French Imperialism

The podcast I listened to most recently discusses "French Imperialism" and can be found on academicearth.org. This video is a lecture from a class at Yale University entitled "France Since 1871", and the lecture is taught by a graduate student by the name of Charles Keith. The content of this lecture revolves around the development of French imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and how the growth of the empire in turn gave rise to a strong French nationalist movement. The theories he discusses involving the growth of nationalism and imperialism echo the work of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, where the majority of the emphasis is placed on the cultural significance of empire building within the metropole and its relationship with the emergence of popular nationalism. This lecture was not only interesting, but also entertaining. Keith did an excellent job at keeping his audience engaged by throwing in a few jokes and changing up the material. It seemed likely to me that the topic he was speaking on was the same as his dissertation, as he had an extensive amount of sources readily available and enmeshed within his lecture. He constantly quoted primary sources, often times in the original French, during the lecture and made good use of a variety of sources to back up the claims he was making. Overall, this lecture was very informative and interesting, and was an excellent representation of a well researched and well written planned historical lecture.