Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Aldrich, Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion (1996)

Robert Aldrich.
Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion.
New York: St. Martin's Press (Palgrave Macmillan), 1996.

Book Information: Google Books; Amazon.com.

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Author Information:
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Wikipedia Articles:
  • French colonial empire, 1534–1980.
    (After reading Aldrich's Greater France I feel obliged to warn the reader that this Wikipedia article treats many topics in a very abbreviated manner.)
  • Overseas France, France d'outre-mer, l'Outre-mer, les DOM-TOM.
Miscellaneous Items:
  • Copra, "dried coconut kernels from which coconut oil is expelled", noted by Aldrich as an export commodity from some French colonies.
  • groundnut, Bambara groundnut, a legume from West Africa.

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Aldrich's Greater France is a very good introduction to the French overseas empire since 1830; however, it appears that it is currently out-of-print. Aldrich's Notes and Bibliography contain extensive references to the French literature so I am sure his book remains a useful guide for more serious students and readers of French. Some more recently published books (in English) on this topic include:
  • Frederick Quinn. The French Overseas Empire. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers (Greenwood Publishing Group), 2000.
    [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
  • Todd Shepard. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2006.
    [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
  • Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery. Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858-1954. Translated by Ly Lan Dill-Klein. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009.
    [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
  • David Todd. A Velvet Empire: French Informal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
    [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]

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