ABSTRACT
One of the assumptions underlying policy in the Fourth Republic was that the French empire,1 which had acted as a refuge for the French economy in times of depression,2 could be developed economically in order to strengthen France’s position in the postwar world. When the French government signed the Treaty of Rome setting up the European Economic Community it brought that strategy to a formal end. One of the obvious questions which this raises is whether the strategy was abandoned because it had not worked or because it had worked so successfully that the French economy was strong enough to face competition in the markets of both Europe and the empire.3
