France managed to keep colonies like French Guiana, Polynesia, and Reunion under its control after WW2 up to today. Is it reasonable to expect countries like the Netherlands keep Suriname and the UK keep places like Signapore, Hong Kong, Belize, and Malta if history went a bit differently? What other places could European countries keep under their control?
What colonies could European countries keep?
- Thread starter Mr. President
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French Somaliland could be easily integrated into the metropole with how strategic it is and play off ethnic Afars against Somalis.
Namibia if there had been no Great War (the population was pretty much decimated). Libya (the Italians were swamping the place and oil made it worth the headache). Parts of Indonesia preferred Dutch rule to what followed.
France could definitely keep Algeria. But it's a question of whether it's worth going down the Apartheid/Genocide path, rather than if it's possible.
What do you think it would take for the French to keep Algeria?
The Italians could keep Libya and the Spaniards could probably keep their slice of Morocco.
I am not too sure if this is realy true. I think it was more of a "we can deal with the Dutch a bit longer, until we are fully independent"", instead of a "lets remain Dutch indefinitely".
Getting away with that would be hard to do Post WW2 without censure though, wouldn’t it?
That's why it's a question of whether it's worth it or not. If the USSR has puppet states bordering up to the Rhine, then France can get away with basically whatever it wants.
But IOTL, France won the Algerian-War militarily. There was a lot of luck involved, and a lot of geographical advantages that can't be replicated anywhere else that helped, but still. A more rightwing post war France, one that basically refuses to give up on Algeria can maintain control by moving in more Frenchmen/French from other colonies that are lost, and by holding onto the areas around rivers and other water sources (aka the only economically useful land in Algeria).
Wasn’t De Gaulle a rightist? I suspect that most of the Europeans could have kept some of their colonies depending on how much money and manpower they’d want to put into holding them.
Holding all of Algeria, despite the military victory won by French troops (however, the FLN units based in neighbouring countries had very little engagements during the war) would have been morally undefendable, economically unsustainable and politically devastating, even in a more rightist France, in the long term (consider the Portuguese example). A rump Pied-Noid Algeria centered around Oranais might survive for a longer time, but it would have been heavily militarized, not unlike Israel or Rhodesia.
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Mmm, like I said, almost all of the colonies lost in the cold war period were more a question of "is it worth it" rather than "could it be done". Although I'm not sure it would be economically unsustainable. The Algerian oil and mining industry is pretty successful, so if the French held it, the budgets could balance out in the long run.
I honestly doubt it : save for total ethnic cleansing, the protracted guerilla war that would ensue for decades and decades would put a strain of French budget (not to mention that I doubt that a France which would keep Algeria would have been very much involved in the EEC, which actually benefited its economy far more that its colonial empire). If you're looking for a profitable colony for France, I'd rather suggest Gabon : scarcely populated, filled with oil, not much military interference to fear.
As early as 1960, during the decolonization of French West Africa (AOF) and French Equatorial Africa (AEF), the Prime Minister of Gabon, Léon Mba, wanted Gabon to become a French Overseas Territory.a But de Gaulle had refused. Probably the risk was that Gabon would draw air from the rest of Africa, which was less likely to develop as Gabon remained with France. Moreover, France would have had to inject colossal sums of money to bring Gabon up to the same level of development as France (we are already struggling with the West Indies and French Guiana, so the same problem with a region the size of Gabon would have been more serious). However, we can always imagine a de Gaulle deciding to keep Gabon for prestige or resources. On the other hand I don't know how the Gabonese population would have accepted the French rule in the long run.
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I suspect that French investments would have been mostly directed to the "useful Gabon", i.e the Libreville-Port-Gentil area (which is larger but also richer in natural ressources than almost every OTL French overseas territories, save for New Caledonia). For the long run, I don't know, but the Mayotte example suggests that comparison with independant neighbouring countries might be an incentive to retain French administration, would the local population benefit from the oil industry of course.
Exactly when I was talking about "attracts air" I was thinking about the case of Mayotte. Mayotte by its wealth due to its French status attracts many poor people from neighbouring countries (its departmentalization in 2008 has reinforced this situation with the political demands of the Comoros on the island).
The problem with Gabon would be similar to that of Mayotte, not as an island like Mayotte but with a land territory on the African continent.
It would not be surprising if Gabon, if it remains French, turns into a giant "fortress" (like the Spanish enclaves in Morocco, but much bigger) that attracts poor populations from all over Equatorial Africa.
Edit:I just noticed that "appel d'air" in French translates into "project" in English. I wanted to use the expression literally. Literally it means "attracts air" in the sense that the richness of a small territory attracts poverty to the surroundings.