Empire · approximate1830 – 1960 · 130 years
French Colonial Empire (Africa)
The world's second-largest colonial empire, built across two distinct phases on three continents.
What it was
France's first colonial empire (Canada, Louisiana, the Caribbean, India) was largely lost to Britain by 1763. The second empire — Algeria from 1830, then most of West and Central Africa, Indochina, Madagascar, and the Levant — peaked in the 1930s and was dismantled by the wars of decolonization between 1954 and 1962.
Why it mattered
French is still an official language in roughly 30 countries, and France's post-colonial relationships with West Africa (the "Françafrique") remain politically charged today.
From Wikipedia
The French colonial empire consisted of the overseas colonies, protectorates, and mandate territories that came under French rule from the 16th century onward. A distinction is generally made between the "first French colonial empire", that existed until 1814, by which time most of it had been lost or sold, and the "second French colonial empire", which began with the conquest of Algiers in 1830. On the eve of World War I, France's colonial empire was the second-largest in the world after the British Empire.
Wikipedia: French colonial empire·CC BY-SA 4.0
Borders & accuracy
Dashed borders mark empires whose extent we can date but whose precise frontiers are contested or undocumented.
- SOURCEreconstructed from Natural Earth country boundaries
- DETAILreconstructed-clipped-country
- SNAPSHOT1930
- POLITY TYPEstate
Also during this period
No conflict record yet names this polity as a belligerent; these overlap its dates only.
- World War II1939–45World-changing · 85M dead
- Taiping Rebellion1850–64World-changing · 30M dead
- World War I1914–18World-changing · 20M dead
- Second Sino-Japanese War1937–45World-changing · 20M dead
- Chinese Civil War1927–49World-changing · 8.0M dead
- Eastern Front (World War I)1914–18World-changing · 6.0M dead
Open in the atlas →Seeks the timeline to 1830 and fits the map to these borders.
Cite as: French Colonial Empire (Africa) (1830 – 1960). War Atlas. https://waratlas.org/e/french-colonial · Sources & methodology