Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'French Colonial Empire'

La période du «Grand Siècle» en France voit le développement ambitieux de l'empire français continental d'Amérique du Nord, la Nouvelle-France, autour de sa capitale, la ville de Québec. Dès la première partie de son règne, Louis XIV et son secrétaire d'État à la Marine, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, encouragent avec détermination le développement de la colonie, notamment en la dotant d'institutions solides par l'édit de 1663 pour en faire une province royale et pour encourager un peuplement plus important.En 1672, le roi nomme Louis de Buade, comte de Frontenac et de Palluau (1622-1698), «gouverneur et lieutenant-général pour le roi» en Nouvelle-France. Ce gentilhomme, né en 1622 à Saint-Germain-en-Laye où son père et son grand-père étaient gouverneurs du château, appartient à une ancienne famille de la noblesse d'épée. Dans sa jeunesse, Frontenac a fréquemment combattu dans les armées du roi. Toute sa vie publique, en plus d'être celle d'un important administrateur du roi, est également le reflet de l'évolution sociale de la noblesse d'épée française confrontée aux défis du siècle de Louis XIV.Le rôle du gouverneur Frontenac en Amérique du Nord est de renforcer la présence française, notamment menacée par les Anglais et affaiblie par une insuffisance démographique. Il doit aussi contrôler le commerce de traite de fourrures et nouer des relations encore plus étroites avec les Amérindiens en veillant à rester en paix avec eux. Cependant, en 1682, après dix ans passés à Québec, son comportement jugé autoritaire, et notamment ses démêlés avec les autres administrateurs de la Nouvelle-France, en particulier avec l'intendant Jacques Duchesneau ainsi qu'avec les autorités religieuses, provoquent son rappel en France.En 1689, Frontenac est pourtant nommé par le roi une seconde fois gouverneur de la Nouvelle-France et il revient en Amérique du Nord dans le contexte de la guerre de la Ligue d'Augsbourg. Malgré des moyens limités octroyés par la métropole, il parvient à repousser victorieusement «par la bouche de ses canons et à coups de fusils» une importante attaque anglaise menée par le général Phips sur Québec à l'automne 1690, ce qui le fait passer à la postérité. Son deuxième mandat est ensuite largement consacré à créer les conditions d'une paix durable avec les Iroquois. Frontenac meurt finalement en 1698 à Québec. À cette période, la Nouvelle-France atteint sa plus grande expansion territoriale quand est signée avec trente-neuf nations amérindiennes la Grande Paix de Montréal en août 1701, que Frontenac a minutieusement contribué à préparer.Cette thèse de doctorat se donne pour objectif de démontrer dans quelle mesure la période des deux gouvernements de Frontenac correspond à l'apogée de la Nouvelle-France
The era of the Grand Siècle in France was the period of the ambitious development of the continental French empire in North America, in New France, around its capital, Québec City. From the very beginning of his reign, Louis XIV and his Secretary of State for the Navy, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, determinedly encouraged the expansion of the colony, providing it with solid institutions such as the edict of 1663 which made it a royal province and encouraged settlers to move in.In 1672, the king named Louis de Buade, Count of Frontenac and Palluau (1622-1698), “governor and lieutenant-general for the king” in New France. This gentleman, born in 1622 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye where his father and grandfather were governors of the castle, belonged to an ancient family of the nobility of the sword. In his youth, Frontenac frequently fought in the king's armies. His entire public life, in addition to being that of an important administrator of the king, is also a reflection of the social evolution of the French nobility of the sword faced with the challenges of the century of Louis XIV.The role of Governor Frontenac in North America was to strengthen the French presence, particularly threatened by the English and weakened by demographic deficit. He also had to control the fur trade and establish even closer relations with the Native Americans while maintaining the peace with them. However, in 1682, after ten years in Québec City, his authoritarian behavior, and especially his problems with the other administrators of New France, namely the intendant Jacques Duchesneau as well with the religious authorities, provoked his recall to France.And yet, seven years later, in 1689, Frontenac was appointed governor of New France by the king for the second time and returned to North America in the context of the Nine Years' war. Despite limited resources granted by the French homeland, he managed to victoriously repel "by the mouth of his cannons and muskets" a major English attack led by General Phips on Québec City in the fall of 1690, a victory which made him go down in history. His second term was then largely devoted to creating the conditions for a lasting peace with the Iroquois. Frontenac finally died in 1698 in Québec City. It was during that period that New France reached its greatest territorial expansion when the Great Peace of Montréal was signed with thirty-nine Amerindian nations in August 1701, an agreement Frontenac had carefully helped to prepare.This doctoral thesis aims to demonstrate that New France reached its heyday during the time Frontenac was governor of Canada

Cette thèse cherche à montrer comment au Vietnam, l’architecture et l’urbanisme relèvent de la rencontre de deux cultures, celle du colonisateur et celle du colonisé. L’enjeu est de mettre en lumière la diversité des échanges culturels – expressions et significations – à travers le bâti, en procédant à une étude critique de l’idée selon laquelle l’architecture et l’urbanisme seraient uniquement des instruments du pouvoir colonial. Nous avons cherché à identifier les conditions de production et d’utilisation du bâti pour appréhender la complexité et la diversité des phénomènes à l’œuvre. Nous avons privilégié trois approches. La première concerne l’étude des acteurs et de la circulation des savoirs qui nous permet d’envisager les différents discours et théories qui ont existé autour de l’architecture métissée, ainsi que leur réception. La seconde prend en considération les politiques de gestion de l’espace urbain en s’attachant à mettre en valeur les négociations et les résistances au projet d’encadrement colonial. Enfin le troisième volet se place au niveau de l’articulation des enjeux techniques et sociaux et permet de mettre au jour les mécanismes constitutifs de cette architecture interculturelle
This dissertation aims to demonstrate how the history of architecture and town planning in Vietnam became enmeshed in the encounter of two cultures: that of the colonized and that of the colonizer. The goal is to first examine the diversity of cultural exchanges – both their manifestations and meanings – through the built environment, and then provide a critique of the idea equating architecture and colonial power. In order to consider the diversity and the complexity of the phenomenon at work, this dissertation identifies the conditions of production and use of the built environment. This study privileges three approaches. The first considers the actors and the circulation of knowledge so as to explore the construction and the reception of the different discourses and theories that enveloped hybrid architecture. The second approach takes into account the politics of administrating urban space by emphasizing the negotiations and the resistance to the colonial project of construction and enclosure. Finally the third part analyzes the articulations between social and technical issues, which reveal the mechanisms constitutive of this intercultural architecture

In this disciplined configurative case-study the effects of imperialistic rule  on the democratization of the colonies Ghana (Gold Coast) and Senegal during their colonization. The positive effects of imperialism will be represented by the liberal thinker J.S. Mill. To measure the positive outcome have this study created a model of analysis in which the operationalization of Mill’s arguments will be represented. The indicators will be applied to the history of Senegal and Ghana, from acquisition of the territory to their independence. What this study found was that both Senegal and Ghana had experienced a democratization process, but with the Ghahanian democratization being more inclusive and more encompassing. This was due to the British allowing self-governance while the French only allowed democracy in the Four Communes.

While the role of photography in enforcing hegemonic ideologies has been amply studied, this thesis addresses the under-researched topic of how photography undermined dominant narratives in specific historical circumstances. I argue that, in the later part of the long nineteenth century, photographs were used to represent the natural world in contexts where their functions were uncertain and their capacities not clearly defined, and that these hesitations allowed for the expression of resistances to dominant social attitudes towards nature. I analyse how these divergences were articulated through three independent case studies, each addressing a corpus of photographs which has been marginalised in scholarly discourse. The case studies all concern photographs of vegetation. The first one discusses photographs produced around Fontainebleau during the Second French Empire, commonly understood as auxiliary materials for Barbizon painters, and argues that they were in fact autonomous representations, reflecting marginal modes of experiencing nature which resisted its prevailing construction as spectacle. The second case study examines a photographic series depicting Amazonian vegetation, published between 1900 and 1906, and shows how, in attempting to satisfy conflicting ideological demands, these photographs undermined the hierarchies enforced upon the natural world by colonial science. The third case study analyses photographs from an early twentieth-century environmentalist treatise, and demonstrates how, while the author's discourse seemingly complied with conventional attitudes towards nature, the photographs instituted an ethical stance opposed to early conservation's aesthetic focus and anthropocentrism. Throughout the case studies, I argue that the photographs were consubstantial to the emergence of these resistances; that dissenting representations stemmed from a tension between their producers' lived experience and the ideological frameworks which informed each context; and that this process engendered remarkable formal innovations, which are not usually associated to non-artistic images. I contend that radical renewals of visual expression occur in all representational contexts, as image producers adapt their tools or forge new ones according to circumstances, and that more attention must be paid to such visual innovations outside the field of artistic production.

La milice, dans l’ensemble de l’empire français, s’érige comme une institution coloniale originale, s’éloignant de ces modèles métropolitains, tout en demeurant sous l’influence du pouvoir souverain. Des premiers rassemblements d’hommes armés à une institution fortement ancrée, la milice s’uniformise progressivement dès la fin du XVIIe siècle. Pourtant des résistances locales au pouvoir unificateur s’enracinent dans des contextes particuliers notamment dans la constitution des sociétés. D’une institution militaire, en particulier dans les premiers temps de la colonisation, elle élargit ses fonctions, et apparaît à la fin de l’Ancien Régime comme une auxiliaire de la défense, mais surtout comme un acteur central dans la sûreté intérieure, la police des habitants ainsi que des esclaves dans le cadre du quartier. Une large part de la société masculine des colonies sert dans les milices coloniales. Tous les hommes de quinze à cinquante-cinq ans sont soumis à ce service même si quelques exempts évitent ce service, notamment les officiers de justice, favorisant ainsi une délimitation plus nette entre les deux institutions durant le XVIIIe siècle. Les officiers de milice, choisis parmi l’élite locale, constituent un échelon central des sociétés coloniales. Le service des milices s’organise essentiellement autour des revues, exercices et gardes dont les fréquences, très irrégulières, s’espacent au cours de la période. Le poids du service bascule alors sur d’autres groupes par l’intégration et la militarisation des libres de couleur ainsi que des esclaves à la fin de l’Ancien Régime
The militia, throughout the French empire, emerged as a new colonial institution, moving away from these metropolitan models, but under the influence of sovereign power. From the first gatherings of armed men to a strongly established institution, the militia gradually became uniform from the end of the 17th century; although local resistance to unifying power is rooted in particular contexts, notably in the constitution of societies. From a military institution, especially in the early days of colonisation, it broadened its functions, and appeared at the end of the Ancien Régime as an auxiliary to defence, but above all as a central player in internal security, policing the inhabitants as well as the slaves in the quartiers. A large proportion of colonial male society served in colonial militias. All men between the ages of fifteen and fifty-five were subject to this service. A few exempt men avoided service as officers of the law, thus creating a clearer demarcation between the two institutions during the 18th century. Militia officers, chosen from the local elite, constituted a central level of colonial society. The militia service was mainly organized around reviews, exercises and guards, the frequency of which was very irregular and became less frequent over time. The burden of the service then shifted to other groups through the integration and militarisation of free people of colour and slaves at the end of the Ancien Régime

Il n’existe pas, à proprement parler, une histoire des Français de l’étranger. La définition même de ce terme reste floue et connaît de nombreuses variantes selon les auteurs qui se sont penchés sur le sujet ; ces derniers sont d’ailleurs rarement des historiens. Autre constat, le concept de présence française recouvre une multitude de réalités. C’est un terme polysémique qui n’a pas encore reçu, chez les historiens du moins, de définition claire et précise. Pour explorer ces pistes, il a semblé que Hong Kong dans l’entre-deux-guerres était un terrain propice.C’est une parenthèse active sur un territoire aux influences multiples ; la colonie britannique est aux portes de la Chine, voisine de l’Indochine, et elle connaît des développements et des remous nombreux entre 1918 et1941.L’ambition de ce travail est d’assembler les différentes formes de la présence française, souvent étudiées individuellement dans d’autres cadres chronologiques ou géographiques, pour offrir un tableau complet de ce que signifie réellement ce terme et réfléchir aux concepts contemporains de Français de l’étranger et de culture tierce. Au regard des spécificités géographiques et politiques de Hong Kong dans l’entre-deux-guerres, en quoi peut-on dire que la colonie britannique joue un rôle particulier pour la France, et qu’à ce titre, elle est un observatoire privilégié de la vie des Français de l’étranger à cette époque ? Cette interrogation cache évidemment de multiples articulations car la présence française suppose l’existence d’une communauté vivante et hétérogène, mais aussi une implantation purement matérielle et parfois abstraite
Strictly speaking, the History of French people abroad does not exist. The meaning of this term in itself is quite vague and there are lots of variations, depending on the scholars who may have flown over this subject; seldom are they historians. Another significant aspect is that the notion of French presence also covers many different realities. It is a polysemous term which, as yet, has never been given a clear and proper definition yet, at least among historians. In order to explore those tracks, using Hong Kong during interwar period as a search field was thought to be relevant.It is an active parenthesis on a territory animated by multiple influences; the British colony is on China’s doorstep, a neighbour of Indochina, and it has known quite a number of developments and upheavals between 1918and 1941.The purpose of this work is to gather different forms of the French presence, often studied separately and individuallyin other geographical and historic contexts, in order to offer a complete picture of what this concept really means. This is an opportunity to debate on the contemporary notions of fFrench people abroad and Third Culture. Because of the geographical and political specificities of Hong Kong during the interwar period, in what way can we consider that the British colony is playing a particular role for France in the area ? And, on this basis, how can it be considered a privileged observatory of the life of French people abroad at that time? Those questions are obviously hiding many others because French presences suppose the existence of a lively and heterogeneous community, but also a material and sometimes abstract implantation

L’historiographie a souvent négligé la place occupée par les migrants francophones au sein de la jeune république américaine, se bornant à suivre l’itinéraire des exilés politiques les plus célèbres, bannis par la Révolution Française ou la Restauration, ou celui des utopistes rêvant d’instaurer une société nouvelle au Nouveau Monde. Au cœur de la Jeune Amérique confrontée à l’épineux problème de l’esclavage, à l’agonie des empires coloniaux et à la naissance de l’esprit d’entreprise et du capitalisme, ils furent nombreux à tenter la fortune outre atlantique entre 1783 et 1815, établissant dans le corridor créole de puissants liens commerciaux, culturels et religieux entre côte Est, Nouvelle-Orléans, Antilles et espace atlantique. Tel est l’objet de la présente réflexion qui emprunte la voie ouverte par l’histoire atlantique, et propose, en tirant parti de la correspondance et des ressources archivistiques, une écriture novatrice de l’histoire des migrations commerciales francophones entre Pittsburgh et Louisville à l’époque des révolutions atlantiques
Historiography often neglects the part of Francophone migrants in the young American republic, merely following the route of the most famous political exiles banished by the French Revolution and the Restoration, or the Utopians dreaming to establish a new society in the New World. In the Early Republic faced with the thorny problem of slavery, the agony of colonial empires and the birth of entrepreneurship and capitalism, many migrants tried fortune beyond the Atlantic Ocean, between 1783 and 1815, establishing in the “Creole corridor” powerful commercial, cultural and religious ties between east coast, New Orleans, West Indies and Atlantic space. This is the purpose of this discussion that borrows the path opened by the Atlantic history, and proposes, through the study of correspondence and archival resources, an innovative history of francophone business migrations from Pittsburgh to Louisville in the age of the Atlantic Revolutions

L’esercito italiano e la conquista della Catalogna (1808-1811) Uno studio di Military Effectiveness nell’Europa napoleonica Settori scientifico-disciplinari SPS/03 – M-STO/02 La ricerca ha lo scopo di ricostruire e valutare l’effettività militare dell’esercito italiano al servizio di Napoleone I. In primo luogo attraverso un’analisi statistica e strategica della costruzione, e del successivo impiego, dell’istituzione militare del Regno d’Italia durante gli anni della sua esistenza (1805-14); successivamente, è stato scelto un caso di studi particolarmente significativo, come la campagna di Catalogna (1808-11, nel contesto della guerra di Indipendenza spagnola), per poter valutare il contributo operazionale e tattico dei corpi inviati dal governo di Milano e la loro integrazione con l’apparato militare complessivo del Primo Impero. La tesi ha voluto rispondere alla mancanza di studi sul comportamento in guerra dell’esercito italiano e, allo stesso tempo, introdurre nella storiografia militare italiana la metodologia di studi, d’origine anglosassone e ormai di tradizione trentennale, di Military Effectiveness. La ricerca si è primariamente basata, oltre che sulla copiosa memorialistica a stampa italiana e francese, sulla documentazione d’archivio della Secrétairerie d’état impériale (Archives Nationales di Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, Parigi), del Ministère de la Guerre francese (Service historique de la Défence, di Vincennes, Parigi) e del Ministero della Guerra del Regno d’Italia (Archivio di Stato di Milano). Dal punto di vista dei risultati è stato possibile verificare come l’esercito italiano abbia rappresentato, per Bonaparte, uno strumento duttile e di facile impiego, pur in un contesto di sostanziale marginalità numerica complessiva di fronte alle altre (e cospicue) forze messe in campo da parte dell’Impero e dei suoi altri Stati satellite e alleati. Per quanto riguarda la campagna di conquista della Catalogna è stato invece possibile appurare il fondamentale contributo dato dal contingente italiano, sotto i punti di vista operazionale e tattico, per la buona riuscita dell’invasione; questo primariamente grazie alle elevate caratteristiche generali mostrate dallo stesso, ma anche per peculiarità disciplinari e organizzative che resero i corpi italiani adatti a operazioni particolarmente aggressive.
The Italian Army and the Conquest of Catalonia (1808-1811) A Study of Military Effectiveness in Napoleonic Europe Academic Fields and Disciplines SPS/03 – M-STO/02 The research has the purpose of reconstruct and evaluate the military effectiveness of the Italian Army existed under the reign of Napoleon I. Firstly through a statistic and strategic analysis of the development, and the following deployment, of the military institution of the Kingdom of Italy in the years of its existence (1805-14). Afterwards, a particularly significant case study was chosen, as the campaign of Catalonia (1808-11, in the context of the Peninsular War), in order to assess the operational and tactical contribution of the regiments sent by the Government of Milan and their integration in the overall military apparatus of the First Empire. The thesis wanted to respond to the lack of studies on the Italian army’s behavior in war and, at the same time, to introduce the methodology of the Military Effectiveness Studies (of British and American origin and, by now, enriched by a thirty-year old tradition) in the Italian historiography. The research is primarily based, besides the numerous memoirs of the Italian and French veterans, on the archive documentation of the Secrétairerie d’état impériale (Archives Nationales of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, Paris), of the French Ministère de la Guerre (Service historique de la Défence, of Vincennes, Paris) and of the Italian Ministero della Guerra (Archivio di Stato di Milano). About the results, it has been verified how the Italian army has become a flexible and suitable instrument for Bonaparte, albeit in a context of substantial overall numerical marginality in comparison to the heterogeneous forces available to the Empire and its others satellites and allied states. Regarding the campaign of Catalonia, instead, it was possible to ascertain the fundamental contribution of the Italian regiments, in an operational and tactical perspective, for the success of the invasion. This was primarily due to the excellent general characteristics shown by the expeditionary force, but also to disciplinary and organizational peculiarities that have made the Italian corps suitable for particularly aggressive operations.

My dissertation, 'A l'ecole du francais: Politiques coloniales de la langue 1830-1944,' confronts current debates surrounding multilingualism, the language of instruction, and the rewriting of history in former colonial sites. Applying historical, educational and socio-linguistic theories to accounts of colonial education, I argue that French administrators enforced different ideologies of education and language in their different colonial territories, offering a limited and fluctuating politics of francisation. My primary inquiry centers on an understanding of the conditions that made possible the exportation of an educational system. The diachronic aspect of my study focuses on the understanding of the different phases of French domination as delineated by reforms undertaken by educational administrators and the impact of colonial language policy and its legacies in the former colonies. I analyze the reasons they did not promote and modernize certain 'indigenous' languages---Wolof in Senegal, Creole in Martinique, or Arabic or Berber in Algeria---and why, instead, they promoted Vietnamese in Indochina and Malagasy in Madagascar. I argue that a discrepancy between language planning and language policy led to teaching different varieties of French: standard French, simplified French or petit negre. My goal is to explain why standard French never fully reached the status of a vernacular language in the colonies The dissertation gives an historical overview of language planning policy from late nineteenth century until the Brazzaville Conference in France and in the colonies. This broadly imposed policy was culturally, economically and politically motivated, yet the link between language policies and socioeconomic development has never been adequately explored in a comparative way. It is crucial to determine if there were any differences and/or similarities in the diffusion of the educational and linguistic policies first between France and the colonies and then among the colonies themselves Drawing on archival and literary research undertaken in France, I reappraise the logic of the Civilizing Mission's francisation policy and its mirage, which ambiguously promulgated the politics of 'l'unique et le meme,' by contrasting five unique facets of l'ecole coloniale in Algeria, the Annam province in ex-Indochina, Martinique, Senegal, and Madagascar
acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation provides a comparative and connected political history of taxation and inequality in the French colonial empire between 1900 and the 1950s. It explores the archives of the French metropolitan state and of various French colonial states in North Africa, Southeast Asia and West Africa, parliamentary debates, the writings and personal papers of colonial officials and theorists, the publications of imperial watchdog organizations, settler, reformist, and anticolonial press outlets as well as literary production in order to probe the ways in which colonial tax regimes were established, debated, resisted and transformed. This political history of colonial taxation thus follows two complementary analytical strategies: it describes the workings of imperial fiscal power and it captures a sense of political possibility.The imperative to preserve the precarious and highly unequal fiscal bargain of fin-de-siècle metropolitan France led to the transfer of the tax burden of empire onto colonized populations. This dissertation argues that this turn to colonial “financial autonomy” in 1900 spawned decades of endemic austerity in the empire, setting the tone for future debates about the legitimacy of taxation and tax fairness in the French imperial state. It also recovers the violence of colonial fiscal seizures and examines the performative role of racial constructions and colonial knowledge in the concrete deployment and justification of French colonial fiscal power. This dissertation ultimately seeks to destabilize the category of “colonial taxation” and argues that at least until the First World War, colonized populations mostly perceived French taxation as the “price of defeat” rather than any sort of legitimate contribution to the common good. Furthermore, the imposition of direct and indirect taxes was often a highly violent endeavor. Early political activists sometimes sought to advance their own vision of fair taxation but they were firmly stonewalled by colonial authorities. Colonial fiscal power only “normalized” overtime. New potentialities arose after the conflict. The war reconfigured the world order and opened the way for a renovated politics of colonial taxation both in France and in the empire. Fiscal inequities became increasingly politicized, especially as reliance on private investment effectively gave greater bargaining power to European settlers and firms operating in the empire. French colonial authorities responded by brandishing the virtues of corporatism and this re-organized but did not curtail the influence of economic elites on the making of tax policies. Fiscal modernization was timidly debated in various colonies in the 1920s and 1930s and income taxes were sometimes implemented. Yet colonial solutions to the “problem” of colonial fiscal inequities (repression, the doling out a modicum of “representation”, corporatist anti-politics) faced significant backlash as the economic upheavals of the Great Depression began to kick in. The synchronous and empire-wide tax revolts of the 1930s considerably raised the stakes of tax politics as tax resistance became a prime tool for early nationalist groups eager to enter colonial public spheres on their own terms. Despite reformist efforts, WWII and the postwar period saw the continuity of this system of imperial fiscal exception exemplified for instance by the tax avoidance practices of colonial firms who used the empire as a tax shelter.

This work is a social and cultural history of the participation of enslaved and free Blacks in the Seven Years’ War in British America. It is, as well, an intellectual history of the impact of Blacks’ wartime actions upon conceptions of race, slavery, and imperial identity in the British Atlantic world. In addition to offering a fresh analysis of the significance of Britain’s arming of Blacks in the eighteenth century, it represents the first sustained inquiry into Blacks’ experience of this global conflict. It contends that, though their rhetoric might indicate otherwise, neither race nor enslaved status in practice prevented Britons from arming Blacks. In fact, Blacks played the most essential role in martial endeavors precisely where slavery was most fundamental to society. The exigencies of worldwide war transformed a local reliance upon black soldiers for the defense of particular colonies into an imperial dependence upon them for the security of Britain’s Atlantic empire. The events of the Seven Years’ War convinced many Britons that black soldiers were effective and even indispensable in the empire’s tropical colonies, but they also confirmed that not all Blacks could be trusted with arms. This work examines “Tacky’s revolt,” during which more than a thousand slaves exploited the wartime diffusion of Jamaica’s defensive forces to rebel, as a battle of the Seven Years’ War. The experience of insecurity and insurrection during the conflict caused some Britons to question the imperial value of the institution of slavery and to propose that Blacks be transformed from a source of vulnerability as slaves to the key to the empire’s strength in the southern Atlantic as free subjects. While martial service offered some Blacks a means to gain income, skills, a sense of satisfaction, autonomy, community, and even (though rarely) freedom, the majority of Blacks did not personally benefit from their contributions to the British war effort. Despite the pragmatic martial antislavery rhetoric that flourished postwar, in the end the British armed Blacks to perpetuate slavery, not to eradicate it, and an ever more regimented reliance upon black soldiers became a lasting legacy of the Seven Years’ War.
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This thesis analyzes the major theme of ‘postcolonial genealogy’ in portraying the African bending under the weight of colonial history in Le vieux nègre et la médaille, Une vie de boy of Ferdinand Oyono and Le Chercheur d’Afriques of Henri Lopes. Being a product of a colonial Genesis, the African character runs behind the colonizer’s mirror through his Civilizing Mission. René Girard’s ‘double bind’ theory explains how this cultural assimilation is, in Le vieux nègre et la médaille and Une vie de boy, a dead end because the colonizer needs a subordinate and not an equal. The cohabitation of a black housewife with the French Commander in Le Chercheur d’Afriques should be seen as simply an allegory of postcolonial Africa’s dependency on the West. The consequences of the feminization of the African continent are enormous in the post-colonial imaginary. While the colonizer had conquered Africa with his Herculean body, in Oyono’s novels, his Fall is obtained through the aesthetics of Bakhtinian ‘rabaissement’ which degrades his ‘grotesque body’ to that of the colonized. The colonizer and the colonized are neutralized and leveled in their perishable bodies, thus, making futile the Civilizing Mission that operated by ranking races. Power is never total. It is always imperfect, and can never destroy a subjectivity that resists it. In Oyono’s novels, the Fall of the colonial Father is also obtained through the inquisitive gaze that the colonized return back to the colonizer, and through their ‘subversive mimicry’ that parodies his codes. In Une vie de boy and Le Chercheur d’Afriques, the ‘son-Father’ relationship between the hero and the colonial Father, is also symbolic of the ‘Africa-West’ rapports. Living under the specter of the Father, the son has to negotiate his survival between weaning and parricide. The biological miscegenation in Le Chercheur d’Afriques is a metaphor of the ‘rhizome identity’ of the postcolonial African who renounces both the Fathers of Negritude and those of the Civilizing Mission.
Thesis (Ph.D, French) -- Queen's University, 2011-06-24 12:43:30.006

Defence date: 11 September 2017
Examining Board: Prof Stéphane Van Damme, European University Institute; Prof Regina Grafe, European University Institute; Prof Lissa Roberts, University of Twente; Dr Sujit Sivasundaram, University of Cambridge
This dissertation examines the globally connected project of plant accumulation on Isle de France in the second half of the eighteenth century, focusing distinctly on the roles and activities of local actors embedded within wider Indo-Pacific networks and environments. Exploring the collection, transfer, and use of plants for subsistence and commerce as localised histories of the plant-related undertakings of a French island colony in the Indian Ocean, this dissertation asks what 'science' and 'empire' meant at a local level. Relying on an in-depth analysis of the plant-based projects of the island 'from below', it raises localised approaches to the transfer, production and practices of plant knowledge and plant material from a crosscultural perspective. Here, a bottom-up approach tells a very different story than a top-down one would: the whole botanical enterprise was fragile, experiential and significantly shaped by environmental conditions. Above all, it was built on collaboration between French actors and local populations from Africa to Asia. To tackle, juxtapose, and understand the possibilities and limits of the French actors and to look at plant knowledge as a nuanced localised knowledge-practice conducted by non-elite and elite actors in the Indo-Pacific worlds, this project couples approaches from the history of science and empire, oceanic history, environmental history, economic history, and global history. For this purpose, each chapter explores plant-related themes from different perspectives, arguing for the uncertainty of the cross-cultural botanical project of eighteenthcentury Isle de France. For one, the Isle de France project was built extensively on the contribution of widely neglected actors, such as slaves, indigenous informants, and gobetweens. For another, the island’s cultivational activities consisted of strongly experiential dynamics of local knowledge deriving from and produced in the Indo-Pacific context. The major aim of this dissertation is to re-assess the French botanical project in the Indian Ocean in order to understand the social, cultural, and natural complexities of plant-based knowledge production as a practice with respect to their local sites in both the Indo-Pacific worlds and the French colonial island as such.
Chapter 5 ‘Invisible empire : the spice quests in the Indo-Pacific (1748-1773)' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'A pepper acquiring nutmeg : Pierre Poivre, the French spice quests and the role of mediators in Southeast Asia, 1740s to 1770s' (2015) in the journal ‘Journal of the Western society for French history’

Defence date: 5 June 2017
Examining Board: Prof Lucy Riall, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof Ann Thomson, European University Institute (Second reader); Prof Alan S. Kahan, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines; Dr David Todd, King’s College London
This thesis investigates liberal responses to French expansionism during Napoleon III’s Second Empire, focusing on three of its main imperialist ventures in the late 1850s and the 1860s: Algeria, a colony inherited from the times of Charles X, whose colonisation received a great boost in the 1860s; Cochinchina, the main step of France’s imperialism towards Asia; and Mexico, Napoleon III’s personal dream for France in America, started as the alleged greatest project of the Empire which, however, ended in great failure. The focus of this study is not on individuals generally acknowledged as main liberal thinkers, politicians or philosophers but on a group of less-celebrated individuals who developed their professional activity both in parliament (the Corps législatif) and the press. The aim is to highlight how liberal languages and discourses in their specific context contributed to the development and the shaping of liberal thinking and political culture in the 1860s with regard to imperial expansionism. This dissertation seeks to tie in with the historiographical trend which sees intellectual and political history not as distinct fields, but as two inseparable sides of the same coin. In a period in which the Second Empire was experiencing a process of increasing internal liberalisation in a number of political, social and economic fields, the Empire’s means of repression and social control were still active. Censorship was commonplace in 1860s France, making it very difficult for those opposing the regime to express their ideas and concerns. However, thanks to several steps made towards opening up the regime politically from 1860 onwards, opposition deputies—including especially the liberals—were able to express in parliament their claims and objections. Whereas some social issues remained difficult to tackle, I argue that liberals found in the Empire’s imperialist endeavours an appropriate space to channel their dissatisfaction with the Bonapartists’ way of conceiving, ruling and managing the country. The Second Empire’s colonial project on all continents fostered an intense ideological debate that transcended the borders of a simple partisan confrontation. It rather revealed the existence of two political cultures in quest of social legitimation: liberal and Bonapartist. This thesis aims to bring together a history of nineteenth-century French imperialist ventures and a history of modern liberal political culture. No scholarly works have focused on the way in which French liberal thinkers, politicians or publicists imagined their empire in the 1860s, how they responded to Napoleon III’s will to expand France’s power and influence across oceans and continents with an intensity never seen before. This dissertation contributes to filling in this gap by tackling the liberal response to French expansionism with regard to three thematic areas: the role of France in the world; trade and finances; and religion. European politics aside, overseas ventures marked France’s foreign policy in the 1860s. The Second Empire’s project to expand France’s influence in the world through various systems of domination and control over peoples on virtually all continents became an issue of political debate that all forces of opposition, namely liberals, could not escape. Imperialist ventures became an important issue of political debate under the Second Empire and acted as a sort of 'hegemony' that liberals needed to confront, either opposing or supporting it. In this thesis, I argue that they did so, taking the opportunity to use the debates on expansionism in their own favour. Through discussing a wide range of social, economic and political topics related to France’s imperialism in Africa, Asia and America during the 1860s, liberals succeeded in presenting to the public an alternative model of government to the one represented by the Bonapartists in power.

Ce mémoire a pour objectif d’analyser et de répertorier les productions historiographiques sur la race et le racisme dans l’Atlantique français au XVIIIe siècle. À travers nos lectures, nous avons pu constater que l’historiographie sur les colonies françaises, de plus en plus abondante, et l’approche privilégiant l’espace atlantique ont pris beaucoup d’importance depuis les vingt dernières années et cela a grandement influencé notre choix de diviser les productions historiographiques en trois catégories qui seront les trois chapitres de ce mémoire. Dans un premier temps, nous traiterons des travaux portant plus spécifiquement sur la race et le racisme où nous présenterons le débat quant à l’origine temporelle du racisme. Par la suite, nous présenterons certains travaux en histoire de l’esclavage dans l’Atlantique français qui relient le développement de l’esclavage et celui de la pensée raciale. Finalement, nous aborderons la question du racisme dans la métropole française au XVIIIe siècle en analysant les études qui ont été faites sur les questions des minorités noires et juives en France ainsi que les études sur la question coloniale à l’heure de la Révolution française. Par ailleurs, nous allons aussi présenter le désaccord qu’il y a entre les historiens quant à l’authenticité de la croyance des philosophes des Lumières en leur idéologie prônant la tolérance. Avec les nouvelles productions en histoire atlantique, il est évident que la conception de la race en France est le résultat d’une multitude de facteurs : culturels, scientifiques, économiques et politiques.
This thesis aims to analyse and categorize the historiography on race and racism in the French Atlantic in the eighteenth century. The increasing weight of historical productions on the colonies and especially on the French Atlantic in the past 20 years is clear and influenced our decision to divide the historiography into three categories corresponding to the three chapters of this thesis. First, we will discuss the work relating more specifically to race and racism and present the debate concerning the period in which racism first arose. Second, we will present historical works on the intersection of slavery and race in the French Atlantic. Finally, we will address the issue of racism in the French metropolis in the eighteenth century by analyzing studies concerning Black and Jewish minorities in France, on political debates during the French Revolution and on race in Enlightenment thought. Taken together, these studies show that ideas about race in France were the result of a multitude of factors, from scientific and intellectual to economic and political.