The aim of the book is to show, from a historian’s point of view, how strange the early Christians must have seemed to their contemporaries and what difficulties they faced in living their faith in a non-Christian world. In doing so, it will become clear that Christians chose a huge variety of paths and that there was no linear progression toward later forms of Christianity. Therefore, the seemingly familiar early Christians are strange even to modern observers. In order to make clear their diversity and strangeness, I do not follow chronological order, but treat the subject matter according to different topics, in four main chapters. The first illustrates the difficulties for Christians to position themselves between Jews and pagans, the second the dispute over forms of authority within the Christian group, the third the challenges of everyday life for Christians, the fourth the relationship to the political system up to Constantine the Great, who turned to Christianity. In addition, I discuss the methodological and theoretical issues involved.

The Conclusion traces the fruits of Ancien Régime imperial innovation and colonial experimentation into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to establish a new perspective on how continuity, innovation, and rupture conditioned the broader narrative of French colonial empire. It looks at the long road to the creation of the DOM-TOM (départements et territoires d’outre-mer) as well as at the ideological underpinnings of French imperial incursions into West and North Africa. Based on this brief overview, it proposes a non-linear history French colonial empire.