2011, Vol., No.24

Korean Review of French History 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.67

pISSN : 1229-702X
https://journal.kci.go.kr/krfh

This article aims to analyze one aspect of the financial revolution, the tax reforms of the modern state. A comparative study on the taxation in England and in France shows us three points as follows:First, the pattern of tax increase was different between England and France. Tax revenues of England made explosive and steady growth since the Restoration. On the contrary, those of France continued to fluctuate throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Second, the tax reform in England should be reviewed. In spite of the abolition of tax farming and the centralization of taxation, the tax administration was far from the public finance. The notorious private interest prevailed tenaciously over the finance of England. On the other hand, France found a way to enhance the fiscal efficiency by institutionalizing the pursuit of private interests of the financiers and by ensuring the short term loan from them. Third, the different paths of the two states resulted not only from the presence of the parliament but also from the war. England, saved from the continental wars, didn’t suffer from the financial pressure that ruined the royal treasury of France and forced her to sell the offices. Thus, France couldn’t liquidate financiers who took the reins of government through the venality, while England pursued the tax reforms abolishing the tax farming and establishing the control of the tax revenue.

This present work intends to explore certain aspects pertaining to the French perception of Indo-China in the nineteenth century by examining French travel accounts of Indo-China from the period. That is, I investigate how the popular image of Indo-China was formed in nineteenth-century France. The paper is organized into two parts as follows. The first part traces the formation of travel accounts as a writing genre in modern France, reviews the historical importance of travel accounts of Indo-China, examines the vulgarization of travel accounts in nineteenth-century France, and analyzes the influence of the illustrated periodical Le Tour du monde(1860-1914), which means Around the World, on Indo-China image formation. The second part provides some specific examples of how Le Tour du monde played a significant role in the formation of an imaginary Indo-China by analyzing two illustrated accounts published by Le Tour du monde: Henri Mouhot’s(1863) and Francis Garnier’s(1870). In conclusion, Indo-China was an object to explore and conquer for the French in the nineteenth century as they attempted to define the region. That space was a world easily specified by the text and images printed on the pages of Le Tour du monde. Most importantly, the Angkor Wat that the French public ‘discovered’ in the nineteenth century through Le Tour du monde played a key role in inducing the French public to fantasize an imaginary Indo-China, which still resonates with the French to this day.

Novels, cartoons, movies and illustrations related to colonialism formed very characteristic cultural configuration, imprinting the theme ‘empire’ in french culture. However, what has more powerful influence and public riffle effect than this ‘colonial culture’ is probably ‘education’. Colonial education contributed to the birth of ‘Homo imperialis’ through the special method(dual mechanism which was less studied) for juvenile education. The first one is ‘school’. This thesis aims to study how ‘imperial human’ was made and developed by analysing the pictures in the text books. Second one is ‘Scouting movement’. I want to examine how Scouting movement, as an educational activity free from traditional principle, played a role in colonial education. The cross study of these two characteristic ‘propaganda media’ will make it possible to understand the complexity and the depth of colonial education for adolescents and to figure out the crafty method created between systematic knowledge learning at school and unconscious incorporation of value through scout activity. The combined study of these two scopes will make it possible to understand the Frenchmen’s awareness and interest of colonial themes and their concealment after independence. It is no doubt that colonial education participated in active and in-depth internalization of colonialism to many generations at school, the place where they propagate ideology very similar to formal slogan, and by Scouting movement that aims to realize the dream of preserving empire by tacit body training. That is how over the years the French youths in the 20th century has unconsciously become ‘Homo imperialis’