The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850-1900 - by Christina B Carroll (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The Politics of Imperial Memory in France examines the shifting role played by the memory of continental-and especially Napoleonic-imperial models in the contested construction of France's expansive "new" colonial empire during the second half of the nineteenth century"--

Book Synopsis

By highlighting the connections between domestic political struggles and overseas imperial structures, The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850-1900 explains how and why French Republicans embraced colonial conquest as a central part of their political platform. Christina B. Carroll explores the meaning and value of empire in late-nineteenth-century France, arguing that ongoing disputes about the French state's political organization intersected with racialized beliefs about European superiority over colonial others in French imperial thought.
For much of this period, French writers and politicians did not always differentiate between continental and colonial empire. By employing a range of sources--from newspapers and pamphlets to textbooks and novels--Carroll demonstrates that the memory of older continental imperial models shaped French understandings of, and justifications for, their new colonial empire. She shows that the slow identification of the two types of empire emerged due to a politicized campaign led by colonial advocates who sought to defend overseas expansion against their opponents. This new model of colonial empire was shaped by a complicated set of influences, including political conflict, the legacy of both Napoleons, international competition, racial science, and French experiences in the colonies.
The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850-1900 skillfully weaves together knowledge from its wide-ranging source base to articulate how the meaning and history of empire became deeply intertwined with the meaning and history of the French nation.

Review Quotes

It is a very successful and stimulating study, and should be a jumping-off point for future work on France and beyond

-- "Oxford French history"

This omission in no way detracts from Carroll's attractive thesis. If anything, it demonstrates the multi-valent character of empire that Carroll has posited and suggests other possible contexts in which debates over empire could be imagined.

-- "History: Reviews of New Books"

By rooting her study in Napoleon III's Second Empire, Carroll contributes to a growing body of scholarship that is demonstrating how much of what seemed to be achieved during the Third Republic, mainly political and social developments, but also overseas imperial expansion, in fact dated to the Second Empire, if not earlier. The book is an exemplary work of deeply contextualized intellectual history that demonstrates how crucial contests over meaning and memory are for understanding the French nation in the nineteenth century.

--Naomi J. Andrews "H-France Forum"

Carroll has written an engrossing and provocative book that raises questions not just about the way imperial memory played out during the second half of the nineteenth century, but also about how contested memory evolves over time. As such, it will be stimulating to scholars and useful to students interested in the various political and ideological currents that developed in France about its post-revolutionary empire.

--Patricia M.E. Lorcin "H-France Forum"

In her excellent, well-constructed book The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850-1900, Christina Carroll argues that the ways commentators of all ideological stripes remembered key practices and discourses of the Second Empire shaped French ideas about colonialism and empire for the rest of the nineteenth century.

--Edward Berenson "H-France Forum"

The genius of Christina Carroll's new book, The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850-1900, is that she takes this multiplicity and historicity of republicanism seriously and then performs the careful work of intellectual history necessary to demonstrate that multiplicity. Moving beyond an abstract republican imperialism "in an ideological vacuum," Carroll undertakes a deep empirical excavation of Napoleonic and Republican discourses around "empire." In close readings of numerous Second Empire and Third Republic journalists, pamphleteers, politicians, and public intellectuals, Carroll compellingly shows just how "contested" the concept of empire was in nineteenth-century France.

--Joseph W. Peterson "H-France Forum"

This provocative, deeply researched study in intellectual history and cultural memory is a challenging and ambitious project--an intellectual history that traces a multiplicity of overlapping influences, contradictory narratives, and shifting ideologies circling around critical concepts which are themselves fluid and ambivalent.

-- "Nineteenth Century French Studies"

The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850-1900 skillfully weaves together knowledge from its wide-ranging source base to articulate how the meaning and history of empire became deeply intertwined with the meaning and history of the French nation.

-- "New Books Network"

About the Author

Christina B. Carroll is Assistant Professor of History at Kalamazoo College. She has published articles in French Historical Studies, French Politics, Culture, and Society, and the Journal of the Western Society for French History.