The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars

Abstract

France experienced a period of crisis following World War I when the relationship between the nation and its colonies became a subject of fierce public debate. French Imperial focuses on two intersecting movements that redefined imperial politics - colonial humanism, led by administrative reformers in West Africa, and the Paris-based Negritude project, comprising African and Caribbean elites. Gary Wilder develops a sophisticated account of the contradictory character of colonial government and examines the cultural nationalism of Negritude as a multifaceted movement rooted in an alternative black public sphere. He argues that interwar France must be understood as an imperial nation-state - an integrated sociopolitical system that linked a parliamentary republic to an administrative empire. An interdisciplinary study of colonial modernity combining French history, colonial studies, and social theory, The French Imperial Nation-State will compel readers to revise conventional assumptions about the distinctions between republicanism and racism, metropolitan and colonial societies, and national and transnational processes.

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