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FRENCH IMPERIALISM AND THE DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
MICHEL CHARLOT

THE POLICY of French imperialism with regard to the "developing" countries cannot be fully understood unless one takes account at one and the same time of the historical heritage of colonization, of the relations between the imperialist system and all the revolutionary social forces which oppose it on a world scale, and finally of the relative influence and current difficulties of French imperialism.

French imperialism's defeat in Indochina had been sanctioned by the 1954 Geneva Agreements. The setbacks in the colonial war carried on since 1954 in Algeria were not unconnected with DeGaulle's rise to power in 1958. He soon decided upon neo-colonialist objectives distinct from the traditional aims of colonialism, prolonging the war for four years in the vain hope of imposing them on the Algerian people. It was in 1960, when the French Army was established in Algeria that the black African states and Madagascar gained their formal independence, with the exception of Guinea which since 1958 had entered upon the non-capitalist path of independent development. 

Despite the attempts at economic and political penetration in many other countries according to the ambition and possibilities of the moment, it is nonetheless true that the essential axis of French policy is a regional strategy which above all involves the Mediterranean, the Arab East and Africa. On the 22nd of June, 1971, President Pompidou stated that "For us the Mediterranean is very important not only because our Mediterranean coast is long, but also because we have close and friendly links with almost all the countries bordering it. The Mediterranean is for us the way to Africa, above all to North Africa so therefore in every respect France has a part to play and a place to keep in the Mediterranean." Justifying French policy in Libya, Prime Minister Chaban-Delmas has said: "This is a question of an important advantage... for the whole of the western Mediterranean we shall have opposite neighbors with whom we have

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Michel Charlot is associated with the Maurice Thorez Institute in Paris. This is a condensation of his paper presented to an International Seminar on Colonialism held in New Delhi last Spring (1972).

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