Joint event with the Frankreich-Zentrum

15 December 2025, 16:15-17:45 (in person)

FU Berlin, FMI, Room A336, Koserstr. 20, 14195 Berlin

In the 19th century, France embarked on a process of colonization across Africa and Asia. What were the motivations and methods that underlay this imperial project? How were the colonized societies affected, and what economic and social development did colonization bring? Is decolonization complete today? Empire on the Cheap offers new answers to these controversial questions.

Building on extensive archival work and statistical analysis, the book describes the French colonial states and their functioning - notably through taxation, military recruitment, capital flows and inequalities. It shows that the empire cost the metropolis little until the wars of independence, and that French capital did not flow to the colonies. The 'civilising mission' that the French Republic had set itself did not bring much development to the colonized countries, and the type of rule that emerged was both violent and contradictory in its aims. The Empire primarily benefited a small minority of French colonists and capitalists. The nationalist elites that came to govern after independence most often perpetuated the authoritarian and inegalitarian rule they had inherited. By focusing on the evolution of colonized societies and their future, the book sheds new light on imperialism, from the past to the present.

Denis Cogneau is a professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics and a Research Director at both the IRD and the EHESS. His work explores the long-term dynamics of development, inequality, and state formation, with a particular focus on the economic and political structures of French colonialism in Africa and their enduring consequences for contemporary societies. His latest book, Un empire bon marché. Histoire et économie politique de la colonisation française XIXe–XXIe siècle (Seuil, 2025), will be published in English in 2026 under the title Empire on the Cheap: The Political Economy of French Colonialism Since 1800. Find out more on the website of the Paris School of Economics.

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