Anthropology, colonial policy and the decline of French empire in Africa

Resource Information

The work Anthropology, colonial policy and the decline of French empire in Africa represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in European University Institute Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Anthropology, colonial policy and the decline of French empire in Africa

Statement of responsibility

Douglas W. Leonard

Creator

• Leonard, Douglas W

Subject

• Africa -- Colonization | History -- 20th century
• France -- Colonies -- Africa -- History -- 19th century
• France -- Colonies -- Africa -- History -- 20th century
• Africa -- Colonization | History -- 19th century
• Imperialism -- Government policy -- France -- History
• Imperialism -- Social aspects -- France -- History
• Nationalism -- France -- History
• France -- History -- Third Republic, 1870-1940

Language

eng

Summary

Conceived as both a vehicle to national prestige and as a civilizing mission, the second French colonial empire (1830-1962) challenged soldiers, scholars, and administrators to understand societies radically different from their own. The resultant networks of anthropological inquiry, however, did not have this effect. Rather, they opened pathways to political and intellectual independence framed in the language of social science, and in the process upended the colonial political system and reshaped the nature of human inquiry in France. While still unequal, French colonial rule in Africa revealed the durability and strength of non-European modes of thought. In this influential new study, historian Douglas W. Leonard examines the political and intellectual repercussions of French efforts to understand and to dominate colonial Africa through the use of anthropology. From General Louis Faidherbe in the 1840s to politician Jacques Soustelle and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in the 1950s, these French thinkers sowed the seeds of colonial destruction. --

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Dewey number

• 944.08
• 325.344096

Illustrations

maps

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography