Conceived as both a vehicle to national prestige and as a civilizing mission, the second French colonial empire (1830-1962) challenged soldiers, scholars, and administrators to understand societies radically different from their own. The resultant networks of anthropological inquiry, however, did not have this effect. Rather, they opened pathways to political and intellectual independence framed in the language of social science, and in the process upended the colonial political system and reshaped the nature of human inquiry in France. While still unequal, French colonial rule in Africa revealed the durability and strength of non-European modes of thought. In this influential new study, historian Douglas W. Leonard examines the political and intellectual repercussions of French efforts to understand and to dominate colonial Africa through the use of anthropology. From General Louis Faidherbe in the 1840s to politician Jacques Soustelle and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in the 1950s, these French thinkers sowed the seeds of colonial destruction.

Conceived as both a vehicle to national prestige and as a civilizing mission, the second French colonial empire (1830-1962) challenged soldiers, scholars, and administrators to understand societies radically different from their own. The resultant networks of anthropological inquiry, however, did not have this effect. Rather, they opened pathways to political and intellectual independence framed in the language of social science, and in the process upended the colonial political system and reshaped the nature of human inquiry in France. While still unequal, French colonial rule in Africa revealed the durability and strength of non-European modes of thought. In this influential new study, historian Douglas W. Leonard examines the political and intellectual repercussions of French efforts to understand and to dominate colonial Africa through the use of anthropology. From General Louis Faidherbe in the 1840s to politician Jacques Soustelle and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in the 1950s, these French thinkers sowed the seeds of colonial destruction.

Intended for those interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this work looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. It illustrates key themes in modern thinking about Africa's history with a range of historical examples.

Long repressed following the collapse of empire, memories of the French colonial experience have recently gained unprecedented visibility. In popular culture, scholarly research, personal memoirs, public commemorations, and new ethnicities associated with the settlement of postcolonial immigrant minorities, the legacy of colonialism is now more apparent in France than at any time in the past. How is this upsurge of interest in the colonial past to be explained? Does the commemoration of empire necessarily imply glorification or condemnation? To what extent have previously marginalized voices succeeded in making themselves heard in new narratives of empire? While veils of secrecy have been lifted, what taboos still remain and why? These are among the questions addressed by an international team of leading researchers in this interdisciplinary volume, which will interest scholars in a wide range of disciplines including French studies, history, literature, cultural studies, and anthropology.

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.

France experienced a period of crisis following World War I when the relationship between the nation and its colonies became a subject of public debate. The French Imperial Nation-State focuses on two intersecting movements that redefined imperial politics—colonial humanism led by administrative reformers in West Africa and the Paris-based Negritude project, comprising African and Caribbean elites. Gary Wilder develops a sophisticated account of the contradictory character of colonial government and examines the cultural nationalism of Negritude as a multifaceted movement rooted in an alternative black public sphere. He argues that interwar France must be understood as an imperial nation-state—an integrated sociopolitical system that linked a parliamentary republic to an administrative empire. An interdisciplinary study of colonial modernity combining French history, colonial studies, and social theory, The French Imperial Nation-State will compel readers to revise conventional assumptions about the distinctions between republicanism and racism, metropolitan and colonial societies, and national and transnational processes.