page_title: Troupes de marine
section_title: Transformation to Troupes Coloniales
hierarchical_section_title: Troupes de marine / History / Transformation to Troupes Coloniales
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: casque des troupes coloniale.
context_page_description: The Troupes de marine is a subdivision of the French Army that includes several specialities: infantry, artillery, armoured, airborne, engineering and transmissions.
  Despite its name, it forms part of the Army, not the Navy. The TDM has gradually become professionalized since 1970.
context_section_description: In 1890 the Ministry of Colonies was separated from that of the Ministère de la Marine. This raised the question of to which authority the troupes de Marine, who only now served in the colonies, should be responsible. By a decree dated July 7, 1900 the renamed troops were placed under the Département de la Guerre and were thus rebadged, now as part of the French Army, under one name - the Troupes coloniales, retaining the anchor badge as a reminder of their naval heritage.
  The Troupes colonials were composed of two distinct corps. One was the colonial forces in metropolitan France, composed of Europeans who had voluntarily enlisted for successive service engagements of five years duration. These regulars (as opposed to conscripts) were assigned in small contingents to undertake tours of duty in the various French colonies outside North Africa. There they served either in blanches (all white) units, or were employed as officers and NCOs in the recruitment, training and leadership of locally recruited indigenous troops (tirailleurs, cipayes etc.). The proportion of European to "native" colonial troops were progressively reduced as additional locally recruited units were created during the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries.
  One problem of this system was the differences between the training and equipment required for colonial and European warfare. Service conditions in turn would differ between the various colonial territories in Africa and South East Asia. The two types of colonial troupes were however successfully employed in World War I and World War II, as well as the Indochina War and the Algerian War.
  The Construction Service of the marine artillery (which designed and engineered the naval artillery guns in the metropolitan arsenals), became an integral part of the colonial artillery following the reorganisation of 1900.  In 1909 those colonial artillery officers who specialised in artillery design and manufacture work were transferred into the newly created "Engineers of Naval Artillery"; a newly created corps of the French Navy which subsequently merged with the Naval Engineer Corps (responsible for the construction of naval ships) during the Second World War.
  In 1905, the strength of the Troupes coloniales stationed in (the 19 military districts of metropolitan) France was marked at 2,123 officers and 26,581 other ranks. The strength maintained in the colonies amounts to 1,743 officers, 21,516 European troops and 47,868 native soldiers.
caption: Helmet of Colonial Troupes.
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