Add to ORKGThe consequences on international trade of colonial rule have received anincreasing attention. This paper investigates the effect of independence on trade with a focus on former French colonies. Thanks to an original dataset including data on pre-independence bilateral trade for former French colonies, we obtain more accurate results on the effect of independence on bilateral trade patterns. We show that that independence reduces trade (imports andexports) with the former metropole and that this effect is mainly driven byformer French colonies. We also show that, after independence, trade (importsand exports) of all former colonies increase with the rest of the world (othercountries not belonging to the same empire)