An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914 - Softcover

J.P. Daughton is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University.

"Through his concentration on the interactoin of French Catholic (sometimes Protestant) missionaries and colonial official in indochina, Tahiti and the Marquesas, and Madagascar during the formative period of France's overseas empire and its colonial ideology, Daughton provides an important contribution to the extant literature on colonialism, modern France, and modern religious history...Daughton furnishes an important contribution to our understanding of the formative years of France's colonial empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries...A much-needed corrective to the extant scholarship on France's notion of the mission civilisatrice."--James E. Genova, Ameriacn Historical Review

"Daughton challenges many commonly held notions about the 'culture wars' and secular 'civilizing mission' of the early Third French Republic and its imperial expansion, demonstrating that Catholic missionaries played a much greater role in the French colonial empire than is usually acknowledged. Drawing upon extensive archival research in France as well as its former colonies of Indochina, Madagascar, and PolynesiaDaughton's exacting, scrupulously empirical methodology is a welcome corrective to the sweeping generalizations and ethereal theorizing of many colonial and postcolonial studies. This is a remarkably well-researched and well-written first book, and announces Daughton as a junior scholar of tremendous promise."--CHOICE

"An elegant study of the intersection of religion and empire...It demonstrates how under the umbrella of the French empire, regional particularities were not just shaped by responses to local conditions and peoples, they were often formed by differences and conflicts among the French themselves."--H-France

"Daughton's treatment of the relations between colonial administrators and missionaries in the wake of conquest makes for fascinating and often gripping reading...[A] richly documented and beautifully written book."--Journal of Modern History

A thoroughly absorbing and informative book which should appeal across the board."--French History

"An excellent study."--Owen White, The Historian

"Daughton's analysis is both subtle and nuanced, revealing the importance not only of religious conflict in the construction of France's colonial empire."--Caroline Ford, University of California