Empire and internationalism in French revolutionary socialist thought, 1871-1885

This article explores the role of colonialism and internationalism in French revolutionary socialist thought at the beginning of the Third Republic. Whilst French revolutionary socialists frequently employed colonial examples and operated within wider traditions of either imperialism or anticolonialism, the conceptof‘colonialism’itselfremainedvagueandundefinedintheirthought. Previousliteratureonthe subject has focused overwhelmingly on the writings of Communards deported to New Caledonia in the 1870s, however this article argues that the deportees in fact remained theoretically unconcerned with colonialism. Rather, it was those who remained in Europe that produced more clearly elaborated theories on empire and international engagement. Such ideas subsequently served to demarcate the limits and possibilities of universal equality and solidarity, which were central to revolutionary socialist thought in this period. Consequently, it shall be suggested that despite their recent rise in popularity, empire and colonialism are not the best categories of analysis for approaching such themes, for they cannot be isolated from broader concerns with international and transnational thought.