How long can France keep its colonies?

France tried to hold on to its colonies, notably Algeria and Vietnam, but de Gaulle eventually decided they were more trouble than they were worth and cut just about all of them loose in 1960. With a post WWII POD, what bits of the French colonial empire can stay with France the longest?
 
Afret WW2 French colonial empire was already doomed. But even with post WW2 POD it could keep parts of coastal Algeria, Djibouti and Comores. Perhaps French India too.
 
Afret WW2 French colonial empire was already doomed. But even with post WW2 POD it could keep parts of coastal Algeria, Djibouti and Comores. Perhaps French India too.
Yep. I concur.
Djibouti had a strategic interest and would be worth keeping for France.
France could own say Algiers and Oran like Spain has Ceuta and Melilla.
As for the Comores, I'll check.
 
Afret WW2 French colonial empire was already doomed. But even with post WW2 POD it could keep parts of coastal Algeria, Djibouti and Comores.
Yep. I concur.
Djibouti had a strategic interest and would be worth keeping for France.
France could own say Algiers and Oran like Spain has Ceuta and Melilla.
As for the Comores, I'll check.

Well, one island in the chains, Mayotte, did vote to stay in France, and remains an overseas department to this day. Comores is still salty about it. It's fairly possible more islands or the whole chain to vote for remaining in France.

French India, sadly, is a lost cause. Either the French cede it to India peacefully, or Nehru brings the pain like he did to the Portuguese in Goa.
 
Well, one island in the chains, Mayotte, did vote to stay in France, and remains an overseas department to this day. Comores is still salty about it.

French India, sadly, is a lost cause. Either the French cede it to India peacefully, or Nehru brings the pain like he did to the Portuguese in Goa.
Most of French India was ceded to India by force; Pondichéry was the only one not to be seized by Indian Nationalists.
 

All Rounder

Gone Fishin'
Maybe parts of Algeria like the coast line as some people here have already suggested, Vietnam is a lost cause as Ho Chi Minh had already planted seeds there for revolution if post WW2. India, like Remitonov, is a lost cause and would require force to keep, which would strain relations with other allies and after WW2 I doubt France would risk it.
 
Maybe parts of Algeria like the coast line as some people here have already suggested, Vietnam is a lost cause as Ho Chi Minh had already planted seeds there for revolution if post WW2. India, like Remitonov, is a lost cause and would require force to keep, which would strain relations with other allies and after WW2 I doubt France would risk it.
Actually, France could've negotiated a more favorable deal than IOTL, but the fact that the government changed in the middle of the negotiations started the war of Indochina. So, basically, stabilize that government a bit, and France stays friendly with an Union Indochinoise and there's a referendum in Cochinchina on whether they want to stay French, become Cambodian or Vietnamese.
 

All Rounder

Gone Fishin'
Actually, France could've negotiated a more favorable deal than IOTL, but the fact that the government changed in the middle of the negotiations started the war of Indochina. So, basically, stabilize that government a bit, and France stays friendly with an Union Indochinoise and there's a referendum in Cochinchina on whether they want to stay French, become Cambodian or Vietnamese.

I like it.
 
France tried to hold on to its colonies, notably Algeria and Vietnam, but de Gaulle eventually decided they were more trouble than they were worth and cut just about all of them loose in 1960. With a post WWII POD, what bits of the French colonial empire can stay with France the longest?

With a post WW2 PoD, the empire excepting Algeria and Vietnam can be held up to the modern day with the right policies by the French government. Vietnam might be held in a theoretical sense by giving it some sort of dominion status. Algeria could probably be held indefinitely - but the amount of blood it would take is not a happy thought.

The real problem is that to hold the bulk of the Empire, France needs to invest heavily in infrastructure, industries and for-profit agriculture. Spending lots of money fighting wars in Vietnam and Algeria undermines that. While Vietnam might be something the French could let go of, getting them to let go of Algeria would be very difficult.

fasquardon
 
France tried to hold on to its colonies, notably Algeria and Vietnam, but de Gaulle eventually decided they were more trouble than they were worth and cut just about all of them loose in 1960. With a post WWII POD, what bits of the French colonial empire can stay with France the longest?

Look at the current composition of Overseas France. IOTL those areas fit your criteria. IATL it depends on the government and its approach. Also depends on the post-WW2 government structure.
 
Reading this list of lost colonies, it sounds like France's best outcome is clinging to a few trading ports/city states while abandoning rebellious hinterlands.
For example, Algeria was mostly desert with only a narrow strip of farmland along the Mediterranean Coast. As population increased, more and more Arabic peasants moved to the major port cities. Algerian port cities teemed with poor, working-class Arabs living in cramped quarters while a French-speaking elite lived in a distinct "white" quarter. Only the wealthy, trading elite and a handful of plantation-owners remained loyal to France.
 
Reading this list of lost colonies, it sounds like France's best outcome is clinging to a few trading ports/city states while abandoning rebellious hinterlands.
For example, Algeria was mostly desert with only a narrow strip of farmland along the Mediterranean Coast. As population increased, more and more Arabic peasants moved to the major port cities. Algerian port cities teemed with poor, working-class Arabs living in cramped quarters while a French-speaking elite lived in a distinct "white" quarter. Only the wealthy, trading elite and a handful of plantation-owners remained loyal to France.

I would not call most of the pied-noir population "wealthy" though. Life was more expensive and salaries lower in Algeria than in Metropolitan France, and most pied-noir were essentially lower-middle class.
 
As pointed out, a lot of areas could be kept for longer.

For example, let's not forget that Gabon WANTED to stay French and be made a département but it was refused. There was a real will from France to let the colonies go (Correze rather than Zambeze).

That said, let's say the French want to keep them.

  • No Dien Bhien Phu, or at least not like this
DBP was a strategic blunder because it happened at the same time as the peace conference. It was however a success for what it wanted to achieve: bleed the Vietcong and drain them away from Hanoi. So either the French disengage early in the war for a nice and friendly Union Indochinoise or the French fight on after DBP and a compromise is made with the Viet Minh.

Ho Chi Minh was not a communist fanatic, he was a nationalist and could be reasoned with, but the whole war of Indochina was in effect a war of colonisation as the French had been completely ousted by the Japanese. There was no more French presence and the whole country had to be reconquered.

If Indochina doesn't end on DBP, it doesn't give the Algerians any bad idea.

  • Better management of Algeria
Algeria had some long standing issues of course, with being an integral part of France populated by subjects of the empire rather than citizens. This became even worse after WWII when Algerians fought for France without real compensation. Then France fell and the Algerians saw it could bleed, and then DBP and they saw France could be vainquished by colonials. Anyway.

Until 1954 the FLN was pretty inocuous and at several times during the war, there was a real strategic victory over them (the ligne Maurice after 1958 helped a lot), so a government could in theory manage everything better, be strong enough to overpower the pied noir political weight without actually causing a civil war and get some concessions going.

Ok, so you're in 1962, all else has failed and you're IOTL. Algeria is now independant and we have to decide what to do with the massive pied-noir population. Then, the OAS starts a campaign of bombing which ruined the whole thing and forced the rushed emigration of the pied-noirs (a very traumatic memory for many of them). If the OAS is dismantled, that doesn't happen and decolonisation can be more peaceful, more long term.

  • Something else?
Surely something else could be done for the African colonies. Even though, generally speaking, giving citizenship to veterans would have probably helped. They shed their blood for France and it's a great injustice they weren't properly rewarded.

Then again, people in France didn't care much about the colonies. Who in France cares about Nouvelle-Calédonie for example? Does it help the prestige of France? Do people remember it's technically French? It's effectively a protectorate these days, same as a lot of French Polynesia, but people don't care about it, I think it gives us a good idea of how the Empire was perceived in France. Even Algeria was "something else" and foreign, hence the racism that welcomed the pied-noirs in France after 1962
 
i second that Tanc49

French Colonia bureaucrats made such a mess in Indochina, that in some parts the Japanese were welcome as Liberators not Conquerors !
Then came fatal decision of Fourth Republic to regain control over Indochina by military force, what ended in Fiasco of Dien Bhien Phu

sadly the French Colonia bureaucrats made some mess in Algeria too, what let after Dien Bhien Phu, to rise of National Liberation front, what the Fourth Republic try to stop by military force
What let to French-Algerian civil war and downfall of Fourth Republic and rise of DeGaulle with Fifth Republic.

i think a Fourth Republic with DeGaulle as President could have let to quite different Colonial politic as OTL.

on Djibouti the french try a different approach, but that failed do internal struggle between people of Issa and Afra.
the Issa wanted Djibouti unite with Somalia and the Afra wanted to stay in France
in 1977 the Issa manage in referendum to make Djibouti independent from France.
 
I would mostly agree with your analysis, @Tanc49, except for that last bit. Most people in France at least heard of the French overseas départements and know they're French; and for French Polynesia, it's seen as "a nice place to go to on honeymoon/holidays which also happens to be French". New Caledonia a contrario is mostly forgotten.
 
I would mostly agree with your analysis, @Tanc49, except for that last bit. Most people in France at least heard of the French overseas départements and know they're French; and for French Polynesia, it's seen as "a nice place to go to on honeymoon/holidays which also happens to be French". New Caledonia a contrario is mostly forgotten.
Heard of, yes, but it doesn't mean it holds any special importance.

Sure, Polynesia is important somehow because of Tahiti, but the Iles Marquises and Iles Gambier? I had to look it up! What about Wallis et Futuna?

My point is, besides the Marine National and Chirac, it's not that important
 
Heard of, yes, but it doesn't mean it holds any special importance.

Sure, Polynesia is important somehow because of Tahiti, but the Iles Marquises and Iles Gambier? I had to look it up! What about Wallis et Futuna?

My point is, besides the Marine National and Chirac, it's not that important
Then again, Creuse is not that important either; outside Chirac and Hollande, I doubt a lot of people would really miss it.
 
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