In the nineteenth century, France embarked on the colonization of whole swathes of Africa and Asia. What drove this policy, and what methods did it use to establish and enforce French domination? What disruptive effects did this have on the colonized societies, and what did it mean for their economic and social development? Today, can we say they have been completely decolonized? Empire on the Cheap offers new answers to these ever-controversial questions.

Drawing on extensive archival work and statistical analysis, Denis Cogneau offers a richly detailed description of the colonial states and how they functioned, with a particular focus on issues of taxation, military recruitment, capital flows and inequalities. He shows that the empire cost France little until the wars of independence following World War II, and that capital from France did not trickle down to the colonies. The French Republic proclaimed its “civilizing mission”, but its rule did not lead to the development of the occupied countries, and instead established violent colonial regimes with ambiguous and sometimes conflicting goals. Such regimes mainly benefited a small minority of French colonists and capitalists. Yet, even after winning independence, nationalist elites in the former colonies most often maintained an authoritarian and inegalitarian state order.

Examining both the evolution of the colonized societies and what has become of them after independence, Cogneau makes a major contribution to our understanding of imperialism, past and present.