France's Lost Empires: Fragmentation, Nostalgia, and la fracture coloniale [Hardcover]

This excellent collection of essays on the aftermath of the loss of Empire makes a significant contribution to the scholarship on post-colonial memory and nostalgia. Covering the period from the collapse of the first French colonial empire to the end of the second, it is essential reading for scholars, students and anyone interested in the cultural, intellectual and political legacies of France's imperial past.This volume constitutes an important contribution to a more complex understanding of the evolution of French colonialism from the 18th to the 20th century. Through its focus on fracture, loss and nostalgia, the text reveals how earlier waves of colonialism inspired colonial actors and ideologues in later centuries. In particular, Kate Marshs introduction provides a brilliant overview of the issues at stake in developing greater historical awareness within the field of Francophone postcolonial studies.This book captures a real intellectual exchange between scholars from several continents, with diverse chronological, national, linguistic, and disciplinary interests. The articles engage with each other and thus make visible how thinking with Lost India crystallizes certain common themes and upends some problematic commonplaces in postcolonial studies. The authors explore infelicitous chronologies; forgetting and memory; the intersections between territorial holdings and imaginary maps; and the extra-European as foundational for thinking intra-European conflicts. They all highlight how crossing boundariesbetween British, French, and Mughal empires; early modern and modern historiesallows for new thinking. This, then, is a book about French Indiawhere actual colonialism always references lost hopes and persistent yet out of reach possibilitiesthat will allow scholars to see that the time has come to resituate French colonial histories in larger contexts, what Kate Marsh identifies as global concerns.Those interested in particular areas of the Frl£Ķ