A Compromised Commerce with East India: Lucien Bonaparte’s La Tribu indienne, ou Édouard et Stellina (1799)
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Date
2020
Authors
Moore, Fabienne
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press
Abstract
In 1799 Lucien Bonaparte (1775-1840) published an equivocal exotic, sentimentalist, and epic novel La Tribu indienne, ou Édouard et Stellina set in Ceylon. Likely pressured by his brother Napoléon Bonaparte, Lucien quickly suppressed a novel avowedly anticolonial. This article analyzes Lucien Bonaparte’s critique of colonial practices and commerce as politically equivocal or “compromised,” and traces the ambivalence of his post-revolutionary novel to its main sources of inspiration, the best-selling Histoire philosophique des deux Indes published by Guillaume Raynal in 1780. Ultimately, La Tribu indienne reflects the impossible construction of an enlightened or soft colonialism à la française.
Description
26 pages
Keywords
Lucien Bonaparte, Guillaume Raynal, colonial trade, Colonialism, East India, French literature
Citation
Copyright © 2000 Trustees of Boston University. This article first appeared in Studies in Romanticism, Volume 59, Issue 3, Fall 2020 pages 273-298. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press.