This volume explores how France’s ‘modernising mission’ unfolded during the post-war period and its reverberations in the decades after empire. In the aftermath of the Second World War, France sought to reinvent its empire by transforming the traditional ‘civilising mission’ into a ‘modernising mission’. Henceforth, French claims to rule would be based on extending citizenship rights and the promise of economic development and welfare within a ‘Greater France’. In the face of rising anti-colonial mobilization and a new international order, redefining the terms that bound colonised peoples and territories to the metropole was a strategic necessity but also a dynamic which Paris struggled to control. The language of reform and equality was seized upon locally to make claims on metropolitan resources and wrest away the political initiative. Intertwined with coercion and violence, the struggle to define what ‘modernisation’ would mean for colonised societies was a key factor in the wider process of decolonisation. Contributions by leading specialists extend geographically from Africa to the Pacific and to metropolitan France itself, examining a range of topics including education policy, colonial knowledge production, rural development and slum clearance.

A collection of thirteen essays by leading scholars in the field, In God's Empire examines the complex ways in which the spread of Christianity by French men and women shaped local communities, French national prowess, and global politics in the two centuries following the French Revolution. More than a story of religious proselytism, missionary activity was an essential feature of French contact and interaction with local populations. In many parts of the world, missionaries were the first French men and women to work and live among indigenous societies. For all the celebration of France's secular "civilizing mission," it was more often than not religious workers who actually fulfilled the daily tasks of running schools, hospitals, and orphanages. While their work was often tied to small villages, missionaries' interactions had geopolitical implications. Focusing on many regions--from the Ottoman Empire and the United States to Indochina and the Pacific Ocean--this book explores how France used missionaries' long connections with local communities as a means of political influence and justification for colonial expansion. In God's Empire offers readers both an overview of the major historical dimensions of the French evangelical enterprise, as well as an introduction to the theoretical and methodological challenges of placing French missionary work within the context of European, colonial, and religious history.

" Conklin brilliantly traces the interconnections and linkages between the three critical sites of political, cultural, and ideological interchange in France' s civilizing mission in Africa: the imperial center, the colonial edifice sur place in West Africa, and the Africans themselves. This is scholarship that will eventually provoke a significant change in the way modern French history is conceived, researched, and written." — Julia Clancy-Smith, University of Arizona

The French Revolution, politics and the modern nation -- French and the civilizing mission -- Paris and magnetic appeal -- France stirs up the melting pot -- France hurtles into the future.

A survey of the latest scholarship on Catholic missions between the 16th and 18th centuries, this collection of fourteen essays by historians from eight countries offers not only a global view of the organization, finances, personnel, and history of Catholic missions to the Americas, Africa, and Asia, but also the complex political, cultural, and religious contexts of the missionary fields. The conquests and colonization of the Americas presented a different stage for the drama of evangelization in contrast to that of Africa and Asia: the inhospitable landscape of Africa, the implacable Islamic societies of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires, and the self-assured regimes of Ming-Qing China, Nguyen dynasty Vietnam, and Tokugawa Japan. Contributors are Tara Alberts, Mark Z. Christensen, Dominique Deslandres, R. Po-chia Hsia, Aliocha Maldavsky, Anne McGinness, Christoph Nebgen, Adina Ruiu, Alan Strathern, M. Antoni J. Üçerler, Fred Vermote, Guillermo Wilde, Christian Windler, and Ines Zupanov.

“This book is an incredibly clear presentation of why the Algerian War mattered, what happened, the key contexts which produced this conflict and those that shaped it, as well as offering a brilliant entry point to teach or demonstrate how historiography works, how historians do history.”- Todd Shepard, Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor of History, John Hopkins University, USA “This is a fantastic book which fills an important gap in the historical scholarship. Natalya Vince has managed the seemingly impossible task of presenting a nuanced history of the Algerian War / Algerian Revolution in clear, concise terms.” - Sarah Frank, Associate Lecturer of History, St Andrews University, UK "This brilliant and beautifully written book achieves the seemingly impossible task of offering a lucid and nuanced guide to the massive body of historical writing on the Algerian war. The book will immediately become essential and indispensable reading not only for students at all levels but also for teachers and historians."- Julian Jackson, Professor of Modern French History, Queen Mary University of London, UK This book provides a new analysis of the contested history of one of the most violent wars of decolonisation of the twentieth century – the Algerian War/ the Algerian Revolution between 1954 and 1962. It brings together an engaging account of its origins, course and legacies with an incisive examination of how interpretations of the conflict have shifted and why it continues to provoke intense debate. Locating the war in a century-long timeframe stretching from 1914 to the present, it multiplies the perspectives from which events can be seen. The pronouncements of politicians are explored alongside the testimony of rural women who provided logistical support for guerrillas in the National Liberation Front. The broader context of decolonisation and the Cold War is considered alongside the experiences of colonised men serving in the French army. Unpacking the historiography of the end of a colonial empire, the rise of anti-colonial nationalism and their post-colonial aftermaths, it provides an accessible insight into how history is written.