Reconstructing Europe through Rejuvenating Empire: the British, French, and Dutch Experiences Compared

In November 1947, Stafford Cripps, the UK’s Minister for Economic Affairs, told a conference of Britain’s governors in Africa that with the sterling area’s dollar deficit running at £600 to £700 million a year ‘we should increase out of all recognition the tempo of African economic development’, boosting production of anything that ‘will save dollars or will sell in a dollar market’. 1 Here was evidence that in the UK’s post-war reconstruction crisis ‘more completely than ever before economics and empire had come together’. 2 The same applied for Europe’s next two largest maritime empires. ‘One of the assumptions underlying policy in the Fourth Republic was that the French Empire [albeit restyled ‘Union’] … could be developed economically in order to strengthen France’s position in the postwar world.’ 3 Meanwhile, in The Netherlands where ‘total regeneration was the order of the day, as to the Dutch East Indies [Indonesia] there was only one thought: restoration of the ties between mother country and the colonies, and restoration of the triangle of commerce, Netherlands-Indonesia-America, which according to the experts was essential for the revival of the Dutch economy.’ 4 Although the post-war ‘second colonial occupation’ was partly concerned with issues of international prestige (particularly for France and Holland), a prime focus of this chapter is the relationship between the development drive overseas and the most pressing international economic issue shared by London, Paris, and The Hague, namely the dollar shortage. In the short term, at least, it will be argued that these were largely successful strategies. But, at the same time, the latter part of this chapter demonstrates how the ‘new imperialism’ of the immediate post-war period exacerbated problems of colonial political management. Moreover, imperial policies and their unwitting consequences provoked new tensions within European imperial and colonial elites, and especially alienated and disillusioned key metropolitan business leaders.