page_title: Joseph Gallieni
section_title: Colonial Service
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Gallieni / Colonial Service
caption_attribution_description: English: Frieze of Gallieni arriving in Antananarivo Madagascar, located outside the Rova of Antananarivo
context_page_description: Joseph Simon Gallieni was a French soldier, active for most of his career as a military commander and administrator in the French colonies. Gallieni is infamous in Madagascar as the French military leader who exiled Queen Ranavalona III and abolished the 350-year-old monarchy on the island.
  He was recalled from retirement at the outbreak of the First World War. As Military Governor of Paris he played an important role in the First Battle of the Marne, when Maunoury's Sixth Army, which was under his command, attacked the German west flank. A small portion of its strength was rushed to the front in commandeered Paris taxicabs.
  From October 1915 he served as Minister of War, resigning from that post in March 1916 after criticizing the performance of the French Commander-in-Chief, Joseph Joffre, during the German attack on Verdun. He was made Marshal of France posthumously in 1921.
context_section_description: He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1873. His colonial career began in 1876 in Senegal. He was promoted to Captain in 1878. He led an expedition to the upper Niger. He also served in Reunion and Martinique. In 1886, he was appointed governor of the French Sudan, during which time he successfully quelled a rebellion by Sudanese insurgents under Mahmadu Lamine. He was outstanding at colonial penetration without open hostilities in West Africa in 1880 and 1886-8.
  In 1888 he was appointed to the War College. In 1892-6 he served as a colonel in French Indochina commanding the second military division of the territory in Tonkin. In 1894 he led successful French action against the nationalist leader Đề Thám, but further military action was overruled by colonial administrators after Đề Thám was accorded a local fiefdom.
  In 1896 he was promoted to General and made Governor of Madagascar, then a new French possession, where the French had just been defeated, with 4,613 soldiers dying of disease. He stayed in Madagascar with one brief interruption until 1905; his future commander Joseph Joffre served under him there. In August 1896 Gallieni reorganised French forces, captured and executed several rebel leaders. Early in 1897 he abolished the Malagasy monarchy and exiled Queen Ranavalona to Reunion. Gallieni practised the tache d’huile (the "oil spot" method, which continues to influence counterinsurgency theory to this day) and politique des races (literally, racial policy; i.e., eliminating the racial hierarchy that had prevailed and suppressing tribes that resisted French rule). Initially military, his role became more administrative, building roads, a railway, markets, medical services and schools.
  In 1905 Gallieni defended the code de l’indigenat (the right of French officials to mete out summary punishment, including corporal punishment and confiscation of property, to individuals and to entire villages), as it administered punishment more arbitrarily and swiftly than would be possible under due legal process.
caption: Frieze of Gallieni near the Rova of Antananarivo in Madagascar
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