France lost the slave colony that funded the Bordeaux and Nantes fortunes. It then made the freed colony pay for losing it. The bill ran until 1947[6].
- First Empire (peak)
- Saint-Domingue, Louisiana, Quebec, India, Mauritius
- Second Empire (peak, 1930s)
- Algeria, Indochina, AOF, AEF, Madagascar, Pacific
- Atlantic slave trade
- ≈1.4 million Africans on French ships
- Haiti indemnity (1825)
- 150 million gold francs (≈$21bn lost development)
- Algeria
- 1830 – 1962, ≈500,000–1,500,000 Algerian dead
- CFA franc
- 1945 – present, 14 African economies
Phase one
Saint-Domingue & the Atlantic, 1660s–1804
By the 1780s Saint-Domingue (today Haiti) was the most profitable colony in the world. Its sugar and coffee built the merchant fortunes of Bordeaux, Nantes, La Rochelle, and Le Havre. It was worked by half a million enslaved Africans under a regime of brutality so explicit that the average enslaved person on a sugar estate survived seven to ten years.
In 1791 they rose. The 1804 Haitian declaration of independence is the only successful slave revolution in history. France responded with the 1825 indemnity demand and the long boycott[6].
“The Republic of Haiti was forced to pay France for being free — at a price that financed French railways while bankrupting Haitian schools.”
Phase two
Algeria, Indochina, West Africa, 1830–1962
The Second Empire was a different architecture. Algeria was treated as part of France itself (three départements) with a million pied-noir settlers and indigenous Algerians who had to apply individually for French citizenship by renouncing Muslim personal status. Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) was administered through indirect rule and rice and rubber concessions. West and Equatorial Africa — the AOF and AEF federations — were the territory of the code de l'indigénat, forced labour, and the Compagnie Forestière Sangha-Oubangui concessions that ran the rubber economies in much the way Leopold's agents ran the Congo's.
The Algerian War of 1954–62 — torture as official method, the 1961 Paris massacre, a million displaced into regroupement camps — produced French independence from the territory but not French exit from the rest of Francophone Africa. For the deep-dive see France in Algeria.
Phase three
Françafrique, 1960 – present
Independence in 1960 transferred political sovereignty without transferring monetary sovereignty. The CFA franc — Colonies Françaises d'Afrique, since rebranded Communauté Financière Africaine — kept West and Central African economies pegged first to the franc and now to the euro, with reserves long held in the French Treasury and French representatives on the central bank boards[4].
France maintained military bases across the region (Djibouti, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Chad) and intervened militarily in former colonies at least thirty times between 1960 and 2020. Operation Serval in Mali (2013), Operation Barkhane in the Sahel (2014–2022), and the long French presence in Côte d'Ivoire are recent examples. The recent Sahel coups (Mali 2020, Burkina Faso 2022, Niger 2023) have publicly framed themselves as anti-Françafrique.
Chronology
Key dates
1685
Code Noir codifies slavery in French Caribbean colonies.
1791
Saint-Domingue revolution begins.
1804
Haitian independence declared.
1825
France imposes the 150 million-franc indemnity on Haiti.
1830
France invades Algiers.
1848
Slavery abolished in remaining French colonies.
1885
Berlin Conference — French claims in Africa formalised.
1945
CFA franc created. Sétif and Guelma massacres in Algeria.
1954–62
Algerian War of Independence.
1960
Year of African Independence.
2019
Hollande's 2015 'recognition' of the moral debt to Haiti reiterated; Macron announces partial CFA reforms.