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16 national unity The Right and Left “Meet” around the Colonial Exposition (1931) Pascal Blanchard the ambiance surrounding the 1931 exposition in the French capital was quite strange, to say the least. The context in metropolitan France had been changing over the prior two years. Between 1929 and 1931, the number of colonial newspapers went from seventy to seventy-seven, the news media became colonial in the space of a few months, and radio-Paris began proposing regular conferences on the empire. The French media had a new infatuation, and was preparing the French populace for an event controlled by political parties that also, directly and indirectly, had an influence on major periodicals. But what exactly was happening in the early thirties? Though the infatuation described above was short-lived, falling by the wayside at the end of 1932 (the “craze” for the empire was at this time clearly a thing of the past), this exemplary colonial moment must be considered as a unique instance of national unity, which the news media covered more than any other topic. it was an ephemeral moment, yes, but it also constituted a sort of peak of the colonial culture that had been developing since the end of the nineteenth century. This moment was part of a larger utopia that saw in the empire an essential element of national power. it highlighted the long-standing involvement of French political parties in the imperial project. The most obvious example is that of the progressive evolution from a virulent politics of anticolonialism toward the actual support of the empire on the national political right. a new national order and national tendencies in the 1920s, there were several elements that contributed to the massive redistribution of the colonial problem’s deck of cards: social upsets resulting from the transfer of former German colonies—primarily to the benefit of France and Great Britain—after the versailles treaty; the ongoing troubles associated with the dismemberment of the ottoman empire; president Wilson’s crusade for the “rights of peoples to rule over themselves”; and the soviet union’s vocal condemnation of the colonial system. For France, abd el-Krim’s “revolt” in 19251 and the yen Bai 217 218 | Blanchard mutiny in 1930 were early signs of the nearing crisis, and signaled the need to reorganize the threatened empire’s defense systems. at this time, the empire had become an important economic factor, as well as a space of political conflict in the struggle against the “reds.” From the rif to indochina, from algeria to syria (highlighted in Galland’s posters for the national republicans), Moscow had a hand in every native nationalist movement. a new notion was being articulated in the context of economic, political, and moral crisis. a notion that, on the right and left alike, was rooted in ideas from the decade before, and was intimately linked to national political life and major international changes. in any case, this was a time in which the colonial enterprise appeared no longer to be an object of contention within the metropole, with the exception of a small minority of intellectuals and the Communist Party.2 Politically , the Communist Party was relatively weak until 1934. and its struggle against France’s colonial politics was marginalized, both by incessant attacks from the right against communists overseas and by the general climate, the “colonial bath,” which increasingly assimilated attacks against the French colonial enterprise into an idea of “antinationalism.” France was undergoing one of its greatest political crises of the century, a crisis that lasted throughout the 1930s. during this era, the convictions of a large fringe of the nationalist and conservative right began to waver. according to many writers and polemicists, the West, founded upon the notion of “white” civilization ’s “racial” primacy, was in danger. The mirage of the imperial myth, the economic autarky, and the appeal of fascism and extreme ideologies to many French people, who had been thrown into a state of extreme confusion, could be explained in terms of the atmosphere of permanent crisis. The French populace soon began to question the capacity of the regime and of democracy to take charge of the situation and resolve the nation’s woes. Public opinion changed significantly throughout the 1920s, and was more or less in agreement on the colonial question, that is until the early 1930s. Then, as a function of particular ideological frames, the two primary political entities in French society became diametrically opposed (at least when...

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