Peasants into Frenchmen: The modernization of rural France 1870–1914: Eugene Weber, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1976. Pp. xv + 615. $20·00)

France achieved national unity much later than is commonly supposed. For a hundred years and more after the Revolution, millions of peasants lived on as if in a timeless world, their existence little different from that of the generations before them. The author of this lively, often witty, and always provocative work traces how France underwent a veritable crisis of civilization in the early years of the French Republic as traditional attitudes and practices crumbled under the forces of modernization. Local roads and railways were the decisive factors, bringing hitherto remote and inaccessible regions into easy contact with markets and major centers of the modern world. The products of industry rendered many peasant skills useless, and the expanding school system taught not only the language of the dominant culture but its values as well, among them patriotism. By 1914, France had finally become La Patrie in fact as it had so long been in name.

Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914

With Empire of Cotton, Sven Beckert provides an expansive framework for thinking about the definitive role of one commodity in the creation, maintenance, and decline of the global economic order si...

Empire of cotton: a global history

This text offers a socio-political history of post-war Francophone West Africa, focusing on colonial conscripts from Senegal.

Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Senegalais in French West Africa, 1857-1960

In most post-colonial regimes in sub-Saharan Africa, state power has been used to structure economic production in ways that have tended to produce economic stagnation rather than growth. In this book, Catherine Boone examines the ways in which the exercise of state power has inhibited economic growth, focusing on the case of Senegal. She traces changes in the political economy of Senegal from the heyday of colonial merchant capital in the 1930s to the decay of the neo-colonial merchant capital in the 1980s and reveals that old trading monopolies, commercial hierarchies and patterns of wealth accumulation were preserved at the cost of reforms that would have stimulated economic growth. Boone uses this case to develop an argument against analyses of political-economic development that identify state institutions and ideologies as independent forces driving the process of economic transformation. State power, she argues, is rooted in the material and social bases of ruling alliances.

Merchant Capital and the Roots of State Power in Senegal, 1930-1985

Children of the French Empire

This book vividly recreates the lives of the children born of relationships between French men and African women from the time France colonized much of West Africa towards the end of the nineteenth century, until independence in 1960. Set within the context of the history of miscegenation in colonial French West Africa, the study focuses upon the lives and identities of the resulting mixed-race or metis population, and their struggle to overcome the handicaps they faced in a racially divided society. Owen White has drawn a valuable evaluation of the impact and importance of French racial theories, and offers a critical discussion of colonial policies in such areas as citizenship and education, providing original insights into problems of identity in colonial society.

Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa 1895-1960

This introduction to the dossier “Wine, Economy, and Empire” surveys the place of economic history in the field of French Empire studies over the last twenty years. Drawing upon the concept of “economic life” as defined by William Sewell, the authors argue that a renewed focus on economic activity within the French Empire offers new opportunities to interrogate commonplace ideas about chronology, imperial forms, and structures of power. The article briefly examines some of the specific avenues of inquiry opened by a conception of economic life as socially “embedded,” while highlighting recent works that exemplify the possibilities of this approach for scholars of empire.

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Introduction: The French Empire and the History of Economic Life

Why, at a time when alcohol made a substantial contribution to colonial economies in West Africa, did the French governor of Cote d'Ivoire launch a temperance campaign in 1912? This question serves as the starting point for an exploration of the ways in which economic, social, and cultural ideas interacted and shaped French policies on social problems in the colonies. Linking together metropolitan and colonial histories of drink, and placing Cote d'Ivoire in a broader regional context in which British West African governors were reluctant to embrace temperance movements, the article finds that temperance was one aspect of a consolidation of state power in Cote d'Ivoire that entailed greater French intervention in Africans' daily lives. The governor's campaign benefited briefly from its appearance at the same time as an African temperance movement, but in the long run the economic and cultural imperatives that favored the importation of French wine tended to undermine the argument that alcohol was harmful to taxpaying Africans.

Drunken States: Temperance and French Rule in Cote D'Ivoire, 1908-1916

Acknowledgments Contributors Introduction: Placing French Missionaries in the Modern World, Owen White and J. P. Daughton Part I: French Missionaries in the Atlantic World 1. When Catholic Worlds Collide: French Missionaries and Ecclesiastical Politics in Louisiana, 1803-1845, Michael Pasquier 2. Creating "The People of God": French Utopian Dreams and the Moralization of Africans and Slaves, Troy Feay 3. Bretons in Conquest of a Former Colony: French Catholic Missionaries in Haiti, 1860-1915, Philippe Delisle Part II: The Ottoman Empire, North Africa, and the Middle East 4. Charity Begins Abroad: The Filles de la Charite in the Ottoman Empire, Sarah A. Curtis 5. Muslim Princes, Female Missionaries, and Trans-Mediterranean Migrations: The Soeurs de Saint-Joseph de l'Apparition in Tunisia, c. 1840-1881, Julia Clancy-Smith 6. Missionary Militarism? The Armed Brothers of the Sahara and Leopold Louis Joubert in the Congo, Bertrand Taithe 7. Flourishing in Exile: French Missionaries in Syria and Lebanon under Mandate Rule, Jennifer M. Dueck Part III: East and Southeast Asia 8. Measuring Catholic Faith in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Northeast China, Ji Li 9. A Colonial Sacred Union? Church, State, and the Great War in Colonial Vietnam, Charles Keith Part IV: Africa and Oceania 10. When French Protestants Replaced British Missionaries in the Pacific and Indian Oceans Or, How to Avoid the Colonial Trap, Jean-Francois Zorn 11. The "Catechist War" in Interwar French Cameroon, Kenneth J. Orosz 12. A Mission in Transition: Race, Politics, and the Decolonization of the Catholic Church in Senegal, Elizabeth A. Foster Afterword: The Missionary Experience in the British and French Empires, Norman Etherington Select Bibliography Index

Owen White

Papers

Children of the French Empire

Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa 1895-1960

Introduction: The French Empire and the History of Economic Life

Drunken States: Temperance and French Rule in Cote D'Ivoire, 1908-1916

In God's empire : French missionaries and the modern world