Ruis in de loftrompet. Reportages als aanzet tot een Frans koloniaal debat in het interbellum?

Abstract

The years 1930-1931, when the famous international colonial exhibition in Vincennes was held, can be considered as the heyday of French colonialism. In these years of colonial consensus, not many newspapers dared to publish „anticolonial‟ articles. In 1930, Le Petit Parisien, the biggest and most influential newspaper of France, published a report by Louis Roubaud that was critical of the French colonisation of Indochina. This was not the only critical newspaper report of that time. On the contrary, the genre had been quite popular since the First World War. To guarantee readership, the reports had to find a balance between, on the one hand, the emotion the readers could feel reading shocking faits divers or revelations, and on the other hand the seriousness of actuality. These characteristics made it possible for critical reports to be published, even in a newspaper that was close to the political establishment. Some reports had real consequences and induced political changes. Although the genre of the „colonial reportage‟ may have roused some discussions, the colonial consensus was still so dominant that a real long-term debate on colonialism was out of the question.