The inXuence of colonization after 1870 was openly acknowledged by
politicians. 1870, the year in which France lost the Franco-Prussian War,
was subsequently perceived as ‘the terrible year of 1870’. This qualiWcation
was still in use in 1912, when Joseph Chailley-Bert, the director of a society for
the promotion of the colonies, the Union Coloniale franc ̧aise, used the
expression (Baumgart 1982: 58). A few years previously, the French foreign
minister in 1900, The ́ophile Delcasse ́(1852–1923), observed in the closing
words of a speech before the Senate, ‘France is, above all, a great European
power... which has become, or rather hasrecoveredits position as a great
colonial power’ (in Baumgart 1982: 58–9). Similarly, the French politician,
George Leygues, argued at the Paris Colonial Congress in 1906:
Just after 1870 it was colonial policy which gave us [the French] a fresh energy,
courage and once more brought to our spirits a taste for action and life. It enabled
us to prove that our trials had not deprived us of suYcient conWdence in ourselves for
us to embark on the greatest undertakings and to carry them to fruition
(in Baumgart 1982: 57).Imperialist nationalism was paramount in the politics of Benjamin Disraeli
(r. 1870s and 1880s) and Joseph Chamberlain (r. 1895–1903) in Britain, and
Jules-Franc ̧ois-Camille Ferry (r. 1870s and 1880s) in France. From the early
1860s, Bismarck’s Germany (r. 1862–90) would be another major player in the
apportionment of the world by the European powers. As a result of a series of
successfulwars Bismarck became theWrst chancellor of uniWed Germany and the
self-proclaimed German Empire of 1871, which joined the colonial race from
1884.
Ideologically, colonialism was justiWed on the basis of the racial diVerences
between the Europeans (and the Japanese) and other peoples of the world.
In Britain the politician Charles Dilke explicitly argued that the might of the
British Empire was partly based on the superiority of the ‘British race’ (ibid. 50).
This view was shared by his colleague Joseph Chamberlain, who considered ‘the
British race’ to be ‘the greatest of governing races that the world has ever seen’
(in Baumgart 1982: 89). In France the politician Jules-Franc ̧ois-Camille Ferry
aYrmed this belief in racial superiority in 1885:
Gentlemen, we must speak louder and truer! We must say openly that, in fact, the
superior races have rights with regard to the inferior races... I repeat, the superior
races have a right, because they have a duty, the duty to civilise the inferior races...
Can you deny that there is more justice, more moral and material order, more
equality, more social virtues in North Africa since France conquered it?
(Ferry in Colonna 1997: 351).212 Colonial Archaeology