The Evolution of French Colonial Historiography: From Imperial Administration to Global Reckoning

French historiography has undergone a profound transformation in its relationship to the nation's colonial past. This evolution moved from a sub-discipline intimately tied to administering an empire stretching from Saigon to Dakar, toward a heavily politicized reflection on the historical roots of decolonization. Consequently, non-European territories gained increasing importance within the French academic narrative. Although findings from colonial history and area studies were integrated into the Braudelian concept of world history during the 1960s, this integration weakened in subsequent decades. French mainstream historiography refocused on national history, while area studies specialized into distinct disciplines. Only recently have French historians begun to critically investigate France's place in a more globalized world.

The Second World War marked the start of a fundamental change in Franco-colonial relations, yet historians reacted slowly. Scholarly interest in colonial history originated in the late nineteenth century at French universities and specialized research centres attempting to understand geographical, political, and economic conditions in West Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. For years, this interest remained marginal within the French academic system. Even during the inter-war period, colonial history was written largely by non-historians. The seminal publication, the six-volume Histoire des colonies françaises et de l’expansion de la France (1929-33) edited by Gabriel Hanotaux and Alfred Martineau, was produced primarily by journalists, teachers, and administrators from the colonial milieu, with professional historians in the minority.

The paradigm of a French civilizing mission survived the state's deep wartime crisis. It persisted until 1959, when the former Revue d’histoire des colonies, administered by colonial officers, became the Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer. This change reflected the new reality of independent former territories. A second transformation occurred a decade later, as the field's self-description shifted to 'histoire du monde extra-européen', echoing decolonization. Earlier inter-war debates on assimilation or association as colonial strategies never fundamentally challenged the entrenched idea of French superiority, which remained widely held among historians.

A comparative perspective on the European colonial past became possible as traditional Anglophobia subsided. Historians began presenting the French Empire as the concrete product of colonization and occasionally portrayed actors other than French colonizers. This shift reflected new political configurations post- the 1944 Brazzaville Conference and emerging debates on the Union Française. However, this was not a substantial critique of the dominant Eurocentric perspective. While the influence of colonial ‘practitioners’ remained, the field followed broader trends in French historiography.

The first wave of professionalization emerged in the 1950s, led by figures like Charles-André Julien, who published a draft for a new colonial history as early as 1931, and Henri Brunschwig. Specialized archives, research centres, and periodicals supported this professionalization but also refocused attention on the imperial past by facilitating access to colonial materials. Linguistic barriers and a conviction of a shared Francophone community fate fostered a certain parochialism that persisted into the 1980s and 1990s. Research exhibited a strong bias towards West Africa, the Maghreb, Southeast Asia, and the Near East, largely ignoring regions without a French historical presence.

Fernand Braudel doubted the methodological compatibility of Julien's politically-focused narrative with the Annales school paradigm, which itself largely neglected decolonization history. However, under the influence of scholars like Gabriel Debien, colonial history slowly transformed into a social history of tropical societies. Concurrently, Tiers Mondisme and its focus on the origins of underdevelopment gained prominence. The imprint of Marxist categories and the aim of integrating Asian and African histories into a holistic scheme led to experimentation with the Eurocentric concept of mode of production, intensifying quantitative approaches to economic history.

The late 1960s climate fueled debate about imperialism’s responsibility for poverty and failed development in former colonies. This expanded into discussions on whether the metropolitan economy had suffered or profited from colonization. A new, post-decolonization generation applied established instruments of social history to the colonial past. This foundation enabled the enquête collective, a tool honed by Annales historians, to mobilize researcher groups for data collection and comparative interpretations of African and Asian societies under colonial rule at institutions like the Institut d’histoire des pays d’outre-mer.

France benefited from an influx of young historians from developing countries, whose theses and books—often published by anti-colonial presses like L’Harmattan or Karthala—enriched the emerging field of aires culturelles. Innovation occurred in three key areas: the reconstruction of collective memory and culturally constructed communities by historical anthropologists using oral history methods; economic history, particularly the consequences of the slave trade; and the history of Christian missions outside Europe. These approaches opened new perspectives by focusing on cultural interaction within asymmetrical power relations, yet recognizing the agency of the colonized.

At the end of this specialized period, research on African and Asian societies became compartmentalized within separate area-studies centres, losing its contextualization within broader colonial history. Simultaneously, metropolitan interest in the colonial past strengthened during a third period: the era of ‘commemoration’. Inspired by the study of remembrance and pressured by state and lobby groups (like the pieds-noirs), this era sparked ideological battles. Key moments included President François Mitterand’s 1989 Bastille Day presentation of France as a universal rights beacon, major works on the slave trade and its abolition/reintroduction, and the contentious 2005 law (ultimately repealed) mandating a positive teaching of the colonial past.

This twenty-year period involved intense debate on reconciling the nation’s universalist ambitions with its colonial past. In an age of globalizing memories, where colonialism occupies a central place in remembrance, this aspect of French historiography is poised to move beyond a marginal academic position. Colonial history in France has thus evolved from a metropolitan-focused narrative into a history of the non-European world, though overcoming its Eurocentric inclinations remains a gradual and ongoing process.