Richard Ivan Jobs
Emily Marker has written a fantastic book that centers young people as pivotal actors in the upheavals of the postwar era. Through them, she reveals the tension between those promoting a French Union that aspired to decolonization without independence and those pursuing European integration while trying to not relinquish colonies.
Elizabeth Foster
In Black France, White Europe, Marker breaks exciting new ground in French, European, and African history. Focusing on youth allows her to integrate metropole and colony in a single frame as well as to situate France in its African and European contexts simultaneously, showing how each informed the other.
Frederick Cooper
Looking at youth and education in postwar France, Emily Marker thoughtfully reveals tensions between France's interest in European integration and its acting as a colonial power. Black France, White Europe takes the reader into the heated debates over race, religion, and education of those years, arguments that still resonate today.