After the fall of the Second Empire, France no longer played any role on the international diplomatic stage. The Third Republic, with determined men and highly talented military leaders, embarked on a renaissance of France.
It reappeared on the world stage with colonization. It was often an adversary of England and nevertheless carved out a colonial empire which restored its prestige and grandeur. This is not the place to debate colonialism.
Arthur Conte, in a magnificent work, tells us with his talent the adventure of our weapons, our navy, and our scientists, who built a universal empire and brought, whether some like it or not, progress and civilization to lands where custom, cannibalism, and religious fanaticism once hindered any evolution. The colonial epic of France is both a history book and a guide to these unknown lands.
Between 1875 and the beginning of the First World War, we discover this Third Republic born from a military disaster, which forged both the grandeur of France and prepared this revenge. Even if ships were headed for new horizons, the blue line of the Vosges remained the priority.
Men like Clémenceau opposed Jules Ferry, wanting to maintain a single objective: to dip the tricolor in the Rhine.
The colonial epic, one of the most beautiful pages of our history with the building of an empire, which would become in 1940 the lifeline of metropolitan France crushed and defeated by the Nazis.
Thierry Jan
