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This article explores the reasons that pronatalists in the Third Republic aligned the resolution of the depopulation crisis with the fate of settler colonialism. Convinced that the French population grew more quickly when far away from the metropole, pronatalists presented colonial emigration and settlement as means by which to strengthen the French race. The demographic importance that pronatalists attached to imperialism also led them to study colonial initiatives in population growth, most notably those of Governor- General Joseph-Simon Gallieni in Madagascar. Gallieni's belief that a large indigenous labor force was essential to preparing the colony for more extensive French settlement led him to introduce a series of reforms intended to increase the colony's Merina population. Though Gallieni's reforms reflected racial and gender assumptions specific to Madagascar, pronatalists in France considered them applicable to their own efforts to address the gendered causes of French racial decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]