An examination of techniques used by scholarly societies to classify people that constructed the image of an inferior "Other" to promote social stability at home and a relationship of domination or paternalism with non-Europeans abroad
Martin S. Staum is professor emeritus of history, University of Calgary, and author of Labeling People: French Scholars on Society, Race and Empire, 1815-1848 and Minerva's Message: Stabilizing the French Revolution.
"Sober, solid, and judicious. The analysis of the ideals held by members of the Paris societies casts new light on the supposedly scientific ideal about the hierarchy of human beings which lay behind France's colonial expansion as well as its harsh penal system. Staum's analysis also provides suggestive parallels to the current debate on how genes, rather than the shape of ones cranium, determine human destiny and the concomitant debate about nature versus nurture." James A. Leith, emeritus, Department of History, Queens University "This careful history of how issues concerning labeling developed in early nineteenth-century France provides extremely valuable background to colonial and imperial discourse in France n the later part of the nineteenth century, and contributes to a deeper understanding of the significance of these on-going issues in our own time. This book makes a significant contribution to research." Richard Lebrun, translator and editor of Maistre's An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon and St. Petersburg Dialogues: Or Conversations on the Temporal Government of Providence
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