Abstract: The existence of a colonial empire may have been a given in 1930s France, yet most people knew little about it and were unaware of the huge upheavals it was provoking, despite the Paris Colonial Exhibition of 1930 and the displays at the Ethnographic Museum. This geographically fragmented and administratively diverse space gave rise to nationalist movements in several places. In such a context, Giraudoux’s irony would surely have been lost.
