Graceful French Exit from Colonialism?

BlondieBC

Banned
Not precisely- by this time Indians were already starting to agitate for independence. It may take a little longer (by which I mean late 50s instead of early 40s) but India will still go and once India goes every other colonised people in the world has an example.

While what you list is possible, it is by far from the only or most likely outcome. India independence might well be delay well past the 50's. We might have a long rebellion war. The Indians might lose. etc.

And to losing one part of the Empire collapsing the rest is not a given either barring the catastrophic losses of the World Wars. Spain lost a large portion of its empire, but not all in the Napoleonic wars. Same for Portugal. And neither cause the collapse of the empire system world wide. So even if I grant that India will be independent by 1958, it is far from given the UK losses the rest of its empire. And it is a huge jump to say that this causes the Germans to abandon SWA or EA. So lets look at some other British colonies, OTL & ATL.

1) Hong Kong preferred UK status, but UK too weak to hold. With possibly divided China and much stronger UK, likely stays in Empire.

2) Singapore and Straights colony. Stays.

3) India area. UK can fall back to Sri Lanka and have adequate naval bases. Much easier area to Dominate.

4) Aden - Likely keeps port.

5) Kuwait - Will keep oil.

6) Suez, Malta, Gibraltar - Keeps.

7) White Dominions - Likely stay in system, but we can debate how closely integrated. Now there are a lot of lesser value colonies that really lose money.

So sure, I can see them leaving some less valuable area like the Sudan. But there will be areas that have substantial white populations (over 1/6) that they will definitely keep. I just can't tell you which ones without writing a full TL. For example, the Uganda/Kenya highlands will be settled by non-Africans, but it might be Indians or Europeans. And the divide an rule can work here. Since the Indians were largely expelled after Kenyan independence, it makes a 20% Indian and 15% White population need a strong Empire. At times, the UK was quite good a cynical power moves.

And lets go more on topic to the French. Let us assume that the UK lose all of India/Burma/Pakistan and a few lesser colonies. What happens to French Colonies.

1) Algeria - Went into detail how it is kept.

2) Tunisia - Also likely kept, but might go to Italy. Italy is exporting substantial population, and Libya can't hold the entire export. Heavy Italian settlement in Algeria and Tunisia is possible.

3) The vast Sahara areas the French hold. They are very likely to hold de jure control, but the actual level of defacto control can be quite light until resources are discovered.

4) French West Africa- Tropics. Probably held by force, but France could easily decide certain areas are not worth the effort. France is not generating the population to make these areas French like Algeria, so they need other European settlers. And it is mostly not a prime area to attract settlers from Europe. USA, Argentina, Brazil and UK white dominions are much better. So is SW Africa, Angolan highlands, German East African Highlands, and British East African Highlands.

5) The little things France still holds IOTL. Still holds in this ATL.

In today world it is important to remember that there will be up to a 1 billion person swing in demographics and definitely over 500 million. There will be a lot more whites and a lot fewer non-whites. And there will be a lot of people switch identities for personal advantages, many of these non-White. While it certainly will not go all to Africa, assuming they all do will illustrate the same. Sub-Sahara Africa has about 600 million people, mostly black. ITTL, there will be only 300 million blacks due to lower birth rate and higher death rate. There will be 300 million people of European descent. So we are looking at much more of a Mexico type ratio of DNA than the Africa of OTL. And the whites will cluster in areas. The Congo will still be mostly native due to malaria and yellow fever. But Rwanda will be a clear white super majority. Same for Kenya and Uganda Highlands and Angola.

Or another illustration is the MENA area of about 300 million. We can simply settle the Europeans there and get a majority. But if under colonies,we will see a lot lower Muslim population due to conversion, changing the ethnic cleansing ratio, and Christians hogging resources. So we are probably looking at under 200 million Muslims in the area if we have major white inflows. It is easy to see many of these areas as Christian majority or plurality.

Now note: I am not saying this is a better world. Some of these places could easily resemble aparteid SA or modern Israel. I would not be surprised to see 5-15 festering wounds such as Israel with constant low level violence and systematic discrimination. And I can easy see Holocaust against none whites. The track record of Europeans in Africa from 1880 to 1960 is simply immoral. So some of the more stable areas could easily be because 80% of the blacks were killed in British or German East Africa or they we expelled into the swamps of the Congo and no one bother to count the dead. After all, the Belgians clearly committed Genocide in the Congo and no one cared. The Germans killed 40-70% of one tribe in a few years. The UK did not bother keeping death tolls in the Boer war. WW1 killed from 1 million to 10 million blacks in the Congo. Again, not worth counting. WW1 killed up to a million blacks in British and German East Africa.

The best illustration of how unimportant black life was pre-WW2 is the Boer war. I can find the number of horse killed (360K) and how long they lived (6 weeks on average), but is was not counting black live lost. While deeply offensive, a black life was probably worth somewhere between a chicken and a cow in the European decision process. Definitely way less than a horse, much less a white life. And it is probably closer to the value of a chicken than a cow. I can easily see a situation where there are two reports on the colonial desk. One says 100K cows died of disease and famine. Another says 150K natives died. The issues of the cow dying is forward to higher officials for action, and the report on native deaths is just filed away.
 
So to save the colony of Vietnam, the French grant it independence? What? The French (like all colonizers) knew exactly what would (and did) happen when a colony was granted independence by the Metropole; all of the other colonies will demand the same. This will just accelerate decolonization, if anything.

Independence in stages, so first off autonomy within the French Community and then later the inevitable independence but on different terms compared to OTL.

And the millions that don't volunteer anyways? What about them? All I see is that you've made some extra Harki collaborators to flee the place when the chips are down.

Since said naturalisation would be extended to the volunteers families, we are probably talking about millions of colonials becoming French here.
The dynamics of colonisation would be changed forever following something like this and barriers will have been broken for good.
The volunteers may very well in favour of independence later on, but their political weight and crucially their shared experience of the war with their French and Pied Noirs borthers will mean that violence could very well be avoided.
Don't also underestimante the fact that a France with Algiers as its capital will be forced to make significant investments in the region. For said investments to be profitable in a war situation they will have to reach out widely.

Every moderate was a nationalist at heart unless they had completely sold-out to France and its message of the White Man's Burden, to say nothing of its pseudo-science which classified North Africans as inherently criminal (something which was officially taught by the French Psychiatric College in Algiers until at least 1954).

As I said before, I am kind of sick of Yanks saying that the Algerian War was a black and white thing when clearly it was not (nothing is black and white). You had a lot of moderates who wanted nothing more than for France to fully accept Algerians as equals and an integral part of France. This would have required huge changes on the part of France of course, which France did not attempt until it was too late.
The rejection of the Blum Violette proposal of 1936 by Grand Colons lobbies was the first blow to the moderates. The repeal of the Cremieux decree was another one. The indifference of Vichy towards the Muslims was another one.
Ferhat Abbas once wrote a report whose title was "Algeria from the colony to the province" which says a lot about his feelings during the early forties.

A France with her back against a wall would implement some reforms. The grand colons won't like it of course and some will say that "the wogs are getting uppity". But the majority of the pied noir population in cities will support the reforms.

It won't be easy by any means, but WW2 is the last chance France had of ensuring a gracious exit from Algeria and the creation of a friendly ally there.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Since said naturalisation would be extended to the volunteers families, we are probably talking about millions of colonials becoming French here.
The dynamics of colonisation would be changed forever following something like this and barriers will have been broken for good.
The volunteers may very well in favour of independence later on, but their political weight and crucially their shared experience of the war with their French and Pied Noirs borthers will mean that violence could very well be avoided.

Don't also underestimante the fact that a France with Algiers as its capital will be forced to make significant investments in the region. For said investments to be profitable in a war situation they will have to reach out widely. As I said before, I am kind of sick of Yanks saying that the Algerian War was a black and white thing when clearly it was not (nothing is black and white).
All this does is show how glaringly ignorant you are of the mindset of colonized people.
You had a lot of moderates who wanted nothing more than for France to fully accept Algerians as equals and an integral part of France.
You had a bunch of urban intellectuals that in other countries were called "Brown Englishmen." The urban bourgeoisie are notoriously pro-colonialist because their entire survival depends on profiting from their role as the colonizer's agents. France institutionally delegitimized Algerian culture, shrieked about there being "no such thing as Algerian culture," and again the glaring racism. People who are victims to this level of exploitation--that is, quasi-totalitarian slavery--never forget it. So for every Muslim teacher who is yearning to be a Frenchmen, there are hundreds of Algerian peasants whose only knowledge of the Frenchman is that of a raping, exploitative pillager who stole their land and dehumanized them. They have no desire to be part of the reeking hypocrisy of a "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" that howls its civilization's Superiority over mountains of Algerian corpses. Except for those native profiteers (who usually wind up running the country post-independence), the number of colonized who want independence ASAP vastly outnumbers and unites all groups of the colonized.

This would have required huge changes on the part of France of course, which France did not attempt until it was too late.
And those changes would delegitimize the entire colonial situation because it would acknowledge Algerians as something other than sub-human subjects. You also give the French an awful lot of agency on how Algerians will feel. Again, the overwhelming majority of Algerians do not want to be Frenchmen.
Ferhat Abbas once wrote a report whose title was "Algeria from the colony to the province" which says a lot about his feelings during the early forties.
You would profit infinitely more from Fanon's insights on the conflict than Abbas. But Abbas' own progress shows how that entire pretext of an "equal Algeria" is doomed; the French will never acknowledged Algerians as equal because that would be acknowledging the Algerians as human beings, which is contrary to the fundamental dehumanization colonization is built upon. No matter how hard he tried, he realized that the colonizer would never see him as an equal, and so--disabused of his conscious mimicry of the colonizer--he became a nationalist.
 
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Wolfpaw

Banned
The most graceful exit a colonizer can make is the same as all rapists; to pull out and leave immediately.
 
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