Christopher Church’s well-researched and innovative book is based on extensive archival sleuthing and covers a period of Caribbean history that has received relatively scant attention from scholars: the late nineteenth century through to the outbreak of World War I. With its principal geographic foci being Guadeloupe and Martinique, the study seeks to answer “two central questions: How did modern France reconcile its liberal convictions with its imperial ambitions? And how did a colonial citizenry transform the Republic and its concomitant definition of citizenship?” (236). Its “underlying theme,” meanwhile, is “the French identity of Antilleans” (237), which is creatively explored by way of Church’s compelling analyses of numerous environmental and sociopolitical disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes, labor strikes, conflagrations, and volcanic eruptions, none more devastating than the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée.

中文翻译：

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法属加勒比 - 天堂被毁：法属加勒比的灾难和公民身份。作者：克里斯托弗·M·丘奇。林肯：内布拉斯加大学出版社，2017 年。Pp。308. $65.00 布。

克里斯托弗·丘奇 (Christopher Church) 的深入研究和创新著作以广泛的档案调查为基础，涵盖了学者相对较少关注的加勒比历史时期：从 19 世纪后期到第一次世界大战爆发。其主要地理焦点是瓜德罗普岛和马提尼克岛，该研究试图回答“两个核心问题：现代法国如何调和其自由主义信念与其帝国野心？殖民地公民如何改变共和国及其随之而来的公民定义？” (236)。与此同时，它的“基本主题”是“安的列斯人的法国身份”（237），通过丘奇对众多环境和社会政治灾难（如飓风、地震、罢工、火灾、