French Algeria in British Imperial Thought, 1830–70

Abstract

This article explores the role played by French Algeria in British imperial thinking during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. It argues that British commentators developed a remarkably stable vision of contemporary French colonial enterprise as unprogressive, incapable, authoritarian and militaristic, as well as harmful to French domestic politics. The explanations they offered for the miscarriage of France’s colonial project in Algeria cast light on mid-nineteenth-century British imperial thinking, throwing into relief the qualities and policies which were believed to make modern British imperial rule uniquely successful. The article contends that analysis of other European countries’ colonial projects contributed importantly to a domestic political culture which defined itself in significant part through contrasts with the Continent.

British Liberalism and the French Invasion of Mexico

“…Here Mexico became a link in the chain of a longer-running debate about whether France as a nation possessed the ability to colonise effectively, as distinct from being able to institute the fundamentals of political order under expensive military shields. 130 The more intriguing and disquieting prospect, however, was that Mexico represented a new phase in Napoleon III's schemes to reorder the world. France's habit of intervening in the internal affairs of foreign polities in order to direct their politics in more congenial directions, of course, went back long before Louis Napoleon's coup d'état.…”

“…126 Given the robust critiques that had been directed at the Algerian enterprise by both British and French political commentators since the 1830s, many in Britain found it difficult to understand why this seemed an attractive prospect, or at least why the emperor thought it likely to succeed. 127 There were suggestions that the invasion represented an opportunity for the French to apply the hard lessons they had learned from their perplexities in North Africa: maybe in this case they would seek to attract the support of influential native chiefs rather than impose their procrustean bureaucracy in defiance of Indigenous traditions. 128 But these expectations were quickly disappointed, and Mexico became a link in the chain of a longer-running debate about whether France as a nation possessed the ability to colonize effectively, as distinct from being able to institute the fundamentals of political order under expensive military shields.…”

2. Crossing the Rift: American Steel and Colonial Labor in Britain’s East Africa Protectorate

“…20 Historians of transimperial connections can draw on the new methodological breadth of research focusing on the practice, and politics, of imperial comparison. 21 This scholarship captures one of the central dynamics of imperial power: its control over the collection and subsequent organization of knowledge in hierarchical terms. On the one hand, shared or comparable concepts of race, science, and civilization lent credibility to the idea that empires faced universal problems to which interchangeable solutions could be applied.…”

Mid-Victorian Liberalism and the Austrian state, 1848–1867

“…84 No such respect had been offered by the French to the inhabitants of Algeria since its invasion in 1830, which helped explain why that colony had failed so spectacularly. 85 But whatever else the Habsburg monarchy had done over the centuries of its existence, it had not overridden the natural distinctions between its subject peoplesthat is, not until after 1848. Thereafter, Austria's travails were used to bolster a specific view of the policy and purpose of British imperial rule.…”