France attempted to fuse nation and empire by incorporating colonies as brothers and subjects

Evidence

The French, in contrast to the British and all other nations in Europe, actually tried in recent times to combine ius with imperium and to build an empire in the old Roman sense. They alone at least attempted to develop the body politic of the nation into an imperial political structure, believed that “the French nation (was) marching …to spread the benefits of French civilization”; they wanted to incorporate overseas possessions into the national body by treating the conquered peoples as “both …brothers and …subjects—brothers in the fraternity of a common French civilization, and subjects in that they are disciples of French light and followers of French leading.” This was partly carried out when colored delegates took their seats in the French Parliament and when Algeria was declared to be a department of France. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 353

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘ius with imperium’ model — nation fused with imperial legal-political structure — which is a recurring concept Arendt sets against British indirect rule.
• XREF: The French ‘brothers and subjects’ formula is the assimilationist counterpart to British indirect rule; connects to later postcolonial theory on French assimilation vs British association, and to the Islamophobia field’s reading of French republicanism’s claim to universalism masking colonial hierarchy. — connects to: the MOC “The Republic’s Impossible Embrace: How Universalism Turned Algeria from the Future of France into Its Undoing”