Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: The Other Empire

The Essay: The Other Empire: Episode 2

Factual: History

Factual: Politics

The Other Empire

Episode 2

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, The Other Empire, Episode 2Close menu

Julian Jackson tells the story of France's involvement in sub-Saharan Africa.

Exploring France's imperial past and how it still affects former colonies today, Julian Jackson discusses France's involvement in sub-Saharan Africa.

Julian Jackson uncovers the forgotten - and indeed in this country largely unknown - story of the French Empire. In the second of five Essays, he tells the story of France's involvement in sub-Saharan Africa.

The French Empire was second only to the British. At its peak in the 1930s it covered some 10 million square miles with a population of 100 million. It stretched from the West Indies to the South Pacific, from Indo-China to the Maghreb, from Sub-Saharan Africa to the Levant. The Empire may be gone now but its legacy lives on both in France and in the former colonies. With a Muslim population of 4.5 million today, France, thanks to her former Empire, has the largest Islamic population of any country in Europe; couscous is as much national dish as coq au vin (or chicken vindaloo in Britain). And with recent turbulent events in Africa and the Middle East reminding the French and us of the importance of these former links, this is a story that is worth telling in some detail.

The inheritance of France's sub-Saharan empire in Africa is complex: What was once the Upper Volta, then part of French Sudan, then part of Niger in 1927, then divided up between Cote d'Ivoire, Sudan and Niger, then (1947) Upper Volta again - and is now Burkina Faso. The arbitrary divisions imposed by the French - are of course part of the reasons for the difficult history of this region ever since...

Producer: Simon Elmes.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Julian Jackson tells the story of France's imperial past

Julian Jackson tells the story of France's imperial past and how it still affects how former colonies connect with the world today

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

The Other Empire

Episode 2

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3