12. French Imperialism ( Guest Lecture by Charles Keith)

France Since 1871 (HIST 276) France s colonial properties were thought of in the latter half of the nineteenth century as consolation for the bitter loss of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany. As civilian administrators came to replace military personnel in the colonies, and as more and more French settlers arrived, empire and colonialism came to play an important function in France s cultural selfpresentation. World War I heralded the eventual decline of the French empire, a decline realized at the hands o