Publications by PSE researchers

Je tiens ici à remercier Frederick Cooper, Christelle Dumas et David Todd d’avoir consacré du temps à lire et commenter mon livre, et suis honoré qu’ils lui aient trouvé quelques qualités. Même si le nombre d’années et l’effort dédiés à un travail n’offrent aucune garantie de valeur, ce livre est le produit d’une recherche de longue haleine s’étalant sur près de vingt ans. Ce travail de longue durée a été rendu possible grâce au système de recherche publique français et a impliqué une petite équipe de collègues et co-auteurs – en particulier Yannick Dupraz et Sandrine Mesplé-Somps – à qui je souhaite une nouvelle fois rendre hommage. Si ce livre améliore, comme je l’espère, notre connaissance collective de l’histoire de la colonisation française, il ne constitue qu’une étape. Il soulève ainsi de nouvelles questions, et je rejoins mes trois commentateurs dans leur souhait que d’autres travaux, en France et ailleurs, s’attaquent à celles-ci. Plutôt que de m’adresser tour à tour à mes trois collègues, j’ai pensé utile de revenir sur les thèmes qu’ils ont abordés, regroupés en quatre sections : conquête et contrôle militaire ; peuplement et institutions ; exploitation et non-développement ; décolonisations. Avant cela, je me permets toutefois quelques remarques méthodologiques. Je suis heureux qu’à la fois un historien des empires, une économiste du développement ainsi qu’un historien de la mondialisation et de l’inscription internationale de la France saluent l’approche comparatiste que j’ai adoptée entre colonies, entre empires et entre périodes

How much did France pay for its colonial empire? Did colonies benefit from large transfers from French taxpayers and private investors, or were they on the contrary drained of their capital? So far, Jacques Marseille (1984) was the only attempt to investigate these questions, by deducting from the structural trade deficit of the French colonies that they were a heavy financial burden for France. We collect novel budgetary and loan data from archives and compute public monetary flows between France and the colonies between 1833 and 1962. We also provide figures of colonial private investment through the Paris Stock Exchange. Public expenditure spent by France on the empire only represented 1.3% of its GDP, of which four fifths were in the military. The persistent trade balance deficits of French colonies did not correspond to large public or private capital transfers, as they were in fact counterbalanced by military expenditure from the Metropole. Once accounting for this, the colonial drain of the French empire is comparable to British India.

Au XIXe siècle, la France s’est lancée dans la colonisation de pays entiers en Afrique et en Asie. Quelles ont été les motivations et les méthodes de cette politique ? Comment les sociétés dominées ont-elles été bouleversées, et quel développement économique et social ont-elles connu ? La décolonisation est-elle achevée aujourd’hui ? Un Empire bon marché propose de nouvelles réponses à ces questions controversées. Grâce à un long travail d’archives et d’analyse statistique, l’ouvrage décrit ainsi avec une grande précision les États coloniaux et leur fonctionnement – à travers notamment la fiscalité, le recrutement militaire, les flux de capitaux et les inégalités. Il montre que l’empire a peu coûté à la métropole jusqu’aux guerres d’indépendance, et que les capitaux français n’ont pas ruisselé vers les colonies. La « mission civilisatrice » que la République française s’était assignée n’a donc pas débouché sur le développement des pays occupés, et c’est plutôt un régime à la fois violent et ambigu qui s’y est établi. De fait, le régime colonial a surtout bénéficié à une petite minorité de colons et de capitalistes français. Quant aux élites nationalistes, elles ont le plus souvent reconduit un État autoritaire et inégalitaire après les indépendances. En s'attachant à l’évolution des sociétés colonisées et à leur devenir, Denis Cogneau fournit une contribution majeure et un nouvel éclairage sur l’impérialisme, d’hier à aujourd’hui.

This article estimates the evolution of income inequality in Africa from 1990 to 2019 by combining surveys, tax data, and national accounts. Inequality in Africa is very high: the regional top 10% income share nears 55%, on par with regions characterized by extreme inequality, such as Latin America and India. Most of continent-wide income inequality comes from the within-country component rather than from average income differences between countries. Inequality is highest in Southern Africa and lowest in Northern and Western Africa. It remained fairly stable from 1990 to 2019, with the exception of Southern Africa, where it increased significantly. Among historical determinants, this geographical pattern seems to reveal the long shadow of settler colonialism, at least in Sub-Saharan Africa; the spread of Islam stands out as another robust correlate. The poor quality of the raw data calls for great caution, in particular when analyzing country-level dynamics.

Paris came under siege twice between September 1870 and May 1871, first by the Prussian army and then by the Versailles government’s assault on the Commune. The first resulted in a severe famine; the second in a bloodbath. We investigate the impact of this crisis on child mortality, adult height, and adult mortality, using original vital records and military register data from one of the city’s lowest-income areas. Deaths more than doubled at all ages during this period, and under-5 mortality rates increased by 30% for children born in 1869 and 1870. Those conceived and gestated during the crisis ended up significantly shorter and faced 40% higher adult mortality than unaffected cohorts born afterwards, but children aged 2–5 later recovered in height as living conditions quickly improved. A nutritional shock’s translation into short-term variations in stature and into lifetime survival thus seems to depend not only on the shock’s duration but also on preceding and subsequent living conditions, which themselves interact with selection effects and critical age windows for physiological growth.

Following the Age of Revolution (Osterhammel, 2014), Paris witnessed two wars at the end of the 19th century. First, in September 1870, the Prussian army besieged the French capital, and then, beginning in March 1871, so did the French government. Both sieges were waged on people perceived to be socially and politically dangerous.

What was the capacity of European colonial states? How fiscally extractive were they? What was their capacity to provide public goods and services? And did this change in the “developmentalist” era of colonialism? To answer these questions, we use archival sources to build a new dataset on colonial states of the second French colonial empire (1830-1962). French colonial states extracted a substantial amount of revenue, but they were under-administered because public expenditure entailed high wage costs. These costs remained a strong constraint in the “developmentalist” era of colonialism, despite a dramatic increase in fiscal capacity and large overseas subsidies.

We assess income inequality across French and British colonial empires between 1920 and 1960, exploiting for the first time income tax tabulations. As measured by top income shares, inequality was high in colonies. Europeans comprised the bulk of top income earners, and only a minority of autochthons could compete income-wise. Top income shares were no higher in settlement colonies, those territories were wealthier and the average European settler was less rich than the average expatriate. Inequality among autochthons was moderate, and inequality among Europeans was similar to that of the metropoles. The post-WWII fall in income inequality can be explained by the one among Europeans, mirroring that of the metropoles, and does not imply that the European/autochthon income gap was very much reduced. After independence, the mass recruitment of state employees induced a large increase in inequality among autochthons. Dualistic structures lost their racial dimension and changed shape, yet persisted.

This paper sheds light on the fiscal trajectories of 18 former French colonies in Africa from colonial times to the present. Building upon own previous work about colonial public finance (Cogneau et al., 2021), we compile a novel dataset by combining previously available data with recently digitized data from historical archives, to produce continuous and comparable public revenue data series from 1900 to 2018. This allows us to study the evolution of the level and composition of fiscal revenues in the post-colonial decades, with a special focus on the critical juncture of independence. We find that very few countries achieved significant progress in fiscal capacity between the end of the colonial period and today, if we set aside income drawn from mineral resources. This is not explained by a lasting collapse of fiscal capacity at the time of independence. From 1960 to today, the reliance on mineral resource revenues increased on average and dependence on international commodity prices persisted, with few exceptions. The relative contribution of trade taxes declined after the structural adjustments, and lost trade revenues were not compensated by a sufficient increase in domestic taxes. However, for the most recent period, we do note an improvement in the capacity to collect taxes on the domestic economy.

What was the capacity of European colonial states? How fiscally extractive were they? What was their capacity to provide public goods and services? And did this change in the “developmentalist” era of colonialism? To answer these questions, we use archival sources to build a new dataset on colonial states of the second French colonial empire (1830-1962). French colonial states extracted a substantial amount of revenue, but they were under-administered because public expenditure entailed high wage costs. These costs remained a strong constraint in the “developmentalist” era of colonialism, despite a dramatic increase in fiscal capacity and large overseas subsidies.

Has massive distribution of insecticide-treated-nets contributed to the reduction in in- fant mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa over the past 15 years? Using large household surveys collected in 16 countries and exploiting the spatial correlation in distribution campaigns, we estimate the relationship between the diffusion of bednets and the progress in child sur- vival. We find no evidence of a causal link in cities, and no impact either in rural areas with low malaria prevalence. By contrast, in highly malarious rural areas where bednet coverage reached high levels, above 75% of households, infant mortality has been reduced by at least 3 percentage points, which amounts to 25% of the initial mortality. The identified impact is even higher for the children of mothers with no education. It lies at the upper bound found with RCTs, most likely because those were implemented in contexts with lower mortality and/or malaria prevalence

Why does it seem so difficultto build a sizeable developmenta state in Africa? Agrowing literature looks at the colonial roots of differences in economic development, often using the French/British difference as asource of variation to identify which features of the colonial pastmattered. We use historical archivestobuildanewdatasetofpublicfinancesin9Frenchand4Britishcoloniesof West Africa from 1900 to in dependence.Though we find some significant differences between French and British colonies, we conclude that over all patterns of public finances were similarin both empires. The most striking fact is the greatin crease in expenditure per capitain the last decades of colonization: it quadrupled between the end o World War II and independence. This increase inexpenditure was made possible partly by an increase incustoms revenue due to rising trade flows, but mostly by policy changes: netsubsidies from colonizers to their colonies became positive, while, within the colonies, direct and indirect taxation rates increased. We conclude that the last fifteen years of colonization area key period tounderstand colonial legacies.