The French Colonial Imagination: Writing the Indian Uprisings, 1857-1858, from Second Empire to Third Republic

The French Colonial Imagination examines France’s critical response to the Indian uprisings of 1857–58 and their brutal suppression by the British. Drawing from texts produced during the Second Empire and the early Third Republic, Nicola Frith foregrounds the extent to which British India acted as a counter-narrative in the construction of France’s rival colonial discourse and its emerging “civilizing mission” alongside France’s persistent desire to compensate for its “loss” of India at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.