Memories of Empire: Legacies of French Colonialism (After the Empire: The Francophone World & Postcolonial France) (After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France) - Hardcover

At a time when France is in the throes of dealing with the politics of memory and coming to grips with its multicultural identity, this rich collection of essays painstakingly reminds us how much its destiny is linked to its colonial legacy. The fourteen essays cover a lot of ground, both geographically and historically; dealing with recent commemorations such as the 40th anniversary of the Algerian war, the 150th anniversary of the French abolitionary decree, and the bicentennial of the Haitian revolution, and more generally with the diverse guises that the colonial past assumes as it informs literary, cultural and historical manifestations from the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe . . . This welcome addition to French and postcolonial studies will be of great interest to historians and literary scholars.--Dr. Danielle Marx-Scouras, The Ohio State University

Every essay is accessible, and the collection as a whole serves as a fine introduction to French postcolonial studies. Summing Up: Recommended.--CHOICE

This collection, an insightful addition to the scholarship on memories of the French Empire, reaches beyond the confines of French and francophone studies as some contributions draw parallels between France's colonial history and the United States' current policies.--Research in African Literatures

To conclude, these essays are generally strong and those working on the Maghreb... will be appreciative....this series of essays represents significant work.--University Of Nebraska Press

He has skillfully edited and assembled fourteen essays. . . . Valuable and well worth reading. . . . As for Memory and Postcolonialism, one must complilment the compiler/editor for the very logical and coherent way he has assembled a set of disparate conference papers so as to create a coherent monograph.--H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online, January 2010

Edited by Alec G. Hargreaves, Memory, Empire, and Postcolonialism: Legacies of French Colonialism seeks to analyze and unravel the complex relationship that exists between past and present French cultural memory, identity, and national politics in the postcolonial era of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries....I highly recommend this book to scholars and students whose research focuses on the French colonization, postcolonial France, immigration, and the Algerian War. In addition, this volume will be equally beneficial to individuals studying slavery, the use of torture, and the numerous human rights violations that are the direct result of colonial empires.--Nineteenth-Century French Studies

Alec G. Hargreaves is Director of the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Florida State University.