'A Poorly Invented Tradition? La Semaine coloniale française 1927–1939 in its Transnational Context'

Recent scholarship of popular imperialism has identified annual public celebrations of Western European colonial empires as important tools for the shaping of new ‘imperial’ national identities. Building on the analyses of British Empire Day and Belgian and Italian colonial days, this article offers the first overview of the French week of pro-Empire celebrations, La Semaine coloniale française, and assesses its reach during the interwar period (1927–1939). In thinking through the fate and transformations of French Colonial Week, from an outdoor public spectacle, to a pale replica of Empire-Day school celebrations (Journée scolaire de la France d’Outre-mer), I will focus on two aspects specific to cyclical vectors of pro-Empire propaganda in Europe more broadly: the transnational context within which they developed between the wars, and their recursive nature. After an account of the event’s foreign origins, devolved organisational model and regionally-inflected public celebratory practices, I will examine more closely the two most enduring and wide-reaching traditions that it produced: the Colonial-Week radio broadcasts and school campaigns. Reading La Semaine coloniale française through this comparative and diachronic framework, I will reflect on social, political and logistic reasons why it never coalesced into as ritualised and widely-observed a festival as Empire Day in Britain.