Empire of Love: Histories of France and the Pacific

In this broad-ranging survey of Paris, Tahiti, Indochina, Japan, New Caledonia, and the South Pacific generally, Matt Matsuda illustrates the fascinating interplay that shaped the imaginations of both colonizer and colonized. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Matsuda describes the
constitution of a French Pacific through the eyes of Tahitian monarchs, Kanak warriors, French politicos and prisoners, Asian revolutionaries and Central American laborers, among others. He argues that French imperialism in the Pacific, both real and imagined, was registered most forcefully in
languages of desire and love--for lost islands, promised wealth and riches, carnal and spiritual pleasures--and political affinities. Exploring the conflicting engagements with love for and against the empire in the Pacific, this book is an imaginative and ground-breaking work in global imperial and
colonial histories, as well as Pacific histories.


Author: Matt K. Matsuda
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 01/13/2005
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.84lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.24w x 0.69d
ISBN: 9780195162950

About the Author

Matt K. Matsuda is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, where he teaches Modern European and Asia and Pacific comparative histories. He is the author of The Memory of the Modern (OUP, 1996).

This title is not returnable