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.