Special thanks to War Thunder for sponsoring this video. Click the link and claim your bonuses: playwt.link/caspianreport

Geez everyone talks about the UK and Spain when they used to rule colonies but France went in so deep they've never even properly left

"Imperialism used to come through tanks. Now it comes through banks" That rhyme tho

Correction: Guinea Bissau was not a French colony. They adopted CFA Franc willingly in 1997 to stop high inflation they struggled to manage. Bissau is a Lusophone(former Portugal colony)

''Imperialism used to be spread by tanks , now it is spread by banks '' -CaspianReport

I liked the way one writer phrased it: French decolonization of west Africa consisted of the French moving out of the offices labeled Gouverneur Général, and down the hall into the offices labeled Conseiller Technique.

US: I own 50 states Britain: I own 17 territories Meanwhile France: I own 14 countries

Aged so well. Africans need independence

Britain never left also, they implanted themselves in the mining industry.

"The most effective forms of control are those that are invisible". Spot on mate.

It should be noted that basically all of Nigerias oil production is controlled by the Shell company, and that oil and gas is its main export. So switching the central currency to a Nigerian controlled currency would just change which European country controls West Africa

How has this gone on for so long without this story being told by the mainstream news?

France also independently developed nuclear weapons, built its own aircraft carrier and jet fighter, maintains its own policy independent of much of NATO. France is still a power many people sleep on. They still are a military power and wield that power their sphere of influence.

I knew that France held some power its former colonies, but I had no idea that it had exploited them so badly.

This scheme honestly sounds massively more profitable than actual colonialism.

Thank you for spending the time to create and share this content awareness 🙏🏾

Africa’s political leaders are the ‘geniuses’ maintaining the situation with their ‘independent’ minds.

“The flags may be different, but the methods are the same.” - Viktor Reznov

Why do fair trade when you can do unfair trade? -Every nation ever

This is why France attacked Libya and killed Kadaffi

Recent events in Niger makes more sense to me now, thanks for the video

🇪🇹🇪🇹This is why I feel so proud and thankful to my Ethiopian fathers, who paid the ultimate price with their blood, to make my country independent from the Italians, not once but twice. We don't share any colonial stories with our other African brothers but a proud Victory Day history Stories. 🇪🇹🇪🇹

_"Most powerful countries will get their way by any means necessary"_ is one of the most accurate sentences said in history.

The headline in the thumb nail "How to hide an Empire" is actually the title of an hour-long video presentation by Daniel Immerwahr. He makes that point along the same lines as this video, but the empire he talks about is the global empire the United States has built. I encourage everybody watching this video to go there next.

This video has aged like fine wine,looking at the crisis in Niger,it explains why this video was important in detailing the subjugation of African nations by France. Right now anti imperialism is rife in French speaking Africa.

What France did to Guinea genuinely put so much anger in me . that’s so disgusting and heartbreaking because it’s done to so many nations just because they want economic independence

Never clicked so fast on a CaspianReport video - this topic is probably one the most under-discussed aspects of modern geopolitics.

A slave who does not rebel against the slave master does not deserve pity

I never knew the Lagos port was part of the Bollore network. Explains why efforts to diversify from the port have failed so far

How to hide an empire: in plain sight.

Just a small correction. The Guinea colonized by France was just Guinea, otherwise known as Guinea Conakry. Portugal was the one colonizing Guinea-Bissau.

Thanks for dedicating the time to research and produce this brief. Congratulations.

“Imperialisms used to be speard through tanks nowadays it can through banks”

He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation. - James A. Garfield

As an American in schools in the 1970s, we were taught about the postwar world and how all the colonies of the European powers in Asia and Africa became independent. My gut feeling was spot on that behind the scenes the former European powers (i.e. France, Britain, and the Netherlands) still hold influence in these nations.

Let’s start with some basic debunking: The countries are free to kick out French banks, swap them for other ones or go out alone. They are also free to tell the French to leave. As some just did. It hasn’t really helped them. Depositing your reserves somewhere doesn’t lose you your money, it just sores out somewhere. Out odd very normal for nations to deposit their foreign exchange reserves in other countries, and as France odd guaranteeing the exchange rate, a 50% cut is actually surprisingly low, as it manages 100% of the flow. You can’t compare France in 2020 with France in the 70s. It would be absurd to do that for the African countries you list. Without the CFA these countries would be exposed to wild swings in exchange rates and would have large difficulty borrowing for government spending. Ask Argentina, Zimbabwe or the UK how having your own currency can back fire.

Thank you for this highly informative piece. We were never taught such in school. This is probably the biggest stumbling block to the idea of a united one Africa. Wake up Africa and lets rid ourselves of this cancer.

Thank you for shedding light on this! As someone born and raised in “Francophone” West Africa, it is unusual for me to see our history explained this accurately to the world… And in English most of all. What usually happens is that we, French speakers from Africa, make UKposts videos in French to denounce and explain the atrocious behavior of the French government in Africa, thus cutting out a big portion of the world from actually having access to the information because nobody is really interested in French UKposts videos. All this to say that the very French language imposed to us, limits our ability to reach the whole world through means like UKposts and the internet in general in order to be heard and in order to expose the neocolonial French policy in Africa. Once again, thanks for bringing awareness to the world on this! Kudos !!! 🤜🏾🤛🏾

As a Canadian, I can say that many colonies in many parts of the world are controlled by money that flows through the Toronto stock exchange. It is the biggest mining investment exchange in the world. Gold, diamond, silver, nickel, oil, cobalt, lithium, you name it. The companies mining those minerals are getting their main funding through the Toronto stock exchange.

For those who understand French and are interested in learning more, there is a good book by African economist, Nicholas Agbohou, titled "Le franc CFA et l'euro contre l'Afrique". He also has YT video in French on that same subject.

Bbc ,french news outlets,european news outlets,american news outlets will never ever dare show this

_There's nothing more agreeable in life than making peace with the status quo, and yet nothing more corrupting_

Glad to see there is a channel who does call out imperialism where it actually exists

Don't even try to pretend like England doesn't pull this sh** too.

You say gdp per capita has not increased meaning that there has been no economic growth. But this is very simplistic. From 1960 to 2022 the population of Ivory Coast increased from 3.50 million to 28.16 million people. This is a growth of 703.8 percent in 62 years. So, the gdp of Ivory Coast has grown 700% is another way of looking at it.

Me : Did your empire collapse? France : Well yes but actually no

Really appreciate you talking about the hidden structures of colonization. I think most people don’t realize how much is happening, I have been studying it for years and you taught me new things today!

It would be more credible if you could list all your sources with links (+access time)/literature in the bio. Just as public UKposts channels also practice.

Better update the title in this video to ‘eleven countries’ as three of those countries have just kicked them out and more are sure to follow!

Being drunk at 3am paid off now I have Caspian Report to keep me up even longer thanks for all the content bro

I'm a Vietnamese. As you knew, my country were a French colony along with Laos and Cambodia. In fact, many people only know the good things that the French brought to Vietnam in particular and Indochina in general. They ignore the fact that the French colonialists also committed many crimes here. Many taxes such as the salt tax were introduced, which made the lives of people at that time extremely miserable. They were exploited to the point of exhaustion. During World War I, the people of Annam were also forced to leave their homeland to join the French army. It was the French who also brought opium to the land of Indochina, causing the people who had suffered from poverty to suffer from addiction. Many patriots have stood up to initiate patriotic movements against the French colonialists such as Yen The uprising, Duy Tan reform, ... and all have failed. They were taken to prison and tortured in the most cruel ways. Until Ho Chi Minh returned after 30 years of traveling abroad and led the people to stand up for independence. However, in 1946, France returned with the hope of having Indochina again. But no, they lost miserably at Dien Bien Phu and had to sign the Geneva Accords. And then I guess I don't have to say it anymore. In fact, France is still hoping for a return and control of former colonies like my country. Their efforts are very weak now and no one cares about it. But seeing the way their colonization still appear in Africa makes my heart broke and I feel worry about the future. Edit: No war in the comment, please.

Gotta love how there are no sources in the description, but there is crypto endorsement....

Good work. Maybe this report helped the changes in Africa we saw in recents days ❤

I had some vague impression that France had influence in West Africa, but had no clue about all of this. Really informative video.

Damn! I didn't realize how deep it went. This explains all the French military interventions in the region that previously left us puzzled.

wow. So Meloni was not making it up.

Update: Niger, Mali and Burkino faso are no longer under france

Guine Bissau was a Portuguese colony (not a French one), independent since 1975 from Portugal, but they left his own currency and adopted the CFA currency in 1994, changing for the more stable currency of his neighbors!

That "Imperialism through Banks, not Tanks" line is one of your best.

The sad thing is, considering how France and other european countries are still taking so much from Africa. They still have the audacity to be annoyed with african immigrants,legal or not. Saying go back to Africa and such, my first instinct when I hear this is then leave Africa alone, all the charities nonsense in the world is not enough to pay back what is being siphoned every day.

and then they whine about immigration

You didn't mention Thomas Sankara and Burkina Faso, but a very similar thing happened as in Togo. There's been many attempts to escape France's oppression in various different ways. But France crush it, either with force or "law".

Some of the maps used are anachronistic. Spanish Guinea and Portuguese Guinea were not part of the CFA currency zone from the start. They joined voluntarily much later, and only after finally achieving indepence from the Franco and Salazar regimes, becoming the new countries of Equatorial Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, respectively.

Alternative Title: France Secretly Economically owns 14 Countries

Man, I didn't realize France still had that level of monetary control in Africa. Also, that closing line was rather chilling. Thank you for another interesting episode. God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ :)

Let me quote a clever economic commentator, on this issue (M. Seminerio): “Is fixed exchange a bad thing? This is probably the case, as is often the case with fixed exchange rate regimes. But what would be the alternative? Very simple: that the countries concerned leave the exchange agreement and create their own local currency, managing it independently. They will have to borrow in euros or dollars or other hard currency, as is the case with emerging countries. A problem? It's not for sure. If the ruling elites in African countries are enlightened (and lucky), they may even succeed and grow a local currency which in the future may also be accepted in international trade. If, however, such elites are unfortunate or rapacious, the local currency will end up on the sidelines, replaced by a thriving black market based on euros and dollars. Does anyone remember that Ecuador has a dollarised economy as a result of the hyperinflation that years ago incinerated the local currency, the sucre? There is only one point: the CFA franc is a more or less hard peg to the euro. Emancipating yourself or trying to emancipate yourself is always possible. Succeeding in the enterprise is subject to uncertainty and high risk. It's not like there are free lunches and freeways - you have to grapple with it. The two CFA francs are simulacra of the euro. The risk that the economy of the countries concerned will end up directly euroized, if and when they decide to emancipate themselves monetarily, is very high. For now, the empirical evidence does not show large differences in performance between the countries of the CFA area and other Africans with their own currencies, which are often forced to defend against speculative attacks, with interest rate hikes.”

Very interesting! Do you have a list of sources, so that I can dive deeper in the topic? Thanks :)

The documentary The Spider’s Web is about Great Britain’s second (financial) empire. I see the French have their own version of the Spider’s Web.

What's interesting is that Guinea-Bissau was a Portuguese colony, not French but still adopted the CFA franc in 1997

After seeing the thumbnail of this video, I remembered something said proudly by a French soldier in the Rwandan movie 100 Days (2001): "I am a soldier of France, and France is a superpower in Africa." It is definitely not inspiring nor thoughtful, but it shows one thing: France still thinks it is an empire owning African colonies. That is starting to crumble away. As it should be. Africa should be free.

As the French people can't trust the French government to act in their best interests it is hardly surprising that the people of West Africa can't rely on either the French government or their own, with or without French colonial interference. Of course, the same can be said about all other governments in the entire world without exception at least to my knowledge. If there was an easy answer to a problem that has haunted mankind since the Dawn of Civilisation itself I feel reasonably confident that we may have tried it at some time over the last 50-60 thousand years. What seems to be the pattern is that for largely geographic reasons particular places in the world have certain inherent advantages over others. Over time this enables them to rise both economically and technologically above other parts and so makes it easier for them to exploit them. However, there is nothing inherently bad about being exploited as long as the net result is positive over time. This wealth accumulation in what we call the colonial powers has over time filtered down to the common masses of these places, but it took a lot of time. It largely came about not by trade unions, socialism, revolutions, civil wars, or even democracy, which is an utter illusion even at the best of times, but because very rich people prefer not to have to step over the dead bodies of other people's children or deal with the stench of death and poverty outside their homes, offices, or mansion houses. The rich tend to like building nice buildings that don't smell too bad or have poor people living in their newly made streets. They also worked out that it would be a good idea that their expensively trained and educated slave class lived long enough to get their job done of making them ever more rich and powerful, hench things such as The NHS. Africans would be well advised to remember this and stop trusting either the French or their own governments to really give a damn whether they all live or die, because they don't, never have, and never will. Although hardly anyone distrusts and despised French, British, or US governments or the corporations that own them all more than myself, I suggest that as a general rule the Devil that you know is very likely going to turn out to be better than the Devil you don't. Indeed history tends to suggest that this is a truism especially when it comes to Africa but everywhere else in the world to my knowledge. My advice is for African people to get smart and do all possible to get their own lives in order. Also, petition as best as you can for your French masters to show at least a modicum of mercy and human compassion. You never know they may actually have some. Make them fully aware that doing this would be in their best interests otherwise, you are wasting your time. Simply hating on the French is not going to help, but contains every chance of making your condition far worse in every respect. A growing tourist industry is often a benefit to local people and so particularly hating on the French is not going to help that, now is it? Whatever you do, try not to allow any so-called aid to come to your people via your own government or the UN as you will see less than none of it, or it will undoubtedly cause more problems than it solves. What you need is to be shown and helped to create your own local economies by becoming good community leaders, better parents, more efficient farmers, tradespeople, or manufacturers of at least something of real value to either yourself or others. This is what you need and so it is the very last thing that anyone in power will even promise you never mind want to give you. They will promise you plenty of jam tomorrow for doing less than you already do and give you less than you already have. If you seriously believe that you are going to get your hands on even a small piece of the wealth generated by your country's natural resources if it ends up in the hands of your own government then you are deluded. Unless of course, you can get a job working for the government pointing guns at your own people, doing their gardening, washing their dirty underwear, or building them a new palace to live in. If you have no value to your rulers they will carry on treating you accordingly, whatever color skin they have will make no difference whatsoever. Remember you will only get what it is in the interests of your rulers to give you or allow you to keep. Otherwise, they will either kill you or deliberately keep you in murderous poverty for eternity and a day. I wish that I could be more encouraging but this is simply how the World works, and has always worked.

As a citizen of one of these nations Caspian I thank you for highlighting this exploitation we have endured for years

I'm in awe how CaspianReport manages to come up with such a fire lines to open and close up a video every time.

next time you hear a European complaining about immigrants and how they want their countries back, show them this video...

Do you log your sources? How can I learn more? I'd love to have a list to use to research this topic.

“Imperialism used to be spread through tanks, now a days it comes through banks” I listen to caspianreport for the bars 🔥🔥💯

Equatorial Guinea wasn't a French colony. It was a Spanish one and its official language is Spanish. They are surrounded by former French colonies so it made sense for them to join the French-designed monetary union with their neighbours.

Kinda funny that right after he said 'Imperialism used to spread with tanks, nowadays it comes through banks' and there comes the tank, sponsor warthunder

And people blame countries like Turkey. My god, this is almost slavery. I always knew that France had still colonies (yes, they still have colonies, usually islands). But I didn't know that they were that bad.

I feel colonized by Visa and Mastercard.

This is neocolonialism. This is how wealthier countries control poorer countries and I remember you making a different video on this topic in the past, Shirvan. Glad to see you return to it, more people need to know this!

Equatorial guinea and guinea bissau weren't colonies. They are part of the CFA france because they requested to be part of it. Any west or central african can either join or leave a franc zone. One thing that has been forgotten to be mentioned is that the practice of french neocolonialism was also done by the french community which composed of member states that were french colonies by having the constitution that had restricted the sovereignty of 12 african nations by reaffirming france in dominance of current affairs, currency and economic policies.

Alright, third sentence, 14secondes into the video: "...tied to the euro, a rate determine by french treasury" 1) The Euro is not a rate ? 2) it's determined by France as much as 1/27th for all members or about 4% of people in a national election determine stuff. Bye to your vid ... I should really get a life.

It could well be that France is abusing the CFA Franc, but using the Ivory Coast's declining GDP is an intellectually dishonest palter - something that's technically true, but presented in a deliberately misleading way to invite an audience to draw a wrong conclusion. The Ivory Coast had a horrific civil war: *of course* its GDP took a nose dive. It nose dived b/c the country was in bloody anarchy for years during the civil war, not because of the CFA Franc, which is what this vid invites the audience to assume.

As much as I think this video is right, there is a weakness in the argument. Both monetary unions include a country that is not a former French colony. Both chose to join the system well after independence. It would be useful to know why they joined. It might give a counter argument, or more nuance, or better explanation of why this odd system has lasted so long.

Ho Chi Minh once said: Nothing is more precious than independence and liberty. Trust me this one never gets old

This aged well

Dumb clickbait title. France doesn't 'own' these independent countries any more than countries whose currency is tied to the US dollar are 'owned' by the US.

Thank you for talking about the topic. As an African myself, I would have appreciated it if your video had been more thoroughly researched though. What does this graph at 6:19 represent? It seems that you are confusing money, currency with exchange reserves, and there's another mistake at 10:17. Typically, the OECD's statistical focus is on its member countries, so I have doubts that these graphs are from the OECD. According to the World Bank, Gabon's GdP per capita in 2022 was $8,017 = 5.4 million FCFA. Your table is referring to something different altogether.

Just when I join the fight...boom, the world starts talking about it. I guess I'm a goodluck charm😅. From Cameroon, thanks to all those assisting and supporting African sovereignty.

I live for the one liners at the beginning and end of these videos.

Mali no longer recognises French as an official language.

Flawless intro!!! From tanks to banks!!

"There's nothing more agreeable than peace with the status quo, yet nothing more corrupting" - Sheerian of CaspianReport

I think it's important to note though that France no longer gets a majority of its uranium from Africa, and has since diversified its security of energy

Your video keeps making the same mistake. Although Equatorial Guinea uses the CFA Franc, it was a Spanish colony until 1975. It would have been interesting to understand why they chose to adopt it, since they had their own currency before

Why is Guinea-Bissau on the list with the CFA currency ? It was a Portuguese colony years ago . How did it come to be grouped with the former French colonies ?

Wow the history of benevolent western democracy.

Anyway you could give sources ? I feel some of this stuff is taken out of context and is implied not directly stated or known

When Gaddafi said that he wanted to unite Africa under one Currency, everyone lost their minds...