Mary D. Lewis is Robert Walton Goelet Professor of French History at Harvard and affiliated faculty at the Harvard Law School. Her work has ranged from questions of immigrant rights in 20th-century France to the nature of French colonial rule in North Africa and the Caribbean since the late 18th century. Her current project, ‘The First French Decolonization: A New History of 19th-century Empire’, examines the transformation of France’s Atlantic empire after the loss of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti). Her most recent book is Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881-1938 (University of California Press, 2013). Professor Lewis will deliver her keynote address in a combined session of the AHA conference, and the George Rudé Seminar in French History and Civilisation