The Long Shadow of Empire: France’s Colonial Past and the Struggle for Its Future

A sweeping history of power, conquest, and memory — and how an empire that no longer exists still shapes one of the world’s most influential nations.For over three centuries, France ruled vast colonies across Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific. From the sugar plantations of Saint-Domingue to the battlefields of Algeria and Indochina, the French Empire reshaped global politics and left behind a legacy as complex as it is contested.InThe Long Shadow of Empire, historian Julien Peltier traces the rise and fall of France’s colonial project and shows how its aftershocks still reverberate today. He explores:Slavery and revolutionin the Caribbean, including the world-changing Haitian Revolution.The brutal wars of decolonizationin Vietnam and Algeria, which scarred both colonizer and colonized.Françafrique, France’s hidden postcolonial network of influence in Africa.Immigration, identity, and memory— how colonial history lives on in today’s France.The politics of forgetting and remembering— from statues and museums to presidential speeches.With gripping storytelling and a historian’s eye for detail, Peltier connects the colonial past to today’s struggles over race, immigration, and national identity. For American readers, his narrative resonates deeply, echoing the United States’ own reckoning with slavery, segregation, and contested history.The Long Shadow of Empireis a vivid, timely, and essential book for anyone who wants to understand modern France — and the world empire helped to create.Read more