Power and Social Control in Settler and Exploitation Colonies: The Experience of New France and French Colonial Africa

Abstract

This paper analyzes strategies for articulating power and effectuating social control in the built environment by French colonial authorities in New France and colonial Africa. The former was a settler colony while the latter comprised colonies of economic exploitation. Despite their different colonial status, they shared much in common. In this regard, French colonial authorities recycled spatial control strategies they had employed in New France a century earlier for use in Africa. However some changes commensurate with the changing priorities and objectives of the French colonial project were instituted. In particular, recycled policies from New France were made more stringent, less tolerant and ostensibly oppressive in French colonial Africa.