Colonialism on the Cheap: The French Empire 1830–1962
Abstract
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.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Culture
Economy
and Development Studies
Historical Economic and Social Studies
African history and culture studies
Publication details
- Journal / source
- The Journal of Economic History
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Volume
- 86
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 1–38
- Publication date
- 14 July 2026
- Language
- EN