Roads out of French Empire opens new windows into the political, social and cultural negotiations that constituted efforts to reconfigure the French empire in the 20th century. It does this by situating key sites and moments of French imperialism and anti-colonialism in the period from 1931 to 1962 within a more entangled global perspective.

Each case study in the book reveals how a pivotal moment in French imperial history occurred within a globally connected context. These case studies are analysed as locations in space and time which have been key to defining and re-defining multiple and often conflicting histories within the Francophone world. They are understood on their own terms - in respect to each location's much longer national and regional histories and to the historically contingent motivations of the relevant historical actors - rather than as episodes in French history. In so doing, the book de-centres the colonial metropole of Paris by placing it within a constellation of locations throughout the French empire.