Assimilation and Empire: Uniformity in French and British Colonies, 1541-1954

Saliha Belmessous

ISBN 10: 0199579164 / ISBN 13: 9780199579167

Published by Oxford University Press, 2013

About this Item

Hardcover, xi + 231 pages, NOT ex-library. Minor handling wear. Book is clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. In a likewise dust jacket. -- The book explores the concept and practice of assimilation in the French and British colonial empires over a span of four centuries. Focusing on the policies of both empires, it examines how the goal of imposing cultural uniformity was central to their imperial strategies. Belmessous investigates the efforts to transform colonized populations into versions of the European ruling nations, emphasizing how ideas of assimilation were both applied and resisted in various colonies. The book compares the French and British approaches to colonial governance, revealing the different motivations and methods each empire used to enforce or promote cultural and legal assimilation. It traces the development of assimilation policies from early modern times to the 20th century, looking at how these strategies evolved in response to changing political, social, and economic circumstances in the colonies. Key themes include: - The origins and evolution of assimilation policies in the French and British empires; - The impact of colonial assimilation on indigenous populations; - Cultural and racial hierarchies in colonial governance; - Resistance and adaptation by colonized peoples; - The eventual decline of assimilationist policies and the rise of self-determination movements; - A comparison of assimilationist policies in different regions and time periods, from North America to Africa and Asia. By examining the contradictions and challenges faced by the French and British in their pursuit of assimilation, Belmessous provides a nuanced and comprehensive account of how the concept of uniformity was central to the justification and maintenance of imperial rule. Seller Inventory # 010498

Bibliographic Details

Title: Assimilation and Empire: Uniformity in ...

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Publication Date: 2013

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Near Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

Assimilation was an ideology central to European expansion and colonisation, an ideology which legitimised colonisation for centuries. Assimilation and Empire shows that the aspiration for assimilation was not only driven by materialistic reasons, but was also motivated by ideas. The engine of assimilation was found in the combination of two powerful ideas: the European philosophical conception of human perfectibility and the idea of the modern state. Europeans wanted to create, in their empires, political and cultural forms they valued and wanted to realise in their own societies, but which did not yet exist.

Saliha Belmessous examines three imperial experiments - seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New France, nineteenth-century British Australia, and nineteenth and twentieth-century French Algeria - and reveals the complex inter-relationship between policies of assimilation, which were driven by a desire for perfection and universality, and the greatest challenge to those policies, discourses of race, which were based upon perceptions of difference.

Neither colonised nor European peoples themselves were able to conform to the ideals given as the object of assimilation. Yet, the deep links between assimilation and empire remained because at no point since the sixteenth century has the utopian project of perfection - articulated through the progressive theory of history - been placed seriously in question. The failure of assimilation pursued through empire, for both colonised and coloniser, reveals the futility of the historical pursuit of perfection.

About the Author:

Saliha Belmessous is a Senior Research Fellow in history at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She studied in France and Canada and has held research positions in the USA and Australia.