Façade of the Colonial School building on avenue de l'Observatoire in Paris
TheColonial School (French:École coloniale, also known colloquially asla Colo) was a French public higher education institution orgrande école, created in Paris in 1889 to provide training for public servants and administrators of theFrench colonial empire. It also was a center for research ingeography,anthropology,ethnology and other scientific endeavors with a focus on French-administered territories.[1]
As France's overseas possessions changed and shrank, the school was restructured and renamed on several occasions: in 1934 asÉcole nationale de la France d'outre-mer (ENFOM, "National School of Overseas France"), in 1959 asInstitut des hautes études d'Outre-Mer (IHEOM, "Institute of Higher Overseas Studies"), and in 1966 asInstitut international d’administration publique (IIAP, "International Institute of Public Administration"). It had students from bothMetropolitan France and itsoverseas possessions and colonies. Its latest incarnation, the IIAP, was sometimes referred to as "the foreigners' ENA" with reference to France'sÉcole nationale d'administration,[2] and was eventually merged into ENA in 2002.
Auguste Pavie (third from left, standing) and Pierre Lefèvre-Pontalis in 1893 with Cambodian interpreters trained at the École coloniale.
In 1885, explorer and administratorAuguste Pavie created a training program for native employees of thetelegraph service inFrench Cambodia, which took the name ofmission cambodgienne ("Cambodian mission"). This was succeeded in 1889 by the Colonial School as a fully-fledged establishment for the professional education of colonial services staff. Its creation, supported byState CouncillorPaul Dislère [fr], was the first successful effort to create a permanent establishment specifically for the training of French civil servants, thus prefiguring both ENA and theFrench National School for the Judiciary.[3]: 273
African students were admitted from 1892 alongside the Cambodian class, and soon later, students from Metropolitan France as well.[3]
The school's building inParis, on 2 avenue de l'Observatoire near theJardin du Luxembourg, was designed by architectMaurice Yvon [de] and built from 1895 to 1911.[4] The Colonial School moved there in 1896 after having been located during its first few years on rue Jacob.[3]: 272
The building was successively the seat of ENFOM, IHEOM, and IIAP including after the latter's absorption by ENA in 2002. Some of the building's decoration evoking colonial glories was deemed inappropriate and removed in the 1970s.[2]
In 2007,Sciences Po acquired ENA's Parisian campus on therue de l'Université, and ENA made the Colonial School building its sole Parisian location at the end of that year. On 1 January 2022, ENA was in turn replaced by theInstitut national du service public, which kept the Colonial School building as its Paris campus.
Main portal on avenue de l'Observatoire
Ceramic detail displaying the date 1889 as reference to the school's creation
Corner with rue Auguste Comte, with adjacentLycée Montaigne in the background
Main courtyard
Library with painted ceiling by Claude Bourgonnier
^Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue, Jacob Tatsitsa, François Gèze, Ambroise Kom, Achille Mbembe et Odile Tobner (4 October 2011)."La guerre coloniale du Cameroun a bien eu lieu".Le Monde. Retrieved6 October 2011.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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