It is a foolish commentator indeed who would attempt to claim a precise moment in history when anthropology in the French-speaking world became postcolonial – that point in time when predominantly French anthropological thought turned on its own history of involvement in the imperial enterprise and began to challenge anthropological theories and practices grounded in the discourses and assumptions of colonialism. That anthropology was one of the handmaidens of colonialism, a science of empire, is indisputable and well documented. For many, the postcolonial turn has yet to occur and anthropology is still irredeemably and fatally tainted by its colonial origins.

A spectacular illustration of the origins of the relationship between the ambitions of empire and colonial anthropology is provided by Napoleon's military expedition to Egypt (1798–99). Although the expedition was intended to extend French trade and disrupt Britain's access to its eastern empire, Bonaparte also included in the occupying force 160 scientists from the Institut de France, whose task was to research the culture of both ancient and modern Egypt and to construct an archive which would be of use to France's present and future imperial ambitions (Néret, 2002). As a consequence, the model of anthropological research methods for successive generations of French anthropologists was based upon the Napoleonic expedition: a kind of scientific raid on Otherness, collecting artefacts and reporting on the strangeness of aliens while marching across exotic territory.