Reassessing French "impérialisme du pauvre" in 1920s Poland

Abstract

The goal of the paper is to reassess imperialist interpretations of French investment in interwar Poland. At the time, France used its political position in Central and Eastern Europe to secure economic concessions, impose asymmetric treaties, and help French companies obtain privileged treatment, despite their limited competitiveness and the weakness of the capital market in Paris. Georges-Henri Soutou called this policy” imperialism of the poor,” with similar imperialist interpretations emerging in the region’s historiography. In this paper, drawing on an analysis of key negotiations, I argue that French investment cannot easily be reduced to imperialist expansion, in which authorities in Paris and the companies they supported exploited the weaker positions of their eastern counterparts. Interactions between Poland and France were a complex game played by asymmetric partners, pursuing different, – not necessarily opposing and not always transparent – goals. In particular, Poland was often an active initiator of talks, rather than merely an object of expansion, and managed to achieve several surprising successes.