Empire of Love: Histories of France and the Pacific (review)

What, after all, was distinctive about French colonialism? Did national character make a difference in the pursuit of empire, and if so, what? In Empire of Love Matt Matsuda approaches this question in strikingly original fashion. He argues that discourses of love constituted a central theme of France’s expansion into the Pacific, exploring this idea by considering encounters between the French and local inhabitants in places ranging from Panama to Japan. The result is a beautifully written and thought-provoking study that both explores colonial encounters in great detail and asks some very fundamental questions. At times Matsuda falls short of making a convincing case for some of his ideas; the concept of “the empire of love” has both prospects and problems. Nonetheless, if one is not always sure of this book’s destination, the voyage remains certainly worthwhile.

In arguing that France’s experience in the Pacific constituted an empire of love Matsuda addresses fundamental concerns in both French and Pacific history. His work draws inspiration from an emerging body of literature on the history of affect in general, regarding human emotions as not just a private affair but also prime movers in the evolution of society and culture. For France, this entails revisiting the notion of that nation as a land of romance, and exploring the ways in which a preoccupation with love informed its views of other parts of the world. This focus also offers possibilities for histories of the Pacific. Ever since the rise of “Pacific Rim studies” in the 1980s, scholars have grappled with how to conceptualize such a vast and diverse area as a unit of analysis. Empire of Love considers French views of the Pacific basin and looks at discourses of love as a key leitmotif. Love, whether romantic fascination, carnal pleasure, family attachment, or patriotism underlies France’s Pacific histories. In making this argument Matsuda uses the tools of cultural history and literary analysis. The central figure in Empire of Love is Pierre Loti, whose naval career and numerous popular novels about empire made him a sort of poet laureate of French colonialism. Matsuda credits Loti with creating the empire of love, showing how his preoccupation with the romance of far horizons mirrored his disenchantment with the modernization of French society in the late nineteenth century. From there Matsuda proceeds to consider discourses of love in several Franco-Pacific encounters. These include both formal colonies (Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Indochina) and non-colonized spaces (Panama, Japan). In each case, Matsuda considers the ways in which French explorers, administrators, missionaries, and settlers framed their views of local areas and inhabitants in terms of love.

One of Empire of Love’s strengths is its multivocality. Like most cultural historians, Matsuda tends to emphasize official and elite voices. Yet he also considers the ways in which the colonized both responded to and at times initiated their own discourses about love. In the section on Tahiti, for example, Matsuda shows how romantic ideas could only exist by silencing the history of Tahitians’ extensive and violent resistance to French colonialism. In the case of Indochina, he describes how different Vietnamese intellectuals adapted and harshly attacked the idea of France as the beloved mother country. Matsuda’s writing style, and the way he structures this book, will also impress historians of colonialism. Rather than attempt to present the Pacific as a unified space he emphasizes diversity and discontinuity, adopting a hybrid approach to the question of imperial expansion. Matsuda not only writes beautifully but consciously replicates some of the romantic style of nineteenth century colonial literature. The romance of empire was a fact, as much as colonial warfare, exploitation, and resistance, and Matsuda brings it to vibrant life in this book.

As much as I enjoyed reading Empire of Love, at the same time I found some of its conclusions unsatisfying. Although discourses of love might well loom large in France’s Pacific history, the term “love” as it is used...