Marseille Credit Society

Historical context

A regional bank with imperial ambitions

Founded in 1865 with a capital of 20 million francs under the sponsorship of the Société générale de crédit industriel et commercial (General society for industrial and commercial credit) and several other big names (Amédée Armand, Henry Bergasse, A. Baux & E. Fraissinet, Charles et Auguste Bazin, Marc Fraissinet & Cie, Joseph, Alphonse et Jules Grandval, Imer frères & Leenhardt, Lazare, Edmond, Gustave, Léonce, Xavier et Edouard Luce, Albert, Alfred et Jules Rostand, Victor Roux, les frères Pastré, Hilarion Roux ou Zafiropulo & Zarifi), the SMC progressively became the financial strong arm of the ambitions of Marseille’s business bourgeoisie. The bank’s engagement within the imperial economic system manifests firstly by its presence in the capital of multiple Marseillais companies, who were very involved in these exchanges : Fournier & Cie, Etablissements Verminck, CFAO, Grands travaux de Marseille, Saint-Louis, Raffineries de sucre de la Méditerranée. The SMC also participated in the negotiations that led to the creation of the Banque d’Afrique occidentale (1901) and the first loans from the AOF in 1903 and 1906 (165 million francs). However, North Africa was its privileged area of action. The bank’s imperial ambitions solidified for the first time in 1871, under the presidency of Jean-Baptiste Pastré, when the bank obtained the management of Tunis beylical government’s debt. It was a strong act that symbolized how Tunis was already in a position of dependency, and it demonstrates France’s advance in the arm wrestle with Italy for control of a regency that theoretically was always a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. The imperial ambitions of the SMC took on a new dimension in 1878 with the accession to the presidency of Amédée Armand. The share capital was at 40 million francs, the 60 millions in the following years. At the same time, a loan of 2 million was accorded to the city of Alger to improve its water service, then another 3.5 million to the city of Constantine and another 500,000 francs to Blidah.

A place of interest : Tunisia

Given that Algeria was already largely controlled by the group Talabot via multiple large businesses – Société générale algérienne; Mines de fer de Mokta-el-Hadid ; Société générale de transport maritime à Vapeur –, Amédée Armand and the administrators of SMC directed their ambitions towards Tunisia. Their aim was to create a mortgage and land bank, based on the model of the Société générale algérienne, that possessed vast agricultural or forest domaines in order to promote agricultural colonization. This bank would also have the privilege of being a State bank and control the country’s monetary issuance. The project took form in multiple steps:

• In March of 1879, the SMC founded the Société franco-tunisienne in Marseille. This banking institution immediately granted a loan of one million piastres to the Bey of Tunis, guaranteed on the upcoming cereal crops;
• In December 1879, an agreement was reached between the Franco-Tunisian Company, Eugène Pereire and the Spanish Credit Mobilier that created branches between Tunis and Tangier thanks to the assistance of the agencies of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique. Thus, Amédée Armand inscribes SMC activity in the great offensive, led by the Pereire group, against the North-African positions of the Talabot group. This agreement led to the foundation of the Comptoirs maritime de crédit industriel et commercial (Maritime industrial and commercial credit counters) in April 1880. This was a société of 10 million francs which replaced the Société franco-tunisienne. Within this group was Amédée Armand, Alphonse and Jules Grandval, Gustave Luce, Etienne Zafiropulo, Henry Bergasse, Emile Darier, Alphonse Baux, Victor Roux, and Albert Rostand.
• Finally, in June 1880, the SMC bought the properties of the former Prime Minister Khérédine for more than 2.5 million francs. This purchase included three palaces, the olive groves in the outskirts of Tunis, in Cape Bon, and above all, more than 100,000 hectares on the Enfida territory between Tunis and Sousse.

From agricultural colonialism to tourisme
Did the directors of the SMC push France to militarily intervene in Tunisia in order to gain possession of the Enfida territory, as it was regularly suggested by legitimist, bonapartist and radical medias, or was it as the deputies Cuneo d’Ornano et Lengle affirmed in the Parliament in April 1881?

“ We do not want to give the money of France and the blood of our children for the benefit of the speculators (...). I don’t need to recount all the affairs of the swindlers, everyone knows what the claim for the property of Enfida is” (Official Journal of 12 April 1881).

The archives of the SMC demonstrate that Amédée Armand and his administrateurs, far from putting pressure on the government, acted closely with successive ministers of Foreign Affairs (Waddington, Freycinet, Barthélémy-Saint-Hilaire) and that the Enfida affair was indeed one of the pretexts used by the government of Jules Ferry to initiate a colonial expedition – the first of a long series – which the republican state had been contemplating for several months.

The financial consequences of the creation of the French protectorate in Tunisia (treaty of Bardo signed May 12^th 1881) was far from minimal for the SMC. In 1884, the former Comptoirs maritimes de crédit industriel et commercial became Banque de Tunisie (Bank of Tunisia), a limited company of 5 million francs directed by Albert Rey, the successor of Amédée Armand at the head of the SMC. This proximity allows for the Marseillaise bank to participate in several projects, like the financing of the construction of the port of Tunis. The fate of the Enfida territory is less successful in its original objectives. Originally, the director of the SMC planned to create vast prairies, irrigated perimeters, herds of sheep and cattle, as well as a vast wine domain. Only the last of these would see fruition. On a surface of 300 hectares with grape varieties such as Carignan, Morastel, Grenache, Pineal, Predo-Ximenès or Clairette. For the remaining land, the Society divided it into lots and put it up for sale or rent in order to facilitate the establishment of settlers. By 1889, 30,000 hectares were either sold or rented. The SMC also looked to develop a tourist element on the site by creating a road network and hotels in the new village Enfidaville. The tourist dimension of Tunisia is in part a legacy of the colonial period.

Critical analysis

The history of Société marseillais de credit reveals the important links that connect the bank to French imperial dynamics. SMC used the Marseille business network to impose itself as a major actor in the economic and political projections of France in North Africa. Its role in the management of Tunisian debt, its investment in Algerian infrastructures, and then its decisive commitment to the development and structuring of the Tunisian protectorate, testifies to the way in which banks accompanied – and sometimes anticipated – the colonial ambitions of the State.

The Enfida affair, in particular, illustrates the extent to which private interest and bank strategies matched national geopolitical objectives. If the SMC did not provoke the 1881 expedition itself, it did involve itself in a game of complex interactions with the French authorities, helping to create the conditions of intervention which had already largely been envisioned. The establishment of a protectorate opened the bank up to a vast scope of opportunities, from the foundation of the Banque de Tunisie to the agricultural and tourist development of the Enfida, even if the initial ambitions were often readjustment in light of the realities of the land.

Through the case of SMC we can clearly see the close interweaving between finance, colonial economy and political strategies. The Marseille bank illustrates the central role that financial institutions played in the material and ideological structuring of the French empire : they allowed for the funding of infrastructures, the organization of money, but also to legitimize their presence. The history of the SMC demonstrates that the imperial project was never only military or administrative : it was also, and occasionally above all, an economic project supported by private actors who were following, under the guise of progress and development, their own logics of profit and expansion.