Empire of Love: Histories of France and the Pacific

ISBN-13: 9780195162950 / Angielski / Miękka / 2005 / 240 str.

Matt K. Matsude

Opis

In this broad-ranging survey of Paris, Tahiti, Indochina, Japan, New Caledonia, and the South Pacific generally, Matt Matsuda illustrates the fascinating interplay that shaped the imaginations of both colonizer and colonized. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Matsuda describes the constitution of a "French Pacific" through the eyes of Tahitian monarchs, Kanak warriors, French politicos and prisoners, Asian revolutionaries and Central American laborers, among others. He argues that French imperialism in the Pacific, both real and imagined, was registered most forcefully in languages of desire and love--for lost islands, promised wealth and riches, carnal and spiritual pleasures--and political affinities. Exploring the conflicting engagements with love for and against the empire in the Pacific, this book is an imaginative and ground-breaking work in global imperial and colonial histories, as well as Pacific histories.

Recenzje

Matsuda offers engaging and well-written vignettes of French imperial experience as lived and remembered which, are explored through literary and archival evidence. The book succeeds, to a considerable extent, in articulating the place of love and desire in the imperial project. Even readers who disagree with Matsuda's argument may be seduced by the stimulating ideas in this work.

O autorze

Matt K. Matsuda is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University. He is the author of he Memory of the Modern (OUP, 1996)