It would seem that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, avid champion and heir to the (lost) grandeur of France, is at the same time aware of the unspeakable colonial era of his country in lands conquered at the wrong time overseas and that were subjugated and plundered. without consideration for their ancestors.
The continuity of its territorial possessions beyond the French hexagon, which has been beating for a long time, with worrying cardiac arrhythmias, within the EU could easily become an unaffordable ballast for the French economy. Although France is not alone in this, far from it.
Although the Germans were forced to assume, at least in part, the atrocities of Nazism, the same cannot be said of the British, Italians, Belgians or Dutch, who, hiding behind the black legend launched centuries ago among all against Spain, They thought, until recently, that they could escape the criminal colonial past that has brought them so much wealth.
The truth is that Macron, a young political leader with hardly any party of his own to back him, at this point in his second term, dwarfs are beginning to grow not only in the banlieue or the conflictive industrial or agricultural regions, but, and increasingly more, in the overseas territories, which he intends to keep, whatever the cost, under French tutelage. For geopolitical reasons. For pride. Perhaps by mistake.
Despite pressing problems at home, at the end of July Macron carved a hole in his busy schedule to fly to Vanuatu, a former Franco-British colony in the distant South Seas. While Paris was burning and Marseilles was exploding, the French president did not lose sight of the fact that in the antipodes China’s expansionism could leave France out of the game in the Pacific Ocean, which is what promises to be, if it is not already, the new world geopolitical scenario.
The rise of Chinese power throughout the Pacific is not only affecting France, but, above all, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, as they all have interests and significant investments in the area.
Before setting foot in Vanuatu, Macron made a stopover in New Caledonia, a ruinous French territory in fact and in law that, based on endorsements so far lost by the indigenous people, is anyway on its way to independence from Paris. If the break occurs, there is fear of the shameful exit from France through the back door while the Chinese enter through the front door.
During his journey through the antipodes, Macron spoke a few words referring to his country’s colonial past in the South Seas, which he described as “a history of hoarding wealth and exploitation of populations”, “a past of suffering and alienation ”, not to mention “trafficking in human beings”. This comes after the French president declared, in 2017, that France’s colonization of Algeria was “a crime against humanity.”
Upon his return to Paris, the powder keg of the Sahel awaited Macron, in which France has everything to lose in the face of the growing role in Africa not only of China, but of Russia and, increasingly, Turkey, with the aggravation of that Washington will be in charge of stopping the advance of these powers in the former colonies so rich in resources, starting with the highly coveted rare earths.
France, by assuming the atrocities of its colonial past in addition to the failure of its policy of social integration in the metropolis, is on its way to becoming, if it is not already, the European stronghold of the ultra-right, who laughs at the Italian Meloni or the Hungarian Orbán. The decline of France as an international power is bad news for the EU, especially after the calamitous Brexit.
Before the watchful eye of the United States, China, Russia and Turkey, the black legend of the European colonial past intensifies, in which the unspeakable truths advance side by side with all kinds of exaggerations and tricks, which reveal the incomplete union of the member states of the EU.
