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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [First Page] [11], (1) Lines: 0 to 2 ——— 6.4pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [11], (1) 2. “A Source of Pride and Greatness” The Place of the Empire in Vichy Ideology Although the Vichy regime gradually lost its grip over most of the French empire, especially after the Allied landing in North Africa in November 1942, its place within the regime’s ideology and discourse was firm and central. While the loss to Prussia in 1871 and the consequent loss of Alsace and Lorraine encouraged some French politicians to seek compensation overseas, the debacle of 1940, which left France with control over only one-third of its territory, turned the empire into a real lifesaver. It became the last opportunity to restore lost French honor. For the Vichy regime the empire was both a diplomatic and political playing card and a myth that was to compensate France for its defeat. The empire enabled France to prove to the world that it was still an independent state with resources, territory, and enormous manpower in its service.1 It is no wonder, then, that Pétain did his best to keep the empire out of German control in the negotiations over the armistice. Another worry the regime had stemmed from a British attempt to encroach on French colonies, and efforts were made in the colonies to resist such attempts. After all, on the colonial scene Britain—not Germany—was France’s major rival. One of the multiple publications dealing with the empire, produced under Vichy, described to its readers how much worse their country’s destiny would have been without the empire: Thanks to this empire, France, though defeated and reduced in Europe, is not a people without space, not a nation without men, not a state without resources. . . . The French should only consider how their country would have been wiped out if it was limited in 1940 to its metropolitan 12 FWA and Its Place in theVichy Colonial Idea 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [12], (2) Lines: ——— 6.19998pt ——— Normal PgEnds: [12], (2) territory and its scant 39 million inhabitants! Deprived of all communication with the outside world, erased from the rank of the sovereign nations for an undetermined period, condemned to wait in the future for only the pity and generosity of others, France would have been, for years, just another Poland or a slightly larger Belgium.2 The empire, then, is presented as the supplier of the three necessities France had lost in the defeat to Germany—territory, manpower, and resources—as well as a way in which the humiliated French nation might regain at least some of its lost honor. Only the empire’s resources had enabled France to tackle the war’s difficult economic circumstances. The empire, in short, is pictured as a ship battling stormy seas, seriously damaged but eventually rescued by the wisdom of an experienced leader and thus able to aid, comfort, support, and feed France.3 But the importance of the empire was not limited to the present. It also had a major role to play in the rehabilitation of France as a great nation in the world that would arise after the war. The Vichy regime perceived this world as an arena in which Germany, after defeating Britain or reaching some sort of agreement with it, would be the dominant power. However, a hope was expressed that France would be able to find for itself a respected status in this new world. Only the empire could secure such a status for France, and this would happen only if France invested efforts in nurturing it. As René Viard explains in L’Empire et nos destins (The Empire and Our Destiny): Thanks to its Empire that reassures notions of demonstrated force and permanent influence, it is on the world map, a piece that still has a proper value that no one can ignore. Through the Empire, it retains its chance to be counted among the great nations; through it, it can safeguard the possibility of offering...

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