Tracing the Pacific and colonial history, this book consists of multiple studies of the interconnections between culture and imperial power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It examines the European presence in contested territories such as Tahiti, New Caledonia, and Wallis and Futuna, and the conflict in Panama, Indochina, and Japan.

The concluding discussions engage Japanese and French debates on the nature of political, economic, civic, and sentimental life east and west, and the possibilities of love in modern states as they mutually struggle to define what is common to all of the above studies: conflicting engagements with love for and against the empire in the Pacific. Through a wealth of primary sources, Matsuda describes the empire through the eyes of Tahitian monarchs, Kanak warriors, French politicos, prisoners, and Central American labourers, among others. He argues that French imperialism in the Pacific, both real and imagined, was registered most forcefully in the language of desire and love - for lost islands, for untouched people, for promised wealth and riches, and for carnal pleasure. "Empire of Love" promises to be an imaginative and ground-breaking work in imperial history, as well as in the growing field of Pacific Studies.