Empire and Culture

This volume explores how the idea of empire in France was expressed in film, photography, painting and monuments. It analyzes how the image of the universal, civilizing mission saturated French society during the first half of the twentieth century. In particular it examines how the subject peoples of the empire were represented in art and fiction. In this way, the authors underline that there was not just one single image of empire but many, ranging from the extreme right to the extreme left. The volume contains and in-depth consideration not just of the triumphalist images of empire but the oppositional ones, most notably the surrealists, which directly challenged the emergent colonial consensus.