French Colonization: Eurocentric vs. Revisionist Perspectives

Introduction: What Is Colonization?

Colonization takes place when people staunchly believe that their culture and lifestyle are superior and therefore must be adopted by those who are foreign to it. As Malidoma Somé explains in his work Of Water and the Spirit, colonization begins from a feeling of superiority held by Western — in this case exclusively European — nations, who believe in their right to own land inhabited by others. A secondary but nonetheless important assumption under colonialism is the belief that European culture is more productive and beneficial to its members. Hence, colonizers justify entering foreign lands, displacing indigenous peoples from their homes, and stripping them of their cultures. Despite the fact that these cultures, with their accompanying rituals, traditions, and religions, have been established for millennia, colonizers maintain that they are backward, inferior, and somehow harmful to their own members. It is "for their own good" that indigenous peoples are divided like spoils of war among colonizing nations (Sullivan).

The Origins and Growth of French Colonial Settlements

Among the many forms colonization has taken throughout history, French colonization stands as a particularly significant example. After losing the Atlantic coast to the Spanish and English, the French tied all their hopes for survival to the "Mississippi River stretching south to the Gulf of Mexico" (French Colonization). The river promised an opportunity to conduct the fur trade with minimal competition, since the English were focused on the eastern seaboard while the Spanish were preoccupied with the benefits offered by Florida and Mexico. Thus, in the late seventeenth century, French settlements began to emerge along the Mississippi River following reconnaissance missions by Jolliet and Marquette in 1673 and by LaSalle and Tonti in the 1680s (French Colonization).

The settlements known as the "American Bottoms" established a regular and cordial relationship with the French, paving the way for the foundation of New Orleans in 1718. In 1731, the town of Cahokia became a full-time settlement. "By 1752, a census revealed the French population of Cahokia to be about 136 people (Belting 1948:13–39). In 1766, the population had grown to about 500 people (Beck 1823:95)" (French Colonization). The character of French settlement in this town revealed a great deal about French architecture and ways of living. "Traditionally, it conformed to the system of villages with common fields that was transplanted from France. It allowed the immigrants to share in a common culture and religion" (French Colonization). Practically, this concentrated settlement also offered protection against intrusion by other Europeans and Native Americans.

This French culture was evident in the houses built on these settlements, as described by Governor Ford:

"The French houses were mostly built of hewn timber set upright in the ground, or upon plates laid upon a wall, the intervals between the upright pieces being filled with stone and mortar. Scarcely any of them were more than one story high, with a porch on one or two sides, and sometimes all around, with low roofs extending with slopes of different steepness from the comb in the centre to the lowest part of the porch. These houses were generally placed in gardens surrounded by fruit trees of apples, pears, cherries, and peaches; and in the villages each enclosure for a house and garden occupied a whole block or square, or the greater part of one. Each village had its Catholic Church and priest. The church was the great place of gay resort on Sundays and holidays, and the priest was the advisor, director, and companion of all his flock."

The Eurocentric Historical Perspective

Thus, French colonization — like all other forms of colonization — brought about significant changes in the settlements where the French established their colonies. These changes, and the way French colonization both amended the cultures of the colonized and contributed to economic development and the rise of capitalism, are explained through two fundamentally different schools of thought: the Eurocentric historians and the revisionist, or anti-Eurocentric, historians.

Eurocentric historians strongly uphold what can be called the "cultural arrogance" associated with "the real-or-alleged centrality of Europe in preparing the explosion of economic development, science and technology, the Enlightenment, and the expansion of the role of the individual — as well as intensified exploitation and colonial conquest — that heralded the modern world," thereby linking these developments directly to the rise of capitalism (Wood, Against the Current). From the Eurocentric perspective, the merchants and traders involved in French colonization were the forerunners of the capitalist movement. On this account, the wealth that French colonizers accumulated through the conquests and settlements they established was viewed as a birthright tied to their advantageous geographic and cultural position (Wood, Against the Current).

Because most history books pertaining to French colonization have been written by Eurocentric historians, course books both ancient and modern are shaped by distortion and omission of historical facts. Studying French colonization from the Eurocentric perspective presents it as a step forward in economic development — and it was, but not toward the development of the entire human race (Athar, Reflections of an American Muslim). Furthermore, as Eurocentrism can be understood as "the implicit view that societies and cultures of European origin constitute the 'natural' norm for assessing what goes on in the rest of the world" (Wood, Against the Current), Eurocentric historians tend to feel pride in neglecting "the scholarship and the achievements of the Afro-Asian worlds" while placing undue stress on the significance of Europe and its culture (Athar, Reflections of an American Muslim).

Conclusion: History, Distortion, and the Need for Critical Awareness

French colonization was, on one hand, a process that gave birth to capitalism and other forms of economic development. On the other hand, it was a process marked by discrimination and the pursuit of selfish motives. Where French colonization brought some degree of economic prosperity, it simultaneously reduced the natives who originally inhabited the colonies to a condition of slavery, leading to political and social unrest and negatively impacting the lives of countless individuals who were compelled to surrender their language in favor of French and their culture in favor of that of their colonizers.