Overview
- Presents a range of topics in a variety of colonial contexts, with examples from Algeria, Senegal, Indochina, and France
- Combines research on the history of welfare, demography, and medicine
- Covers a broad chronology, revealing the evolution of ideas about welfare and demography as the French Empire expanded
Part of the book series: New Directions in Welfare History (NDWH)
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Table of contents (11 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Reviews
"This edited volume brings together cutting-edge research on French colonial and postcolonial efforts to manipulate and control non-white populations, and especially non-white women’s reproductive bodies. It is a must-read for scholars interested in how the long-time French imperial obsession with race and reproductive sexuality shapes the modern welfare state."
—Nimisha Barton, Visiting Scholar, UC Irvine, USA
“In a welcome addition to the field, this significant book analyses France’s colonial and post-colonial population control projects. The authors’ comprehensive geographic and chronological analyses examine reproduction, marriage, sexuality, bodies, and labour through such lenses as gender, race, sexuality, religion, and class. The authors also present convincing evidence of how people rejected and refused population control.”
—Jennifer Anne Boittin, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
“This book brings together contributions that address the French Empire around the globe from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, always with attention to race, gender, and ethnicity. This ambitious geographic and chronological sweep demonstrates that whether in the Caribbean, North America, the Indian Ocean, Africa, or France itself, the French colonial state consistently sought to manage reproduction in ways seen to fit best with its goals for empire. While the precise goals changed, this volume demonstrates the deeply rooted and ongoing imbrication of population management and racism. All scholars of France and its empires will find inspiration in these wide-ranging chapters, each tightly focused on the relationship between French colonialism and mechanisms of population control.”
—Jennifer Palmer, Associate Professor of History, University of Georgia, USA
“This rich collection of chapters covers an impressively broad range of locales—from Pondicherry and Cambodia to Marseille and Réunion, among others. Collectively, the authors bring remarkable nuance to the ways that reproduction, family life, health, and migration have been shaped by colonial dynamics in the francophone world. Each of these essays draws on meticulous archival research to bring us some of the most innovative scholarship in the field of French Studies today. This collection’s astounding chronological scope provides us with more than four centuries of history and its global approach gives us a birds-eye view of empire’s most intimate interventions.”
—Jessica Lynne Pearson, Associate Professor of History, Macalester College, USA
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Melissa K. Byrnes is Professor of History at Southwestern University, in the USA. Her research focuses on migration, race, empire, activism, and human rights. In addition to publishing the book Making Space: Neighbors, Officials, and North African Migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon (2023), she has written articles for journals including Cold War History, French Politics, Culture & Society, French Cultural Studies, and French History and Civilization.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Fertility, Family, and Social Welfare between France and Empire
Book Subtitle: The Colonial Politics of Population
Editors: Margaret Cook Andersen, Melissa K. Byrnes
Series Title: New Directions in Welfare History
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26024-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-26023-0Published: 29 November 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-26026-1Due: 30 December 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-26024-7Published: 28 November 2023
Series ISSN: 2730-7662
Series E-ISSN: 2730-7670
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVII, 264
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations
Topics: Social History, History of France, Imperialism and Colonialism, History of Medicine, Politics of the Welfare State, Demography