REPUBLICANISM, RAILWAY IMPERIALISM, AND THE FRENCH EMPIRE IN AFRICA, 1879–1889

ABSTRACTThis article questions accepted views of French expansion as a largely autonomous process, reflecting new attitudes towards Africa among policy-makers. It argues that the African railway schemes of 1879 were the outcome of an understanding between powerful railway interests and mainstream elements of the newly victorious republican parties. The ambitions of the railway companies were restricted in scope, however, being confined mainly to existing French possessions, while their sponsorship of imperial expansion was little more than a tactical expedient. It was only when the opportunities created for expansion were taken up by locally based pressure-groups or became caught up in international rivalries that empire began to take root in the Soudan and the Congo. By the time the anti-colonial reaction of the mid-1880s took hold, railway imperialism, a product of the short-lived economic boom, had already run its course. Government now had an opportunity and an incentive to put its imperial house in order. Nevertheless, the resulting equilibrium remained vulnerable to a re-emergence of the forces that had first set France on the road to empire in tropical Africa.