India in the French Imagination:

Peripheral Voices, 1754–1815

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Kate Marsh

Empires in Perspective

This book examines metropolitan French-language representations of India from the period between the recall of Dupleix to France, which effectively curtailed French expansionist policies in India, to the Second Treaty of Paris, which confirmed the territorial settlement of 1763 and France’s subordinate position to Britain. Marsh explores how a European power, territorially peripheral in India, conceived of both India and the administrative rule there of its rival, Britain.

For the French, the image of India had a polyvalent nature, functioning both as a trope of exoticism and as a site that was inescapably imbued with expansionist failure and the concomitant success of la perfide Albion. Employing a comparative approach, and questioning the colonizer-versus-colonized binary which persists within colonial discourse analysis, Marsh posits a triangular discursive relationship between Britain, France and India. Challenging the grand narrative of the British imperial conquest of India, she explores the consequences for French culture of competing colonialisms on the Indian subcontinent.

Readership

Empire Studies, Cultural Studies

Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: The French Presence in India from the Recall of Dupleix to the Treaty of Paris
Chapter 2: Constructing India as Other: Fiction, Travelogues, and Ambassadors
Chapter 3: Subjugating the Indian Other: The Indienne, Feminization and Female Writers
Chapter 4: Mythical India
Chapter 5: Historical India: Narratives of the Past
Chapter 6: India and the Philosophes
Conclusion

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