The Taste of Empire: Colonial Food in Interwar Paris

This dissertation investigates the promotion and consumption of colonial foods in interwar Paris. During this period, food became central to the political imagination of what France's global empire meant for the French nation. The loss of French agricultural self-sufficiency during the war and the failure of the French empire to efficiently meet all of France's immediate food needs convinced many in the colonial lobby that the organized expansion of colonial agriculture and the orderly and profitable export of colonial foodstuffs to France were the most critical aspects of colonial development. At the same time, the colonial lobby seized upon the example of those colonial foodstuffs that did reach France during the war as powerful symbols. The role of the empire in feeding France became a central aspect of a new narrative of Greater France, one in which the colonies were portrayed as necessary to sustaining life in the metropole.;There were serious limitations, however, in the popular consumption of this narrative. While French consumers embraced a few new colonial foods---especially tropical fruits and curry---the rejection of many colonial foods by the Parisian public suggests real cultural resistance to the notion that the development of Greater France was essential to improving life in the metropole. The refusal to incorporate colonial foods into individual bodies reflected a popular anxiety over the incorporation of the colonies into Greater France.;Food is a remarkable lens from which to analyze the history of imperialism because foods are embodied global commodities as well as potent cultural symbols. By examining the trajectories of colonial food---how it moved through the empire, how it was promoted, and its place in French culture and cuisine---my dissertation takes into account both discourse and practice in the center and at the margins of empire.