Colonialism on the Cheap: The French Empire 1830-1962

• 成果类型: Article; Early Access
• 署名作者: Cogneau, Denis; Dupraz, Yannick; Huillery, Elise; Mesple-Somps, Sandrine
• 署名单位: Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD); Paris School of Economics; Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Universite PSL; Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050726101533
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: BRITISH-EMPIRE; benefits; COSTS

摘要

How much did France pay for its colonial empire? Did colonies benefit from large transfers from French taxpayers and private investors, or were they, on the contrary, drained of their capital? This paper uses novel budgetary, private investment, and loan data to compute monetary flows between France and the colonies between 1833 and 1962. Public expenditure spent by France on the empire represented only 1.3 percent of its GDP, of which four-fifths was for the military. Trade balance deficits of French colonies were not counterbalanced by large public or private capital transfers from France to the colonies, but by military expenditure from the metropole. Overall, large sums of money were flowing from the colonies to the metropole, a drain representing a couple of percentage points of colonial GDP, making French colonies comparable to British India in the twentieth century.