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An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914

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Defined as `ideas behind, motivations for and implementation of programs designed to reform and develop colonial societies,' French colonial ideology was not programmatic and did not borne out of revolutionary republican values. Instead, the case studies of Indochina, Madagascar and Tahiti and the Marquesas revealed it to be `a set of individual projects defined by degrees of dissent, debate, competition and collaboration between people both at home and abroad.' At the forefront of the empire, missionaries, Daughton argued, are essential to understanding republican attitudes toward colonialism. Civilizing policies came about `in the fires of religious resentment and political confrontation,' an exchange that underscored `les deux France' but exposed `how malleable and fragmented Catholic and Republic ideologies really were.'

Taking place in the backdrop of nationalism, the Dreyfus affair was emblematic of `two competing concepts of French identity,' pitting the `republicans versus Catholics, secular versus religious and left versus right.' Prior to 1880s, missionaries `rejected liberalism and nationalism and remained committed to Catholic traditions.' Pere Guelach epitomized those views as he `failed to see their work tied to French rule, was openly hostile about many of his lay compatriots and even believed the savages will have a higher place in heaven.' After 1880s, anticlericalism of metropolitan France not only challenged the missionaries in the colonies but could also militated against the republicans' own civilizing goals.

A complicated collaboration existed in Indochina: the administration used `the missions as effective tools for spreading French influence' while the Catholic missionaries, such as Bishop Puginier, sought to influence the government to benefit evangelizing. The Freemasons' fierce attack in Meyrena affair, best exemplified by Camile Paris' polemics, compelled the missions `to deflect criticism and protect missions from damaging legislation' by declaring patriotism and `retooling religious goals to correspond with the republican civilizing mission.' Aimed to sway public opinion, the clerical authority reinvented Pigneau `as both a hero for Catholicism and a dedicated servant of French colonialism.' For the sake of social stability, high-ranking French officials, such as Klobukowski, `did not take sides' and adopted policies that created `independent republican organizations like the Mission laique.' As a result, even after bearing the blunt of the anticlerical attacks, the missions remained in place and prospered in Indochina.

On the other hand, the failure of the Tahiti and the Marquesas missions to defend themselves against attacks and voice patriotism invited wholesale dismantlement. `Gender influenced republican approach to civilization,' and prior to the anticlerical era, worked in favor of the missionary sisters, who `represented hope for future Polynesian mother and their families.' As the region experienced rapid depopulation, the deficiencies of the civilizing mission reported by the likes of painter Paul Gaugauin with accounts and fiction pieces that inculpated the missions and officials' deceptions and induced successful anticlerical assault against the Catholic missions. In 1904, Governor Cor `shut down the all Catholic schools and revoked their official legal status.' The replacing ecoles laiques `drew only a fraction of the students the missions had' the anti-Catholic polices, in effect, `sacrificed the republic's own colonial ideology- its own civilizing mission- in the process.'

Ironically, Madagascar was a complete bouleversement of fortune for the Catholics and stranger still, the Jesuits. Driven by the fear of a Malagasy insurrection incited by the English Protestant, the colonial government `accepted and even cheered Catholic mission in the pacification of the country.' Furthermore, with `a long tradition of affinity for the Catholic church,' the military backed the Jesuits. Governor-general Augagneur's 1905 anti-Protestant reform policies that restricted `building and maintaining churches, religious meetings and job opportunities for church-school students not only sacrificed republican civilizing ideology' but also attracted British pressure to guarantee freedom of religion. The resulting 1913 decree `gave legal legitimacy to Catholic missions by officially recognizing them' since the officials in Paris could not possibly grant freedom only to Protestants - that was how the British Protestants helped save French Catholicism.

During the intervening years, the missionaries sought to reshape public perception by defining their `main occupation as an essentially French characteristics.' The defense and campaigns by publications like the Almanach des Missions, Annales and Missions Catholiques, emphasized the `missionary's contributions to colonialism' and infused a `rhetorical blend of Christianity, civilization and patriotism.' Histories were rewritten and retold. An Empire Divided explored the idiosyncrasies of French colonial ideology and the centrality of patriotism, at least outwardly, in the dialogue between the different actors of the civilizing missions.

This is an extraordinary book that casts France's global empire in a new light. In crisp and lively writing, the author reveals how Catholic missionaries lay at the heart of an ostensibly secular republican project. This exciting and original book should interest all readers who want to explore the history of modern France, colonialism, and the intersection of religion and politics in the modern world.