In the museum of man: race, anthropology, and empire in France, 1850-1950

Abstract

This book grew out of my earlier study of French colonial administration in West Africa between 1895 and 1930. In that work, I was struck by the ways in which high-level offi cials in the 1920s began to claim that the very African peoples whom the French were exploiting had “cultures” and “civilizations” worth preserving. I concluded then that this newfound French “respect” for an “authentic” African way of life was largely a political response designed to contain demands by young educated Africans for equal rights, but later I began to wonder how the best anthropologists of the day were talking about these same African societies. Th is question led me to the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, and through it, to a labyrinthine world of ideas, networks, and sci-entific practices not only unfamiliar to me, but also to many historians of modern France and to anthropologists everywhere. The result of my intel-lectual foray into this world, I hope, is a story that will interest historians and anthropologists equally.