The Colonial Policy of the Popular Front

Abstract

The accession to power of the Popular Front government in 1936 was greeted in the French empire with enthusiasm by many leaders of the non-European population overseas. Political leaders as different as Ho Chi Minh, Habib Bourguiba, and Ferhat Abbas viewed with optimism the possibility of cooperating with the French government and working for a liberalization of the French imperial structure.1 All three French political parties making up the Popular Front-the Radical Socialist, the Socialist, and the Communist parties-were vaguely identified with reformism and the latter two were even thought of as being anticolonial. The very hopes which the Popular Front engendered overseas in the long run proved to be deleterious to the empire-for hopes were raised which were totally unrealistic. Perhaps, if the history of the political parties had been studied more carefully, it would have been discovered that none of the three parties was unconditionally anticolonial and that even their devotion to reform was at best equivocal. In its early years the Radical party had had a reputation for its violent attacks against the imperialism of Jules Ferry and his Opportunist majority. Article 10 of the Radical party program in 1881 was: Opposition to all policies of conquest.2 In the Chamber of Deputies the flamboyant Clemenceau denounced colonial conquest as a betrayal of democratic principle; in adopting a policy of domination and exploitation of man by his fellow-man we are betraying our tradition .. , Clemenceau declared.3 In 1883 the Tiger attacked the subter-