La Constitution de 1875 et les Colonies françaises: de la perplexité républicaine aux soupçons d’Empire

The successive constitutions of France adopted varying attitudes concerning the colonies, sometimes including them, at other times excluding them or ignoring them completely; the constitutional problems posed by the colonies were not satisfactorily resolved. The Constitution of 1875, like Others, was problematic in this regard; keeping the Sénatus-consulte of 1854, resolving to treat the colonized lands differently from the home country, fearing eventual autonomy if the colonized people’s rights were aligned with those of the French, this constitution made of the president of the republic a colonial legislator. The practice was an immediate concern of the constitutional jurists, who were unsure of how to reconcile the dual competence between the president and parlement. The debate soon focalized on the nature of colonial decrees (décrets): were they fundamentally legislative, or rather reglementary? But the debate in fact took a political turn, as jurists evoked the danger of décrets-lois in France itself, possibly tipping France toward the German model of executive/legislative balance of power.