Books & ideas

In All Their Singularity

Alain Policar — 2025-07-10T08:00:00Z

We need to rebuild universalism, not as an overarching model to be applied to all regions of the world, but on the basis of their own singularity—laterally, not from above.

The Holy Roman Empire and colonization

Gabriel Redon — 2025-04-24T08:30:00Z

What role did the Holy Roman Empire play in the first colonial conquests of the early modern period? What was the role of its princes, institutions, diplomacy, sailors, and merchants?

The Cultural Hegemony of Colonialism

Alain Policar — 2024-09-03T07:00:00Z

The decolonial movement is diverse and often highly fragmented. Nevertheless, it remains a major theoretical force, one concerned with tracking down all forms of Eurocentrism and showing how knowledge is always necessarily situated.

Castes and State in India

Jules Naudet — 2024-04-19T07:30:00Z

Quotas in India contribute to the emancipation of lower castes while producing perverse effects that are difficult to control. Rohini Somanathan questions the right balance between targeted positive discrimination policies and public policies with a universal vocation.

Africanist

Elara Bertho — 2024-01-16T11:08:00Z

In her memoir, the renowned French researcher Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch looks back on her Jewish childhood, her first experience of Africa in the 1960s, the neo-colonialist stance of some academics, and her intellectual and political career, in which anti-racism has played a pivotal role.

The Illusions of Colonial Schooling

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch — 2023-06-20T14:45:05Z

What motivated French colonisers to found schools in the Maghreb and Subsaharan Africa? Carole Reynaud-Paligot shows how their superiority complex ended up overcoming their meritocratic ideals and dreams of diversity.

Snapshots of colonial violence

Frédéric Rousseau — 2023-05-11T06:47:00Z

Like machine guns, Kodak cameras make it possible to celebrate Western “modernity”. But to what extent do the photographs show European violence in Africa and Asia?

Medicine and Race during the French Empire

Élodie Edwards-Grossi — 2023-05-04T06:20:00Z

Drawing on treatises by naturalists and doctors, as well as reports from colonial missions, historian Delphine Peiretti-Courtis examines how racialized bodies were belittled and dehumanized by medical professionals in the French Empire from the 19^th century onwards.

The Western Conquest of the Silk Routes

Claude Markovits — 2022-06-17T08:24:20Z

The question has long preoccupied historians studying international trade and capitalism: Why did European trading companies, above all the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the English East India Company (EIC), dominate Eurasian trade from the 17^th century onwards?

When Art Colonises

Guillaume Mazeau — 2020-09-28T07:00:00Z

In a wide-ranging essay on the construction of race in Enlightenment art, Anne Lafont tracks down the responsibility of images in the naturalization of racial difference and the justification of colonialism.