Empire of Ruins: France in Roman Africa, 1830-1900

Biddlestone, Jessica

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-2gnk-k225

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Empire of Ruins: France in Roman Africa, 1830-1900

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This dissertation, titled “Empire of Ruins: France in Roman Africa, 1830-1900,” explores the relationship between French colonialism in Algeria and Tunisia and the study of Roman Africa in the nineteenth century. Its central argument is that the French study and use of Roman ruins produced a version of Roman history that overdetermined the role that material development played in the successful colonization of Roman Africa and that this vision of the Roman past shaped French imperial practice and ideology. Roman history had long been a touchstone for French political and intellectual elites, but in North Africa, the engagement with the Roman past shaped the evolution of empire in unprecedented ways. Using the ruins of the Roman Empire, the French not only crafted a version of Roman history that could serve as a model for their own colonial ambitions, but they also revived, restored, and re-used ancient structures to support contemporary development. “Empire of Ruins” draws attention to the instability of political regimes that haunted nineteenth-century France, an instability that translated into colonial ideologies, policies, and practices. Faced with unclear directives from home, the French in North Africa turned to the remains of the Roman past to work through domestic and colonial challenges. Drawing on archives in France and Tunisia, “Empire of Ruins” traces the evolution of French colonialism in North Africa from the invasion of Algeria in 1830 to the turn of the century-an era, many historians argue, in which the French Third Republic established a distinct imperial ideology. This dissertation demonstrates that that policy, known as association, was based on the historical paradigm of Romanization that was crafted through the study and use of Roman ruins in North Africa. It makes clear that the colonial ideology of the French Third Republic was the product of a decades-long history of using the ancient past to grapple with the challenges and contradictions of empire.

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