ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a particular set of ideas of turning empire into something else, and it addresses directly the ambiguity between belonging and distinction that was part of the politics of difference in empires at a moment when the nature of imperial power was very much in question, and it uses the concept of 'citizenship of empire' to explore that ambiguity. Political leaders in both European and African France were uncertain just where the 'nation' was and what the place of nationality in a multinational community might be. The French government's retreat from the social and economic implications of imperial citizenship meant the effective reversal of a policy that since the war had centralized power in Paris and insisted that France as a whole was the relevant unit of political contestation. European French leaders, including de Gaulle, thought that there was only one nationality too-that of the French Community.
