Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis highly readable and meticulously documented study is the first to offer an analysis of French perspectives on a pivotal event in Indian history: the widespread uprisings of 1857–58, which the British imperial establishment termed the ‘Indian Mutiny’. Examining how the events were represented across a range of texts, it charts how French writers used a serious threat to the empire of France’s frère ennemi to reflect upon French conceptualizations of colonialism. By exploring how the eighteenth-century ‘loss’ of French influence in India could be deployed during subsequent periods of colonial expansion, the monograph significantly augments scholarship on a period until recently dismissed in the historiography of the French empires as a lapse in activity between two more significant waves of expansion, the first under the Ancien Régime and the second under the Third Republic. The French Colonial Imagination: Writing the Indian Uprisings, 1858-1859, from Second Empire to Third offers valuable insights into French and British encounters with India in the nineteenth century, into imperial rivalries, and into colonial discourses more generally. It should appeal not only to those interested in French expansion but also to all scholars of nineteenth-century European imperialisms. -- Kate Marsh, University of Liverpool
Carrying the inquiry into a barely studied field—the effect of France-England rivalry in the making of French colonial civilizing mission—Nicola Frith provides a new reading of French republican colonialism. She offers an invaluable resource for academics and students of European colonialism. -- Françoise Vergès, Goldsmiths College
Table of ContentsTable of Contents Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Beyond the Binary—Triangulating Colonial Discourse 2. A War of Words: The Politics of Nomenclature 3. Villains and Heroes: Ventriloquizing the "Revolutionary' 4. Massacring the Myth: Telling Tales of Revenge 5. Compensating for l'Inde perdue: France's "Civilizing Mission" Conclusion: From Empire to Republic Glossary Bibliography Index About the Author
