France's Lost Empires: Fragmentation, Nostalgia, and 'la fracture coloniale' (review)

The historiography of French colonialism is usually divided into two main periods: the 'lost' colonies of the Ancien Régime (mainly as a result of the Seven Years War and of the Haitian Revolution) and the 'new' colonial empire of the nineteenth century, which was carved out under the justificatory pretext of la mission civilisatrice (and which came to an end in the 1950s and 1960s). In her Introduction, Kate Marsh states that 'one of the aims of the essays in this collection [is] to challenge this convenient periodization, illuminating how perceptions of territorial loss sustained continuities' (p. 2). This focus on memories and nostalgia for the bygone days of la plus grande France is linked to the notion (articulated by Ernest Renan in his well-known 1882 lecture, 'Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?') that 'grief could play [a role] in the generation of a collective sense of nationhood' (p. 2). The ten articles of France's Lost Empires cover various forms of mourning or nostalgic longing for the colonies of Haiti (or Saint-Domingue, a source of great wealth for France in the eighteenth century), Algeria, French Canada, and, less predictably, India (which is nevertheless the topic of four of the articles). Interestingly enough, no article is devoted to the French colonies of sub-Saharan Africa or of Indochina. The authors scrutinize colonial-era documents, more recent novels and films, 'colonial collecting cards', and even a town in southern France that has become an enduring pied-noir symbol, Carnoux-en-Provence. Among the most interesting articles: Yun Kyoung Kwon's account of how refugee planters elaborated idyllic representations of pre-revolutionary Haiti, in a vain attempt to persuade the Restoration-era French government to reconquer the sugar-producing island; John Strachan's use of Albert Camus's school years in Algeria as a case study for the examination of foundational narratives of national identity; Indra N. Mukhopadhyay's fascinating analysis of India and Indian characters in the works of Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne; and Claire Eldridge's investigation of Carnoux and its 'Association nationale des Français d'Afrique du Nord', Carnoux Racines. Some quibbles about the content: while the 1889 Exposition universelle included exhibits dedicated to French colonies, it was not a fully fledged 'colonial exhibition' (p. 32), a term that was officially used for the Expositions coloniales of 1906, 1907, 1922, and, most famously, 1931; also, strictly speaking, in 1966 De Gaulle did not 'remove France from NATO' (p. 48), but from the integrated military structure of the Alliance. There is the occasional typographical error, mostly in French: 'tout fini par se ressembler' (p. 73); 'descendait d'une forte ancienne famille' (p. 90); 'Edmund Dantès' (p. 112); 'le symbol de l'Afrique perdu' and 'tchatcha' (p. 126). Since this book explores images and discourses that reflect tropes of loss and longing for empires that vanished at different historical junctures, readers should not expect a balanced or comprehensive presentation of the various parts of the former French colonial domain. That said, this original contribution to postcolonial studies offers several articles that will be of interest to specialists and generalists alike.