Simon Bittmann: “Decolonization and the Expropriation of French Capital”

This presentation will study compensations paid by France’s former colonies to French colonial firms, between 1954 and 1998. Political independence did not, in most cases, entail economic sovereignty, as private capital claimed that concessions (for agriculture, oil and mineral extraction, or infrastructure) acquired under colonial rule remained valid; an argument gradually supported by international law. This meant that any attempts at economic nationalization was to be associated with “prompt, effective, and adequate compensations” of private shareholders, a process strangely reminiscent of the indemnities paid to former slave-owners after the Haitian Revolution. In this research, Bittman builds a unique dataset of all expropriations of French capital, as well as associated compensations, to study the power dynamics which shaped French post-colonial capitalism. In doing so, he seeks to bring back capital within post-colonial analysis, showing how countries negotiated their economic sovereignty through a shift from colonial control to a world of foreign aid, investment treaties, and geopolitical conflicts.

Simon Bittmann is a tenured sociologist at the CNRS, and assistant professor of historical sociology at the University of Strasbourg. He is currently a visiting professor at the Sociology Department, University of Chicago. His research focuses on U.S. and European capitalism, through both sociological and historical lenses. While his earlier work dealt with consumer finance and racialism capitalism in the US South, he now works on the political economy of colonization and decolonization in the French empire, looking at imperialism through the lens of private capital as well as its manifold opposition.

Sponsored by the Center for German and European Studies, and the Center for Interdisciplinary French Studies (a French Embassy Center of Excellence).

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