An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914 (review)

Central to Daughton's argument is that the conflict of viewpoints between French Catholic missionaries and their opponents, whether colonial administrators, anticlerical politicians, Protestant missionaries or Freemasons, resulted in changes to colonial policies and Catholic attitudes towards the Third Republic by 1914. In supporting this claim Daughton offers three case studies: Indochina, Tahiti and the Marquesas and Madagascar. In each case Daughton works closely with archives (letters, publications, official reports) and weaves them into a very readable narrative that always finds space for a colourful incident that might act as an exemplum for the author's argument. He illustrates the extraordinary network established by French missionaries from the 1820s to the First World War, a network supported by Catholic publications, such as those of the Oeuvre de la propagation de la foi, which had a possible readership of more than 1. 5 million by 1914. Such publications brought awareness and popular support for the French Empire. By 1900 there were over 58, 000 Catholic religious workers working overseas and Daughton provides fascinating, and sometimes troubling, insights into their relations with indigenous communities as well as with the actors of the Third Republic who saw their usefulness and supported them when it was expedient. Daughton makes clear his own set of assumptions, the principle one being that 'Beneath the shipping lanes, military posts, and mountains of reports, underpinning the laws and bureaucracies, modern empires have been built soundly on faith—be it religious, secular, or a combination of both' (p. 260). In tracking manifestations of this idealism within the archives, Daughton succeeds in bringing the reader into the ideologically informed perspectives of missionaries and colonial administrators as they negotiated their differences. This necessary focus on the archives is, however, not matched by a similar engagement with recent historiographical work on the French Empire and the absence of a bibliography is to be regretted. Moreover, one senses that Daughton's argument might have been better tested had at least one of the case studies involved a region where Islam was the principal religion. Instead, Daughton sets aside North Africa on the grounds that missionary activity was limited due to what was considered to be the 'spiritual intractability of Muslims' and the concern that any such activity would result in 'social upheaval' (p. 22). Yet to admit that North Africa and the Middle East provides little support for the argument must also diminish it as the diversity of French colonial practices that emerged in these regions owed little to the Catholic Church. Indeed, Daughton's conclusion suggests that the conflicts between Church and State had a greater effect on French Catholic missionaries than on the Third Republic. As Daughton admirably demonstrates, missionary organizations, concerned that the anticlericalism of the turn of the century would result in their demise, increasingly proclaimed their support for France's colonial enterprise and identified with la mère Patrie to a point that met with the disapproval of Pope Benedict XV in 1919. Overall, Daughton's book brings our attention to a wealth of archival material (mainly Catholic) and offers an important insight into the part played by Catholic missionaries in the expansion and consolidation of the French Empire.