It is one of the first important essays of 2023. “A cheap empire” (Seuil) tackles the economic history of colonization, a field that has been deserted for about forty years. A minefield too, as the controversies are lively on the subject.
To venture there, the author, Denis Cogneau, professor at the Paris School of Economics and director of research at the EHESS, relies on fifteen years of work, carried out with a team of economists. They sifted through hundreds of archives to build an economic and social database that offered a much better view of the French Empire after 1830. And they had many surprises, the main one being the modest expenditure of France to maintain its empire.
In your book, you destroy several received ideas. Colonization did not greatly fuel the growth of metropolises; it was not a “burden” for their taxpayers; nor has it pulled the countries of the South upwards in terms of infrastructure or education… What has been its impact on the French economy?
Denis Cogneau Not huge. The countries colonized by France were among the poorest in the world, the furthest from trade. For French capitalism, the colonial empire was therefore not a central field of investment. During the Belle Epoque, it constituted only 10% of assets invested abroad and 2% of movable wealth. And finally, in the 1950s, about 10% of
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