Europe s imperial projects were often predicated on a series of legal and scientific distinctions that were frequently challenged by the reality of social and sexual interactions between the colonized and the colonizers.When Emmanuelle Saada discovered a 1928 decree defining the status of persons of mixed parentage born in French Indochina the metis she found not only a remarkable artifact of colonial rule, but a legal bombshell that introduced race into French law for the first time. The decree was the culmination of a decades-long effort to resolve the metis question : the educational, social, and civil issues surrounding the mixed population. Operating at the intersection of history, anthropology, and law, Empire s Children reveals the unacknowledged but central role of race in the definition of French nationality.Through extensive archival work in both France and Vietnam, and a close reading of primary and secondary material from the Pacific islands and sub-Saharan and North Africa, Saada has created in Empire s Children an original and compelling perspective on colonialism, law, race, and culture from the end of the nineteenth century until decolonization.

Europe s imperial projects were often predicated on a series of legal and scientific distinctions that were frequently challenged by the reality of social and sexual interactions between the colonized and the colonizers.When Emmanuelle Saada discovered a 1928 decree defining the status of persons of mixed parentage born in French Indochina the metis she found not only a remarkable artifact of colonial rule, but a legal bombshell that introduced race into French law for the first time. The decree was the culmination of a decades-long effort to resolve the metis question : the educational, social, and civil issues surrounding the mixed population. Operating at the intersection of history, anthropology, and law, Empire s Children reveals the unacknowledged but central role of race in the definition of French nationality.Through extensive archival work in both France and Vietnam, and a close reading of primary and secondary material from the Pacific islands and sub-Saharan and North Africa, Saada has created in Empire s Children an original and compelling perspective on colonialism, law, race, and culture from the end of the nineteenth century until decolonization.