Visualizing empire: Africa, Europe and the politics of representation

Abstract

"By the end of World War I, having fortified its colonial holdings in the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, the Indian Ocean, and Asia, France had expanded its dominion to the four corners of the earth. This volume examines how the French Empire encouraged a vibrant and engaging material culture--from commercial as well as political sources--to normalize its colonial project and racialized ideas of life in the empire. Drawing from documents and media held in the Getty Research Institute's ACHAC collections, Visualizing Empire analyzes aspects of colonialism manifest in the art, popular literature, games, maps, films, and exhibitions that represented, celebrated, or were created for France's colonies across the seas."--back cover.

Contents

Introduction: Visualizing empire / Rebecca Peabody, Steven Nelson and Dominic Thomas -- French Colonial collections at the Getty Research Institute / Frances Terpak -- Documenting (post)colonial visual histories: The global impact of the ACHAC Research Group / Pascal Blanchard and Dominic Thomas -- Decolonizing the ACHAC Collection / Patricia A. Morton -- Fragments of empire : Ephemera, toys, and the dynamics of colonial memory / Charles Forsdick -- Intersecting legacies of bandes dessinées and Belgian colonial instruction : Les aventures de Mbumbulu in nos images (1948-55) / Peter J. Bloom -- French colonialism : The rules of the game / Dominic Thomas -- Envisioning the desert: The Sahara and French colonial visual culture / Michelle H. Craig -- Representations of the tirailleur sénégalais and World War I / David Murphy -- On posters and postures : Colonial enlistment posters and the nationalist imagination in France / Lauren Taylor -- La France et ses colonies : Mapping, representing, and visualizing empire / Steven Nelson.