The French Colonial Mind

by Thomas, Martin

• ISBN13: 9780803220935
• ISBN10: 0803220936
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

What made France into an imperialist nation, ruler of a global empire with millions of dependent subjects overseas? Historians have sought answers to this question in the nation's political situation at home and abroad, its socioeconomic circumstances, and its international ambitions. But all these motivating factors depended on other, less tangible forces, namely, the prevailing attitudes of the day and their influence among those charged with acquiring or administering a colonial empire. The French Colonial Mindexplores these mind-sets to illuminate the nature of French imperialism. The first of two linked volumes, this book brings together fifteen leading scholars of French colonial history to investigate the origins and outcomes of imperialist ideas among France's most influential "empire-makers." Considering French colonial experiences in Africa and Southeast Asia, the authors identify the processes that made Frenchmen and women into ardent imperialists. By focusing on attitudes, presumptions, and prejudices, these essays connect the derivation of ideas about empire, colonized peoples, and concepts of civilization with the forms and practices of French imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors to The French Colonial Mindplace the formation and the derivation of colonialist thinking at the heart of this history of imperialism.

Author Biography

Martin Thomas is a professor of colonial history at Exeter University. He is the author of several books, including The French Empire Between the Wars: Imperialism, Politics, and Society and Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 1914.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: Mapping the French Colonial Mind	p. xi
Colonial Encounters and Imaginings of Empire
Reflections on the French Colonial Mind	p. 3
Intellectuals for Empire? The Imperial Training of Félicien Challaye, 1899-1914	p. 26
Colonial Minds and African Witchcraft: Interpretations of Murder as Seen in Cases from French West Africa in the Interwar Era	p. 49
The Colonial Cosmology of Fernand Braudel	p. 72
Mental Maps of Modernity in Colonial Indochina during World War II: Mobilizing Sport to Combat Threats to French Rule	p. 96
Language, Culture, and Communities of the Colonial Mind
Anticlericalism, French Language Policy, and the Conflicted Colonial Mind in Cameroon, 1923-1939	p. 121
Information and Intelligence Collection among Imperial Subjects Abroad: The Case of Syrians and Lebanese in Latin America, 1915-1930	p. 144
Religious Rivalry and Cultural Policymaking in Lebanon under the French Mandate	p. 168
France's Arabic Educational Reforms in Algeria during the Colonial Era: Language Instruction in Colonial and Anticolonial Minds before and after Algerian Independence	p. 194
Administrators and the Colonial Mind after World War II
Thinking Like an Empire: Governor Henri Laurentie and Postwar Plans for the Late Colonial French "Empire-State"	p. 219
Recycling Empire: French Colonial Administrators at the Heart of European Development Policy	p. 251
Friend or Foe? Competing Visions of Empire in French West Africa in the Run-up to Independence	p. 275
Thinking between Metropole and Colony: The French Republic, "Exceptional Promotion," and the "Integration" of Algerians, 1955-1962	p. 298
Rigged Elections? Democracy and Manipulation in the Late Colonial State in French West Africa and Togo, 1944-1958	p. 24
List of Contributors	p. 347
Index	p. 351
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.