ABSTRACT
The history of modern Europe is the history of an expansion occurring in two great waves: that of Western Christendom which began with the voyages of the Portuguese, and the expansion of Eastern Christendom across the Russian and Siberian plain. None of the new nations of the European continent would exist; there would be no United States. That the most important Western nation has arisen out of colonialism is the foremost colonial triumph of European history. While in Metropolitan France social distinctions are substantial, they are far smaller among Frenchmen of European origin living in a colony where only a very few are found in the very lowest economic or social brackets. Because in Africa Frenchmen are bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, managers, and, at the very lowest, foreman or skilled workers, the image of "Frenchness" is bound up in the native mind with the image of a certain minimum social status.
