Overview

Europe’s imperial projects were often predicated on a series of legal and scientific distinctions that were frequently challenged by the reality of social and sexual interactions between the colonized and the colonizers.When Emmanuelle Saada discovered a 1928 decree defining the status of persons of mixed parentage born in French Indochina—the métis—she found not only a remarkable artifact of colonial rule, but a legal bombshell that introduced race into French law for the first time. The decree was the culmination of a decades-long effort to resolve the “métis question”: the educational, social, and civil issues surrounding the mixed population. Operating at the intersection of history, anthropology, and law, Empire’s Children reveals the unacknowledged but central role of race in the definition of French nationality. Through extensive archival work in both France and Vietnam, and a close reading of primary and secondary material from the Pacific islands and sub-Saharan and North Africa, Saada has created in Empire’s Children an original and compelling perspective on colonialism, law, race, and culture from the end of the nineteenth century until decolonization.

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Empire's Children is a brilliant and deeply researched exploration of the place of race in the French citizenship experience, focusing on the rights of mixed-race people in French Indochina and other colonies. Emmanuelle Saada deftly weaves together the perspectives of jurists, colonial officials, journalists, and the mixed-raced individuals themselves to demonstrate why the French Empire - and by extension, today's France - cannot be analyzed in black-and-white terms. A nuanced and important account, beautifully translated by Arthur Goldhammer. (Mary Dewhurst Lewis, Harvard University)

"""Empire's Children is a brilliant and deeply researched exploration of the place of race in the French citizenship experience, focusing on the rights of mixed-race people in French Indochina and other colonies. Emmanuelle Saada deftly weaves together the perspectives of jurists, colonial officials, journalists, and the mixed-raced individuals themselves to demonstrate why the French Empire - and by extension, today's France - cannot be analyzed in black-and-white terms. A nuanced and important account, beautifully translated by Arthur Goldhammer."" (Mary Dewhurst Lewis, Harvard University)"""

Author Information

Emmanuelle Saada is associate professor of French at Columbia University. Arthur Goldhammer is an award-winning translator who has translated books by Georges Duby, Jacques Le Goff, and Jean Starobinski.

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