action and energy could exercise their ambitions and fulfill their desires, could renew their lives, and could dedicate themselves to national causes” (“The French Colonial Frontier,” 127).

5. Gordon Wright, France in Modern Times, 301. For a solid synthesis of the importance of the economic motivation for imperialism, see Christopher M. Andrew and A. S. Kanya-Forstner, The Climax of French Imperial Expansion, 1914–1924, 14–17.

6. Raymond F. Betts, The False Dawn: European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century, 77. For more on Ferry and economic motivation for imperial conquest, see Thomas J. Power, Jr., Jules Ferry and the Renaissance of French Imperialism, 196–99.

7. Henri Brunschwig, French Colonialism, 1871–1914: Myths and Realities, 182–83. In his introduction to Brunschwig’s study, Ronald Robinson agreed that French imperialism was “driven by nothing more complicated than a passion for national honour and cultural extravention” spearheaded by ambitious colonels and admirals conquering commercially insignificant territory. “The French colonel with one hand on his Gatling and the other on the proofs of his next book was no myth” (ix–x).

8. Cady, Roots of French Imperialism, 294–95.

9. Duroselle, “Changes in French Foreign Policy,” 313.

10. Quoted in M. E. Chamberlain, The New Imperialism, 33.

11. Quoted in Raymond F. Betts, Tricoleur: The French Overseas Empire, 18.

12. Quoted in Andrew and Kanya-Forstner, Climax of French Imperialism, 25. For more on the colonial attitudes of Gambetta and Delcassé, see J. P. T. Bury, Gambetta’s Final Years: “The Era of Difficulties,” 1877–1882, 60–81; Charles W. Porter, The Career of Théophile Delcassé, 72–73, 99; and Christopher Andrew, Théophile Delcassé and the Making of the Entente Cordiale.

13. James J. Cook, New French Imperialism, 1880–1910: The Third Republic and Colonial Expansion, 10.

14. See Cook, New French Imperialism; Andrew and Kanya-Forstner, Climax of French Imperialism, 25–26; and Betts, False Dawn, 77.

15. Betts, False Dawn, 50. Andrew and Kanya-Forstner argue that public support could be aroused if it could be persuaded that the failure to acquire a colony would allow a European rival to seize it. This reflected concerns about the role of France in great-power relationships rather than inherent desire for colonial acquisition itself (Climax of French Imperialism, 29–32).

16. Albert Sarraut, La mise en valeur des colonies française, 463.

17. For the main developments of the French conquest of Indochina, see D. W. Brogan, The Development of Modern France, 1870–1939, 232–42; and C. G. F. Simkin, The Traditional Trade of Asia, 340–44.

18. Brogan, Modern France, 239. See also Andrew and Kanya-Forstner, Climax of French Imperialism, 18–23. About 72 percent of Frenchmen in Indochina were employed by the government, either as civil servants or in the military. By comparison, only 20 percent of the Dutch in Indonesia were so employed (John F. Cady, Southeast Asia: Its Historical Development, 548). Raymond Betts has observed that “if not always second-raters, the men who serviced the French empire were often ill-trained, often ill disposed to the people they ruled, and, generally, uninspired” (Tricoleur, 80).

19. Virginia Thompson, French Indochina, 399.

20. Betts, Tricoleur (see chap. 2). See also Raymond F. Betts, From Assimilation to Association in French Colonial Policy, 1890–1914.

21. Thompson, French Indochina, 217; Joseph Buttinger, A Dragon Defiant: A Short History of Vietnam, 68. See also Alan B. Cole, ed., Conflict in Indo-China and International Repercussions: A Documentary History, 1945–1955, xx.

22. For studies of the economic issues, see, for example, Brunschwig, Myths and Realities: Cady, Roots of French Imperialism; Andrew and Kanya-Forstner, Climax of French Imperialism; and Cook, New French Imperialism. The quotation is from Cady, Southeast Asia, 543.

23. Buttinger, Dragon Defiant, 65 (see also Simkin, Traditional Trade of Asia, 344–46); Bernard B. Fall, The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis, 27; Stephen H. Roberts, The History of French Colonial Policy, 1870–1925, 2:490–98.

24. Buttinger, Dragon Defiant, 66–68. See also Virginia Thompson, “Indo-China—France’s Great Stake in the Far East,” 15–22; Roger Levy et al., French Interests and Policies in the Far East, 22.

25. Alfred Sauvy, Histoire économique de la France entre les deux guerres (1918–1931), 1:304.

26. Betts, Tricoleur, 77; Fall, Two Viet-Nams, 30; Cady, Southeast Asia, 554; Cole, Conflict in Indo-China, x–xxi; and Claude A. Buss, War and Diplomacy in Eastern Asia, 343–46. See also Lauristan Sharp, “Colonial Regimes in Southeast Asia,” 51. Banking resources in Indochina reached about 750 million francs. The Banque de l’Indochine became the most important French banking institution in the colony as well as in neighboring China. Well connected in French governing circles and partially owned by the government, it enjoyed the exclusive privilege of note issue.

27. Cady, Southeast Asia, 552.

28. Roberts, French Colonial Policy, 2:497–98.

29. Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff (The French Pacific Islands, 238–39) suggest that the French annexation may have been motivated by a desire to punish natives who had killed and eaten a number of French sailors. They place the number of convicts at a more modest figure of 20,000 (241) than Douglas L. Oliver (The Pacific Islands, 324; cited in the text).

30. Oliver, Pacific Islands, 324–27. By 1938, New Caledonia still supplied 6 percent of the world’s production of chrome and 8 percent of its nickel.

31. Ibid., 329; C. Hartley Grattan, The Southwest Pacific since 1900, 405–6; Glenn Barclay, A History of the Pacific, 134–36; and Lewis S. Feuer, “End of Coolie Labor in New Caledonia,” 264.

32. Grattan, Southwest Pacific, 405; Oliver, Pacific Islands, 326. The French colonists’ attitude was undoubtedly enhanced by New Caledonia’s contribution to the French war effort between 1915 and 1918, when the island contributed 2,170 men to the Pacific Battalion that served on the western front. Nearly one-fourth of them died during the hostilities (Thompson and Adloff, French Pacific Islands, 251).

33. Grattan, Southwest Pacific, 411. The archipelagoes included the Society Islands comprising Tahiti, the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, the Gambiers, the Australes, and Clipperton Island off the coast of southern Mexico.

34. Ibid., 411–12.

35. W. P. Morrell, The Great Powers in the Pacific, 18, 22.

36. Oliver, Pacific Islands, 245–52.

37. Quoted in Akira Iriye, Across the Pacific: An Inner History of American-East Asian Relations, 35.

38. For the development of French interests in China, see Cady, Roots of French Imperialism; Herbert Ingram Priestley, France Overseas: A Study of Modern Imperialism, 102–8; and Kenneth Scott Latourette, The Development of China, 168–69, 183–85.

39. This examination of French economic interests in China is based largely on Chiming Hou, Foreign Investment and Economic Development in China, 1840–1937; C. F. Remer, Foreign Investments in China, 619–36; and Levy et al., French Interests, 17–40 (see esp. Levy et al., French Interests, 18–26, on China, Indochina, and France). Prior to 1914, China enjoyed a favorable balance of trade with France because of French imports of silk (Francis E. Hyde, Far Eastern Trade, 1860–1914, 190).

40. Jeffrey J. Clarke’s “Nationalization of War Industries in France, 1936–1937: A Case Study” (413) discusses the commerce in the automotive industry.

41. Even as late as 1938, however, it was estimated that France still held 23 percent of China’s foreign debt, ranking behind only Britain and the United States. For a breakdown of French loans to China’s government, see Levy et al., French Interests, 26–33. On France’s substantial interests in other railways in China, see Remer, Foreign Investments in China, 622–23, and for exports to Yunnan, see Remer, 630–31. For an estimat...