This book vividly recreates the lives and identities of the children born of relationships between French men and African women in colonial French West Africa. It shows how colonial policies and attitudes influenced the lives of this mixed-race population and analyzes their responses to living in a racially divided society.

A collection of original essays by leading scholars in the field, In God's Empire examines the complex ways in which the spread of Christianity by French men and women shaped local communities, French national prowess, and global politics in the two centuries following the French Revolution. More than a story of religious proselytism, missionary activity was an essential feature of French contact and interaction with local populations. In many parts of the world, missionaries were the first French men and women to work and live among indigenous societies. For all the celebration of...