The Starving Empire: A History of Famine in France's Colonies
()
About this ebook
The Starving Empire traces the history of famine in the modern French Empire, showing that hunger is intensely local and sweepingly global, shaped by regional contexts and the transnational interplay of ideas and policies all at once. By integrating food crises in Algeria, West and Equatorial Africa, and Vietnam into a broader story of imperial and transnational care, Yan Slobodkin reveals how the French colonial state and an emerging international community took increasing responsibility for subsistence, but ultimately failed to fulfill this responsibility.
Europeans once dismissed colonial famines as acts of god, misfortunes of nature, and the inevitable consequences of backward races living in harsh environments. But as Slobodkin recounts, drawing on archival research from four continents, the twentieth century saw transformations in nutrition, scientific racism, and international humanitarianism that profoundly altered ideas of what colonialism could accomplish. A new confidence in the ability to mitigate hunger, coupled with new norms of moral responsibility, marked a turning point in the French Empire's relationship to colonial subjects—and to nature itself.
Increasingly sophisticated understandings of famine as a technical problem subject to state control saddled France with untenable obligations. The Starving Empire not only illustrates how the painful history of colonial famine remains with us in our current understandings of public health, state sovereignty, and international aid, but also seeks to return food—this most basic of human needs—to its central place in the formation of modern political obligation and humanitarian ethics.
Related to The Starving Empire
Related ebooks
The Politics of Imperial Memory in France, 1850–1900 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCaribbean New Orleans: Empire, Race, and the Making of a Slave Society Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJewish Universalisms: Mendelssohn, Cohen, and Humanity’s Highest Good Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArchaeologies of Colonialism: Consumption, Entanglement, and Violence in Ancient Mediterranean France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEating People Is Wrong, and Other Essays on Famine, Its Past, and Its Future Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Rebordering the Mediterranean: Boundaries and Citizenship in Southern Europe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology in France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStorytelling in Sixteenth-Century France: Negotiating Shifting Forms Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Human Reality: A Reinterpretation of Our Origins and Evolution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Age of Globalization: Anarchists and the Anticolonial Imagination Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Natural History of Revolution: Violence and Nature in the French Revolutionary Imagination, 1789–1794 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLatin America and Existentialism: A Pan-American Literary History (1864-1938) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Broken Village: Coffee, Migration, and Globalization in Honduras Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRefugees, Refuge, and Human Displacement Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Cosmopolitans: Race, Religion, and Republicanism in an Age of Revolution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond Nature and Culture Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5British civic society at the end of empire: Decolonisation, globalisation, and international responsibility Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCapitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Frankenstein of 1790 and Other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hour of Eugenics": Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Civilizing Mission in the Metropole: Algerian Families and the French Welfare State during Decolonization Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIberian Empires and the Roots of Globalization Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPeasant Politics of the Twenty-First Century: Transnational Social Movements and Agrarian Change Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlind Spot: How Neoliberalism Infiltrated Global Health Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Culture of Disaster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Scalpel, the Sword: The Story of Doctor Norman Bethune Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCaring Cash: Free Money and the Ethics of Solidarity in Kenya Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Politics For You
Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Capitalism and Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on the U.S.-Israeli War on the Palestinians Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago: The Authorized Abridgement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fear: Trump in the White House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race: The Sunday Times Bestseller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Closing of the American Mind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The U.S. Constitution with The Declaration of Independence and The Articles of Confederation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Starving Empire
0 ratings0 reviews