EMPIRE AND CULTURE: THE FRENCH EXPERIENCE, 1830-1940; ED. BY MARTIN EVANS

This volume explores how the idea of empire in France was expressed in film, photography, painting and monuments. It analyzes how the image of the universal, civilizing mission saturated French society during the first half of the twentieth century. In particular it examines how the subject peoples of the empire were represented in art and fiction. In this way, the authors underline that there was not just one single image of empire but many, ranging from the extreme right to the extreme left. The volume contains and in-depth consideration not just of the triumphalist images of empire but the oppositional ones, most notably the surrealists, which directly challenged the emergent colonial consensus. Front Matter....Pages i-xi Culture and Empire, 1830–1962: An Overview....Pages 1-23 Front Matter....Pages 25-25 Poor Propaganda: French Colonial Films of the 1930s....Pages 27-40 Un de la Légion: Myth Conception and Misconceptions....Pages 41-53 Front Matter....Pages 55-55 Surrealism, Colonialism and Photography....Pages 57-70 Documents against Civilization....Pages 71-88 Front Matter....Pages 89-89 Indigestible Indo-China: Attempts to Introduce Vietnamese Food into France in the Interwar Period....Pages 91-102 The ‘Ballet blanc et noir’: A Study of Racial and Cultural Identity during the 1931 International Colonial Exhibition....Pages 103-112 ‘Frenchmen in Disguise’: French Musical Exoticism and Empire in the Nineteenth Century....Pages 113-127 Front Matter....Pages 129-129 Making Indo-China French: Promoting the Empire through Education....Pages 131-147 The Empire and the Nation: The Place of Colonial Images in the Republican Visions of the French Nation....Pages 148-160 Portrait of the Young Woman as a Coloniale....Pages 161-180 ‘All the World’s a Stage’, Especially in the Colonies: L’Exposition de Hanoï, 1902–3....Pages 181-191 Back Matter....Pages 192-212 Annotation By 1931, the time of the huge Colonial Exhibition in Paris, France had the second largest empire in the world extending to the four corners of the globe. Yet, intriguingly the multi-various impact of the empire upon French culture and society has been largely ignored by historians. This volume aims to redress this balance and will explore how the idea of empire was expressed in film, photography, painting and monuments. It analyzes how the image of the universal, civilising mission saturated French society during the first half of the twentieth century. In particular it examines how the subject peoples of the empire were represented in art and fiction. In this way the volume underlines that there was not just one single image of empire but many ranging from the extreme right to the extreme left. It contains an in-depth consideration not just of the triumphalist images of empire but the oppositional ones, most notably the surrealists, which directly challenged the emergent colonial consensus On 6 May 1931 France's Colonial Exhibition finally opened at the Bois de Vincennes in Paris.