Böcker av Eric T. Jennings

This book is a vivid history of Madagascar from the pre-colonial era to decolonization, examining a set of French colonial projects and perceptions that revolve around issues of power, vulnerability, health, conflict, control and identity.

Combines the histories of empire, leisure, tourism, culture, and medicine to explain how therapeutic spas for colonists facilitated French imperialism between 1830 and 1962.

Intended as a reminder of Europe for soldiers and clerks of the empire, the city of Dalat, located in the hills of Southern Vietnam, was built by the French in an alpine locale that reminded them of home. This book uncovers the strange 100-year history of a colonial city that was conceived as a center of power and has now become a kitsch tourist destination famed for its colonial villas, flower beds, pristine lakes, and pastoral landscapes. Eric T. Jennings finds that from its very beginning, Dalat embodied the paradoxes of colonialism-it was a city of leisure built on the backs of thousands of coolies, a supposed paragon of hygiene that offered only questionable protection from disease, and a new venture into ethnic relations that ultimately backfired. Jennings' fascinating history opens a new window onto virtually all aspects of French Indochina, from architecture and urban planning to violence, labor, metissage, health and medicine, gender and ethic relations, schooling, religion, comportments, anxieties, and more.

Early in World War II, thousands of refugees traveled from France to Vichy-controlled Martinique, en route to safer shores in North, Central, and South America. While awaiting transfer, the exiles formed influential ties with one another and with local black dissidents. As Eric T. Jennings shows, what began as expulsion became a kind of rescue.