In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, George Steinmetz – author of the major new monograph “The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought. French Sociology and the Overseas Empire” – sketches the manifold entanglements of French sociology with the French Empire and colonialism; discusses the key ideas and innovations that have emerged in this context; dissects how indigenous scholars fared within the vast network of French institutions over time; illuminates his own approach to intellectual history he calls a historical socio-analysis of the social sciences; and reflect on how contemporary agendas of decolonization could be made more convincing and fruitful, not least by drawing on what French sociologists of colonialism have “partially and tentatively foreseen.”