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An Empire of Facts: Colonial Power, Cultural Knowledge, and Islam in Algeria, 1870-1914
Contributor(s): Trumbull IV, George R. (Author)
ISBN: 0521516544     ISBN-13: 9780521516549
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
OUR PRICE:   $114.00  
Product Type: Hardcover
Published: December 2009
Qty:
Annotation: A fascinating account of the formation of French conceptions of Islam in France's largest and most important colony.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- History | Africa - North
- History | Europe - France
- History | World - General
Dewey: 965.03
LCCN: 2009028173
Series: Critical Perspectives on Empire
Physical Information: 0.9" H x 5.9" W x 8.9" (1.65 lbs) 328 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - North Africa
- Cultural Region - French
- Religious Orientation - Islamic
- Chronological Period - 1851-1899
- Chronological Period - 1900-1919
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
An Empire of Facts presents a fascinating account of the formation of French conceptions of Islam in France's largest and most important colony. During the period from 1870 to 1914, travelers, bureaucrats, scholars, and writers formed influential and long-lasting misconceptions about Islam that determined the imperial cultural politics of Algeria and its interactions with republican France. Narratives of Islamic mysticism, rituals, gender relations, and sensational crimes brought unfamiliar cultural forms and practices to popular attention in France, but also constructed Algerian Muslims as objects for colonial intervention. Personal lives and interactions between Algerian and French men and women inflected these texts, determining their style, content, and consequences. Drawing on sources in Arabic and French, this book places such personal moments at the heart of the production of colonial knowledge, emphasizing the indeterminacy of ethnography, and its political context in the unfolding of France's empire and its relations with Muslim North Africa.

Contributor Bio(s): Trumbull IV, George R.: - George R. Trumbull IV is Assistant Professor of History at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.