Unlike Britain, whose empire has been studied from numerous
perspectives, the French empire has received comparatively little
attention, particularly with reference to how France and its
colonies perceived the French outposts in the Pacific. Spanning
Paris, Tahiti, New Caledonia, Indochina, Japan, Panama, and other
island groups, Matt Matsuda argues that, far more significant than
the French administrative or political presence in the Pacific, was
the French Pacific-especially the waters of the Pacific itself-in
the scientific, literary, and artistic imaginations of both
colonizers and colonized. Initially, the book follows the traces of
French naval officer and writer Pierre Loti and his powerful patron
Juliette Adam as they "romance" a popular overseas empire that for
both reflects back upon their highly emotional ideas of the nation.
In Panama, romantic Jesuit ruins, isthmian peoples, and a French
canal project illuminate Saint Simonian communities of love
plotting to conquer the Pacific transit with a passionate Gallic
nationalism. In the Pacific islands of Wallis and Futuna, church
fathers confront the sacred and profane alliances of a martyr's
love that will create the first saint in the South Seas. Tahiti
situates the reader where violent warfare and erotic loves for
Tahitian "natives" are implicated in battles and alliances between
the Queen and french Naval officers struggling for control of the
Society Islands. In the penal colony of New Caledonia settler
communities face local Kanak resistance to the affective politics
of an imperial administration involving itself in making
love-matches and households to serve the needs of colonialism. A
chapter on Indochina examines how love of country, possession of
the "native," and colonial marriage are consistent figures in the
French articulation of the Southeast Asian colony, and how these
same figures are reiterated by Vietnamese both in colonial
collaboration and armed resistance. The concluding discussions
engage Japanese and French debates on the nature of political,
economic, civic, and sentimental life east and west, and the
possibilities of love in modern states as they mutually struggle to
define what is common to all of the above studies: conflicting
engagements with love for and against the empire in the Pacific.
Through a wealth of primary sources, Matsuda describes the empire
through the eyes of Tahitian monarchs, Kanak warriors, French
politicos, prisoners, and Central American laborers, among others.
He argues that French imperialism in the Pacific, both real and
imagined, was registered most forcefully in the language of desire
and love-for lost islands, for untouched people, for promised
wealth and riches, and for carnal pleasure. Empire of Love promises
to be an imaginative and ground-breaking work in imperial history,
as well as in the growing field of Pacific Studies.
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