Among the European colonial powers in the Indian Ocean, France was a relative latecomer. It arrived in the Indian subcontinent several decades after the Portuguese, Dutch, and the English, and within just a matter of a century was reduced to a mere spectator to Britain’s grand imperial rise in the region. Though limited to just five distinct enclaves – Pondicherry, Karaikal, Yanaon, Mahe, and Chandannagore– the French empire in India had far-reaching consequences.
Historian Robert Ivermee, in his latest book Glorious Failure: The Forgotten History of French Imperialism in India, has put the spotlight on the 150 years of France’s attempt to rule over the region and the damaging effects of it that remains largely absent from the historical narratives of colonialism in the subcontinent.
In an interview with Indianexpress.com, Ivermee said there is a wide misconception that France was the “good coloniser”. It was an assumption, he believes, that was set in the historical context of the French Revolution and France’s defeat to Britain in the Seven Years’ War in 1763. In his book, Ivermee has explained the precise adversities caused by the French in India, and why they ultimately failed in their efforts to build a territorial empire in the region.
Excerpts from the interview:
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When and how did the French first decide to come to India?
Robert Ivermee: Well, the French were basically trying to catch up. So, by the time they decided to launch an East India Company under Louis XIV in the middle of the 17th century, the Portuguese had already been in India for about 150 years, and the Dutch and the English for about 50 years. So the French decided that they needed to try to catch up with their European rivals, particularly the Dutch.
Later on, it was the rivalry with the British that became very important to the French. But at the beginning, the French saw their Northern European neighbours, the Dutch, as very successful economically. They saw some of the textiles, the spices, and the other products that were being brought back from the Indian Ocean in the early 17th century to Northern Europe, and they wanted to get involved.
There were a couple of failed attempts, in the beginning, to establish a French East India. It is finally in 1664 that a company was launched with the backing of the French state and King Louis XIV. And this company was the first one to arrive in India a couple of years later.
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The French, at the time, did not necessarily think about India as one single place. They talked about the Indian Ocean. They use the term Indies to refer not just to India, but to Southeast Asia as well. So, the French were not necessarily sure exactly which part of the Indian Ocean they were aiming for. It is only their second or third voyage to the Indian Ocean that sees them finally arrive in India.
There is a perception of the French being the ‘good colonisers’. How did it take shape?
Robert Ivermee: The idea goes right back to the end of the 18th century, after France lost its territorial empire in Central and Southern India in 1761. So this was after the Seven Years’ War when this idea takes hold in France and among French people in India, that they didn’t really want to be an imperial power in India anyway, that they were only ever interested in trade, that they were only ever getting involved in conflicts to protect their commercial interests, and not because they had other political ambitions.
Later on in the 18th century, there is this very powerful idea that if France was involved in conflicts in India, it was only because it was trying to help the people of India and prevent the British from dominating the subcontinent.
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We see this idea reemerging yet again at the time of the War of American Independence, when France was trying to help American patriots get independence from Britain, and also (while) supporting states like the Kingdom of Mysore in their fight against the British.
And then it is an idea that got embedded in French writing about 18th-century India. So, there are generations of French historians writing in the 19th, and early 20th century, who repeated this idea, effectively, that it was only ever interested in commerce in India, that France was a peaceful power in India, and that French involvement in wars was with good intentions.
You could even argue that certain aspects of French national identity were shaped by this kind of discourse. The idea that France was fundamentally different from Great Britain, that Britain is mean and France is generous, and that Britain is interested in territorial empires, and France is only interested in trade and peaceful relations with Indian powers.
There are other reasons as well, such as the French Revolution, and the ideas of freedom and equality that are spoken a lot about at this time, and how they inform later French policies in India during the time of the French Third Republic (1870-1940).
And would you say it is misleading?
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Robert Ivermee: Yeah, I do. Perhaps the main argument in the book is the idea that France was actually an aggressive imperial power in India, and that it was motivated primarily by its own interests, and that it sought a territorial empire as well as gains from commerce. I argue that it is impossible to separate commerce from war in this period.
The book goes into quite a lot of detail about some of the damaging consequences of the French presence in Central and Southern India, the impact of the wars that the French were involved in, the economic cost of those conflicts, along with related issues like French slave trading between India and other parts of the Indian Ocean. So there is a lot in the book that challenges the idea that France was a good coloniser.
What were the damaging effects of French imperialism on India?
Robert Ivermee: Well, when the French arrive in India, the wealth of India is legendary. It is referred to by French and other European writers who can’t really believe what they were seeing in terms of the riches of India, the opportunities for trade. By the time French imperial ambitions in India are defeated, by 1815, where my book ends, India is a much poorer place.
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Famines have become more commonplace. I am not suggesting for a moment that France is solely responsible for that process. But, undoubtedly, France plays a part in that impoverishment of India through the course of the 18th century. Alongside that impoverishment, we have the destabilisation of the political situation in Central and Southern India.
The book covers a period of exactly 150 years from 1664 to 1814. France was at war with other European powers for exactly half of those 150 years. And every one of those conflicts with other European powers was fought in India, as well as being fought in Europe, in North America, in the Caribbean, and elsewhere. So that is just an indication of how widespread, how commonplace war becomes in this period.
You also write about French slavery in the book. Could you explain how slavery helped in establishing French imperialism in India?
Robert Ivermee: This is something that has been mostly overlooked in existing scholarship. It is true in terms of numbers, this slave trafficking is on a much smaller scale than in the Atlantic. But the book argues that it is nonetheless essential to understand, to recognise that this slave trading took place, and that the French East India Company was one of the main actors in it, along with French private traders operating in the region. And once we understand that slave trafficking existed between different Indian Ocean sites, we can begin to understand how it supported French imperialism in India itself.
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First of all, the French colonies in India have a large slave population. Slaves were often working as domestic servants. They might have been working for the French East India Company as well, involved in building infrastructure, or working on land that was owned by the company.
Over time, the most important slave colonies of the French in the Indian Ocean are the two islands of the Mascarene, so that is Mauritius and Reunion Island today, which are French colonies from the early 18th century. They developed plantation economies, mostly based on the production of coffee, reliant on slave labour. The slaves that arrived in the Mascarene were mostly coming from Madagascar and the coast of East Africa, but there were some enslaved Indians who were taken to the Mascarene as well, from the first decade of the 18th century onwards. There are records showing that at times of war, at times of economic downturn, and in times of famine in southern India, slaves were bought at Pondicherry and in other French colonies.
Some of those slaves remained in the service of French households in Pondicherry and elsewhere, but some of them were shipped to the Mascarene. There were, later in the century, even a small number of enslaved Indian people who were taken all the way to the Caribbean on ships.
You write that by the 1750s, France was the most dominant power in the subcontinent. Why then did they fail?
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Robert Ivermee: There are two things to explain. One is why the French East India Company was never as successful as the Dutch and then later, the British. I think that is largely because from the beginning, there was some scepticism about trade with India within the economic or merchant class in France. The French East India Company was set up at the initiative of the French government. It was set up by the chief minister in Louis XIV’s government.
The British and Dutch East India companies were primarily set up by groups of investors who wanted to profit from this trade, and then they were supported by their national governments. The French company, in contrast, was set up by a government that then tried to convince French investors to get involved. And it was clear that by the early 18th century, the French East India Company was struggling financially, and it was wound up in the 1710s.
There were two further attempts to establish East India companies in France later in the 18th century, but those attempts failed as well. And eventually, instead of having a monopolising company taking care of trade, we had a period of free trade between French territories in India and France itself. So that is the commercial side of things.
In terms of why French attempts to establish a territorial empire failed, there are structural problems related to the East India Company and the French state. There was perhaps an over-centralisation of power. French officers on the ground and French governors on the ground had lesser scope to act independently than their Dutch and British counterparts.
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The period of imperial expansion took place during the governorship of Joseph Francois Dupleix, who was an important character in the book. His policies of imperial expansion were not always supported by the French government at home. The French East India Company at that time was underfinanced, and with each change of government in Paris or in Versailles, there were funding cuts and changes of priority within France.
The other big reason, of course, why the French territorial empire in India collapsed is because of the superior strength of the British. So by the early 1750s, it was clear that with its navy and army attached to its East India Company, the British had superior wealth, strength, and resources at their disposal.