A Velvet Empire: French Informal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century by David Todd (review)

Reviewed by: A Velvet Empire: French Informal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century by David Todd Elizabeth Heath Todd, David–A Velvet Empire: French Informal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. 350 p. “It ought to be commonplace that, for most of the nineteenth century, France expanded chiefly by means of informal empire.” (p. 1) With this intriguing statement, David Todd opens A Velvet Empire and invites readers to join what seems to be an ongoing conversation animated by an apparent riddle: How did France gain a reputation as the world’s second imperial power in the period between 1815 and 1880 when the country possessed few territorial holdings outside its metropolitan boundaries apart from a smattering of islands, trading posts, and, eventually, Algeria? From any conventional definition of empire, nineteenth-century France was an imperial power without colonies. Todd’s answer is, of course, the one he offers from the start: France’s imperial strength and reputation derived from its informal deployment of cultural, economic, and legal imperialism. Indeed, he argues, France’s ability to combine “soft” cultural power with economic and military [End Page 234] influence ought to be recognized as a particularly cunning imperial strategy that enabled post-Napoleonic France to expand its global influence without acquiring the fiscal and infrastructural obligations carried by formal imperial rule. Thus, France’s informal empire deserves recognition not only as a distinct form of imperialism, but perhaps one even more sophisticated than that deployed by that European colonial power par excellence: Britain. Todd begins making his case by exploring the post-1815 geopolitical and intellectual foundations that contributed to France’s development as an informal empire. After the defeat of Napoleon, France found itself deprived of most of its colonial holdings and at a severe strategic and demographic disadvantage vis-à-vis Britain. New territorial conquests seemed unlikely. Rather than turn inwards, Todd argues, French liberal political economists, such as Benjamin Constant, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord, Abbé Dominique de Pradt, and, later, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, popularized the idea that informal avenues of influence and control offered France a lucrative way to pursue its commercial interests while avoiding the costs associated with territorial sovereignty. Instead of warships and military troops, France’s imperial agents would take an unexpected guise. Stylish luxury goods like silk, velvet, and champagne produced by French skilled workers and carefully packaged to emphasize their monarchical and aristocratic associations seduced and indebted foreign elites. France’s small-time savers aided the imperial cause by investing heavily in state-backed loans to foreign powers, including Mexico, Imperial Russia, and the newly recognized Haitian Republic. Through commodities and capital, France extended its domination and influence over foreign markets, eliciting concessions and trade agreements that successfully turned foreign lands like Mexico and Egypt into client states. French success as an informal imperial power reliant on “soft” power nevertheless had its limits. In the early nineteenth century, France’s informal approach failed spectacularly when metropolitan and local conditions transformed French attempts to wrest additional control over the temperate regions of Algeria into a military campaign for actual territorial control. Even here, Todd argues, the French initially tried to limit their formal control, especially of the hinterland, through a collaboration with the local Indigenous leader Abd al-Qadir. The violence unleashed when this collaboration unravelled in 1845 would create the foundation for an expanded formal colony and French settlerism. By the 1860s, French influence was on the retreat elsewhere as well. French troops occupied Mexico to force the resumption of loan payments. The French-imposed monarchy came to a decisive end in 1867, when American-backed Mexican troops executed the installed king, Maximillian of Habsburg. In Egypt, local backlash at French economic control and claims to extraterritoriality in 1867 created an opening for British formal control. Thus, even before Napoleon III’s defeat at Sedan, the global tide had already begun to turn against French informal imperialism. Under the Third Republic, this informal approach to empire would recede further—though certainly not disappear—as the new regime revived the quest to build a formal empire based on French territorial sovereignty. [End Page 235] Velvet Empire is a compelling read...

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