Le fascisme italien : État des travaux depuis 1945

Résumé En

The apotheosis of « the wider France » the colonial conception and french public opinion Raoul Girardet The colonial exhibition organisai in Paris in 1951 marked the heyday of the colonial conception in the history of contemporary France. By comparison with the former period there was a perceptible increase in the interest takcn in the Overseas Empire and this can be seen in the press as well as in teaching or in romanesque literature. At the same time a relatively coherent doctrine of French imperialism was established : this doctrine was founded on the principle of « the wider France », that is on the extension of the traditional idea of national sovereignity to all the overseas territories. Nevertheless it was also during these years of apotheosis that the colonial conception was first questioned. The attacks were threefold : the campaign of the French communist party against imperialism, the denunciation of corrupt practices and scandais in the colonies and the questioning of the postulate of the cultural supremacy of the colonizing nation. It is nevertheless difficult to guage thé exact effects of such currents. By the reactions to which they gave rise these anticolonial attacks even resulted in certain milieux in a widening and deepening of the colonial idéal : the concept of the Empire was gradually supplanted by that of the Community.