France holds to-day a position among colonial powers second only to that of Great Britain. She is the one modern power that has gained and lost and gained anew a vast overseas empire. The French did not seriously enter the colonial field until toward the end of the sixteenth century. In 1504 Breton ships fished off the coasts of Newfoundland, 20 years later Verazzano mapped the coast of North America and sailed on the Indian Ocean, and in 1534 Cartier took possession of the region adjacent to the St. Lawrence River and Ribaut explored the coast of Florida. But France was busy with wars at home. Ultimately, however, the purposeful efforts of the French explorers, missionaries, and trading companies outdid, in the acquisition of valuable and extensive colonial connections, the more brilliant pioneering of the Portuguese and the Spanish, and the French successfully rivaled the Dutch and the British as colonial empire builders The Marquis de la Rouche was given in 1598 a commission to conquer Canada. Champlain founded Quebec and French missionaries and traders penetrated to the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi. Frenchmen settled in Louisiana in 1699 and founded New Orleans in 1715. Villegaignon established a French colony at Rio de Janeiro. The French company of the Moluccas competed successfully in the trade of the East Indies and its ships. touched at Madagascar and the Comoro Islands. French companies were organized for trade with the Orient, with Senegal, with Cape Verde, and with the islands of America, and for colonizing St. Christopher's Island and other islands in the West Indies. Settlements were

established on Martinique, Antigua, St. Martins, St. Bartholomew,* and the Bahama Islands, and in Guiana. During the seventeenth century Colbert's French East India Co. established the colony of Pondicherry on the Coromandel coast (India) and sent an expedition to Ceylon. French expeditions made settlements in Bourbon Island (Reunion) and in Mauritius (Isle of France). Senegal and Goree, in Africa, were made French possessions, their chief attraction being the slave trade. Later Louis XIV sponsored an adventure directed toward monopolizing the trade of Siam.

These activities brought France into collision with Holland, Spain, and England. The Dutch almost exterminated the French colonies in the Far East. After the restoration of Pondicherry, in 1693, the French fortified that point and made it the political and commercial capital of an empire in the East. Their expansion in India, together with that of North America, made them the most formidable rivals of the British. The test of strength between the two powers came in the Seven Years War (1756-1763), which was fought in the colonies as well as in Europe and which settled the fate of both India1 and Canada. From the beginning to the end of the eighteenth century France lost colony after colony. The Napoleonic Wars completed the destruction. The Congress of Vienna left to France only St. Pierre and Miquelon, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and a part of the Guiana coast in America; Reunion Island off the coast of Africa; and small enclaves in India."2 Upon the restoration of Louis XVIII the colonies which had been in French possession just before the revolution were returned, with the exception of Tobago, St. Lucia, and Mauritius.

Just before the "July revolution" of 1830, Charles X sent a punitive expedition to Algeria and occupied part of the coast. The new king, Louis Philippe, did not withdraw this army, but it was not until 1857 that the conquest of what is now northern Algeria was completed. Between 1841 and 1843 certain other regions in Africa were occupied. In 1860, Moorish tribes in Senegal were pacified, and thereafter French interests in that region expanded. Napoleon III had visions of possible colonization in the Western Hemisphere, but . without successful achievement.

Much the greater part of the second French colonial empire has been acquired under the Third Republic within the past 40 years. In Africa, France has accumulated an unbroken territorial block embracing three and one-half million square miles. Most of this domain has been brought under French rule since 1880. In Asia, since 1880, France has acquired most of the 310,000 square miles of the governor-generalship of Indo-China.

In 1881 the French entered Tunis and placed that country under French protection. As time passed their influence in Tunis was strengthened, while their control in Algeria was being perfected. Meanwhile though not closely connected with events in the Mediterranean -the partition of tropical Africa had been proceeding. The European occupation of central Africa really dates from Stanley's

1 Pondicherry was restored to the French in 1763; it has since been taken three times by the British and three times restored, and it remains to-day the chief French community in India. Gibbons: The New Map of Asia, p. 95.

Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul: De la Colonisation chez les Peuples Modernes, vol. 1, p. 371. The author mentions the chief advances in the occupation of Algeria, the events named falling into 13 different years. See Woolf, Leonard: Empire and Commerce in Africa, 1920, pp. 58, 93 ff.

descent of the Congo and his return to Europe in the following year (1878). In 1880 de Brazza, who had earlier been engaged in explora tions in those regions, undertook to establish a French protectorate over a large area on the north bank of the Congo. By 1884 the French were penetrating into the interior of all West Africa from the Senegal to the Congo and were establishing their position by means of treaties with native chiefs.

By agreement with Great Britain in 1890 and with Germany in 1894, the French obtained a free hand in the Central Sudan, and thus established a continuous sphere of influence between their possessions in North and West Africa and those in the Congo region. Boundaries in Africa had been for the most part agreed upon by 1900, and the French had established themselves in the remoter hinterland behind the States of Morocco and Liberia and behind all the West African colonies of Great Britain, Germany, Portugal, and Spain from the Congo to Algeria and Tunis. The final adjustment of the last part of the undefined boundary of the French Sudan was made in an agreement with Great Britain in the autumn of 1919. In a post-war settlement of colonial boundaries in accord with the treaty of London (1915), France has ceded to Italy certain Saharan territory to round out the boundaries of Libia.

The French position in Algeria led to boundary conflicts with Morocco and these conflicts led to disputes with other European powers. Through agreements with Great Britain, Germany, and Spain, these disputes were compounded and in 1912 France was recognized as the paramount power over most of Morocco. German recognition of the new French position in Morocco was obtained in return for the cession of 107,000 square miles of Equatorial Africa, a cession which broke the continuity of the French possessions. This territory was regained in the late war."

As early as 1862 France had acquired by treaty Obok, on the Gulf of Aden, but this point was not formally occupied until 1883. Treaties with Somali sultans resulted in the extension of the boundaries of this territory (French Somaliland), and in 1897 the boundary toward Abyssinia was fixed by treaty with King Menelik.

With an interest which began much earlier, the French conquest of Cochin-China dates from 1861. In 1867 Cambodia was made a protectorate, and in 1884 Annam was brought into the same position. The conquest of Tonkin was completed in 1886. The governor-generalship of Indo-China was formed in 1887. Six years later there was added the Laos protectorate, ceded by Siam; and in 1907, Battambang, also ceded by Siam.

PRESENT EXTENT.

The French Colonial Empire of to-day has a total area of over 4,000,000 square miles. Of this territory 3,735,000 square miles, an area greater than that of the United States and all its possessions, is in Africa; 310,000 square miles are in Asia; 35,000 square miles are in America; and 8,700 square miles are in Oceania. This empire

5 The territory ceded by France was added to German Kamerun under the name of New Kamerun. The territories constituting old Kamerun and Togo are now held under mandate of the League of Nations, the greater part of each being held by France and the smaller part by Great Britain. The division is so made that the territories under mandate are contiguous to colonies of those powers.

1

includes peoples of the greatest diversity widely distributed over the earth's surface. Algeria in northern Africa is as far from Madagascar in the Indian Ocean as it is from French Guiana in South America or from St. Pierre off the coast of Newfoundland; while Madagascar is as distant from Algeria as it is from Indo-China.

The French possessions and protectorates in Africa include Tunis and Algeria on the Mediterranean, and Morocco bordering on the North Atlantic; Sahara to the south of these; West Africa, including Senegal, Upper Senegal and Niger, Mauritania, French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and Dahomey on the Atlantic coast in the northern half of the torrid zone; French Equatorial Africa, touching on the Gulf of Guinea and extending a thousand miles inland to the northeast, partly north and partly south of the Equator; Madagascar and certain smaller islands east of Africa in the Indian Ocean; and a fragment of the Somali coast on the Gulf of Aden. In Asia, France has five areas in India, aggregating less than 200 square miles and organized as a single "colony," and a considerable region in Indo-China bordering on the China Sea. In Oceania, the French possess the sizable island of New Caledonia together with a number of other islands of less importance. In America, the French possessions embrace French Guiana, north of Brazil; Guadeloupe and Martinique in the West Indies; and St. Pierre and Miquelon, off the south coast of Newfoundland.

These vast areas are not, it is true, as densely populated as is the motherland with her 189 inhabitants to the square mile, or the United States with its 31 persons to the square mile; but with their average of 13.7 persons to the square mile they have a total population of over 56,000,000, which is more by 41 per cent than the population of France. In Africa, where the greater part of the French colonial population is located, the average is estimated at 10.3 persons to the square mile, while in the French possessions in Asia the density is about 55.5 to the square mile.

AREA AND POPULATION.

Table 1 gives the area and population of the various French colonies. Approximately 91 per cent of the area and 68 per cent of the population are in Africa.

TABLE 1.—Area and population of French possessions and protectorates.