"By the sea, for the fatherland". The maritime leagues in France under the Third Republic

In the aftermath of the Fachoda disaster, the various actors in the world of the military and merchant navy joined forces to found a maritime league in February 1899, in imitation of the British, Italian and German maritime leagues. After a difficult start, despite institutional and political support, the French Maritime League met with public enthusiasm and, without reaching the records of the German Naval League, had several thousand members on the eve of the war. After a period of sluggishness following the declaration of war, it resumed its activity from 1917 and experienced a growth that enabled it to attract more than one hundred thousand members after the victory. A real mass organization in the 1920s and 1930s, it merged with the French Colonial League in 1921 to give birth to the Maritime and Colonial League, which then benefited from the craze for imperial issues. If its success was largely due to its support of maritime institutions, for which it appeared to be a very complaisant auxiliary, it was also linked to the effectiveness of a propaganda that was as skillful as it was prolific, allowing it to concentrate the attention of the public and the mainstream press.