By 1931, the time of the huge Colonial Exhibition in Paris, France had the second largest empire in the world extending to the four corners of the globe. Yet, intriguingly the multi-various impact of the empire upon French culture and society has been largely ignored by historians. This volume aims to redress this balance and will explore how the idea of empire was expressed in film, photography, painting and monuments. It analyzes how the image of the universal, civilising 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 volume underlines that there was not just one single image of empire but many ranging from the extreme right to the extreme left. It contains an 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.

• Preface The French Empire and Culture: An Overview
• M.Evans PART I: FILM Poor Propaganda: French Colonial Films of the 1930s
• M.O'Shaugnessy Un de la Legion: Myth, Conception and Misconceptions
• M.Heurtaud PART II: PHOTOGRAPHY Surrealism, Communism and Photography
• D.Bate Documents Against Civilisation
• D.Evans PART III: FOOD, MUSIC AND DANCE Indigestible Indochina: Attempts to Introduce Food into France in the Inter-War Period
• E.Peters The "Ballet Blance et Noir": A Study of Racial and Cultural Identity During the 1931 Colonial Exhibition
• D.Hale Frenchmen in Disguise: French Musical Exoticism and Empire
• T.Cooper PART IV: PROMOTING THE FRENCH EMPIRE Making Indochina French: Promoting the Empire Through Education
• N.Cooper The Empire and the Nation: The Place of Colonial Images in the Republican Visions of the French Nation
• T.Baycroft Portrait of the Young Woman as a Coloniale
• M.Ha "All the World's A Stage", Especially In The Colonies: L'Exposition de Hanoi, 1902-03
• M.Vann