French Colonial Empire and the Popular Front


Book Description

In revisiting the Popular Front sixty years on, this book explores the link between metropolitan France and the empire at a defining moment in their history.




The French empire between the wars


Book Description

By considering the distinctiveness of the inter-war years as a discrete period of colonial change, this book addresses several larger issues, such as tracing the origins of decolonization in the rise of colonial nationalism, and a re-assessment of the impact of inter-war colonial rebellions in Africa, Syria and Indochina. The book also connects French theories of colonial governance to the lived experience of colonial rule in a period scarred by war and economic dislocation.




Colonial Culture in France since the Revolution


Book Description

This landmark collection by an international group of scholars and public intellectuals represents a major reassessment of French colonial culture and how it continues to inform thinking about history, memory, and identity. This reexamination of French colonial culture, provides the basis for a revised understanding of its cultural, political, and social legacy and its lasting impact on postcolonial immigration, the treatment of ethnic minorities, and national identity.




The Colonial Legacy in France


Book Description

Debates about the legacy of colonialism in France are not new, but they have taken on new urgency in the wake of recent terrorist attacks. Responding to acts of religious and racial violence in 2005, 2010, and 2015 and beyond, the essays in this volume pit French ideals against government-sponsored revisionist decrees that have exacerbated tensions, complicated the process of establishing and recording national memory, and triggered divisive debates on what it means to identify as French. As they document the checkered legacy of French colonialism, the contributors raise questions about France and the contemporary role of Islam, the banlieues, immigration, race, history, pedagogy, and the future of the Republic. This innovative volume reconsiders the cultural, economic, political, and social realities facing global French citizens today and includes contributions by Achille Mbembe, Benjamin Stora, Françoise Vergès, Alec Hargreaves, Elsa Dorlin, and Alain Mabanckou, among others.




Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture


Book Description

The authors highlight the new symbolic forces put in play by technologies of the illustrated press and the sound film - technologies that converged with efforts among writers, artists, and other intellectuals to respond to the crises of the decade.




The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of the Ends of Empire offers the most comprehensive treatment of the causes, course, and consequences of the collapse of empires in the twentieth century. The volume's contributors convey the global reach of decolonization, analysing the ways in which European, Asian, and African empires disintegrated over the past century.




French Colonialism Unmasked


Book Description

Before the Vichy regime, there was ostensibly only one France and one form of colonialism for French West Africa (FWA). World War II and the division of France into two ideological camps, each asking for legitimacy from the colonized, opened for Africans numerous unprecedented options. French Colonialism Unmasked analyzes three dramatic years in the history of FWA, from 1940 to 1943, in which the Vichy regime tried to impose the ideology of the National Revolution in the region. Ruth Ginio shows how this was a watershed period in the history of the region by providing an in-depth examination of the Vichy colonial visions and practices in fwa. She describes the intriguing encounters between the colonial regime and African society along with the responses of different sectors in the African population to the Vichy policy. Although French Colonialism Unmasked focuses on one region within the French Empire, it has relevance to French colonial history in general by providing one of the missing pieces in research on Vichy colonialism. Ruth Ginio is a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of articles in International Journal of African Historical Studies, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, Cahiers d'etudes africaines, and several other journals.




Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa


Book Description

Looking at decolonization in the conditional tense, this volume teases out the complex and uncertain ends of British and French empire in Africa during the period of ‘late colonial shift’ after 1945. Rather than view decolonization as an inevitable process, the contributors together explore the crucial historical moments in which change was negotiated, compromises were made, and debates were staged. Three core themes guide the analysis: development, contingency and entanglement. The chapters consider the ways in which decolonization was governed and moderated by concerns about development and profit. A complementary focus on contingency allows deeper consideration of how colonial powers planned for ‘colonial futures’, and how divergent voices greeted the end of empire. Thinking about entanglements likewise stresses both the connections that existed between the British and French empires in Africa, and those that endured beyond the formal transfer of power.




A Velvet Empire


Book Description

How France's elites used soft power to pursue their imperial ambitions in the nineteenth century After Napoleon's downfall in 1815, France embraced a mostly informal style of empire, one that emphasized economic and cultural influence rather than military conquest. A Velvet Empire is a global history of French imperialism in the nineteenth century, providing new insights into the mechanisms of imperial collaboration that extended France's power from the Middle East to Latin America and ushered in the modern age of globalization. David Todd shows how French elites pursued a cunning strategy of imperial expansion in which conspicuous commodities such as champagne and silk textiles, together with loans to client states, contributed to a global campaign of seduction. French imperialism was no less brutal than that of the British. But while Britain widened its imperial reach through settler colonialism and the acquisition of far-flung territories, France built a "velvet" empire backed by frequent military interventions and a broadening extraterritorial jurisdiction. Todd demonstrates how France drew vast benefits from these asymmetric, imperial-like relations until a succession of setbacks around the world brought about their unravelling in the 1870s. A Velvet Empire sheds light on France's neglected contribution to the conservative reinvention of modernity and offers a new interpretation of the resurgence of French colonialism on a global scale after 1880. This panoramic book also highlights the crucial role of collaboration among European empires during this period—including archrivals Britain and France—and cooperation with indigenous elites in facilitating imperial expansion and the globalization of capitalism.




France's Colonial Legacies


Book Description

In an era of commemoration, France's Colonial Legacies contributes to the debates taking place in France about the place of empire in the contemporary life of the nation, debates that have been underway since the 1990s and that now reach across public life and society with manifestations in the French parliament, media and universities. France's empire and the gradual process of its loss is one of the defining narratives of the contemporary nation, contributing to the construction of its image both on the international stage and at home. While certain intellectuals present the imperial period as an historical irrelevance that ended in the years following the Second World War, the contested legacies of France's colonies continue to influence the development of French society in the view of scholars of the postcolonial. This volume surveys the memorial practices and discourses that are played out in a range of arenas, drawing on the expertise of researchers working in the fields of politics, media, cultural studies, literature and film to offer a wide-ranging picture of remembrance in contemporary France. Introduction: The Postcolonial Nation, Fiona Barclay Part One: Narrative Gaps 1. Amnesia about Anglophone Africa: France’s Rhodesian mind-set, its manifestations and its legacies, 1947–58, Joanna Warson 2. From ‘écrivains coloniaux’ to écrivains de ‘langue française’: strata of un/acknowledged memories, Gabrielle Parker Part Two: The Algerian War, Fifty Years On 3. Conflicting memories: modernisation, colonialism and the Algerian war appelés in Cinq colonnes à la une, Iain Mossman 4. Derrida’s virtual space of spectrality: cinematic haunting and the law in Mon Colonel (Herbiet, 2006), Fiona Barclay 5. ‘Le devoir de mémoire’: the poetics and politics of cultural memory in Assia Djebar’s Le Blanc de l’Algérie, Jennifer Mullen 6. (Un)packing the suitcases: postcolonial memory and iconography, William Kidd Part Three: The Transnational Family 7. Interrogating the transnational family: memory, identity and cultural bilingualism in Sous la clarté de la lune (Traoré, 2004), Zélie Asava 8. Continuity and discontinuity in the family: looking beyond the post-colonial in Il y a longtemps que je t’aime (Claudel, 2008), Fiona Handyside Part Four: Contemporary Commemorations 9. Anti-racism, republicanism and the Sarkozy years: SOS Racisme and the Mouvement des Indigènes de la République, Thomas Martin 10. Playing out the postcolonial: football and commemoration, Cathal Kilcline 11. Crime and penitence in slavery commemoration: from political controversy to the politics of performance, Nicola Frith