Empire of Love Histories of France and the Pacific [Paperback]

In this broad-ranging survey of Paris, Tahiti, Indochina, Japan, New Caledonia, and the South Pacific generally, Matt Matsuda illustrates the fascinating interplay that shaped the imaginations of both colonizer and colonized. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Matsuda describes the constitution of a French Pacific through the eyes of Tahitian monarchs, Kanak warriors, French politicos and prisoners, Asian revolutionaries and Central American laborers, among others. He argues that French imperialism in the Pacific, both real and imagined, was registered most forcefully in languages of desire and love--for lost islands, promised wealth and riches, carnal and spiritual pleasures--and political affinities. Exploring the conflicting engagements with love for and against the empire in the Pacific, this book is an imaginative and ground-breaking work in global imperial and colonial histories, as well as Pacific histories.

Introduction: Empire of Love: Histories of France and the Pacific
1. Rochefort: The Family Romance of the French Pacific
2. Panama: Geopolitics of Desire
3. Walls and Futuna: Martyrs and Memories
4. Society Islands: Tahitian Archives
5. New Caledonia: Prisoners of Love
6. Indochina: The Romance of the Runis
7. Japan: The Tears of Madame Chrysanth?me
Afterword: The Lost Continent
Notes
Index

Matsuda offers engaging and well-written vignettes of French imperial experience as lived and remembered which, are explored through literary and archival evidence. The book succeeds, to a considerable extent, in articulating the place of love and desire in the imperial project. Even readers who disagree with Matsuda's argument may be seduced by the stimulating ideas in this work. --Joseph Zizek,The International History Review

Well researched in historical and literary sources and eloquently written, Matt Matsuda's thought-provokingEmpire of Lovereveals in an original way the entanglementl£'