Beyond the Ocean

Reviews / Votes

In this epic, powerful, and transformative telling of the history of the French Atlantic world, Hodson and Rushforth offer us a new way of understanding empire and its many contemporary legacies. Crafted from a remarkably rich set of archives and material culture and a deep understanding of cultural, economic, and intellectual history, Beyond the Ocean foregrounds African and Indigenous voices and the role of women as it brings alive little-known historical figures and astounding moments of encounter and exchange. * Laurent Dubois, author of Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution * Beyond the Ocean is a revelation. Hodson and Rushforth retell the story of France's engagement in the Atlantic world not from the aloof perspective of kings and courtiers but from the intimate viewpoint of sailors, traders, and entrepreneurs in France, West Africa, and the Americas who together fashioned vital and dynamic transatlantic communities. * Andres Resendez, University of California, Davis * Magisterial in scope, Beyond the Ocean restores to view a French Atlantic world whose reach and complexity matched those of its more famous Iberian and British rivals. Perhaps most remarkable, the never-before-heard stories of countless Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans share equal billing in Hodson and Rushforth's reconstruction of four centuries of transatlantic trade and conquest. All students of empire will want to read this landmark work. * Alice L. Conklin, Ohio State University * Hodson and Rushforth have crafted a stunning retelling of France's historical entanglements with the Atlantic world centering on the human experience and on the overseas rather than an institutional metropolitan perspective. This book is sweeping in its scope, rich in its visual program, painstaking in its details, and delightful in its prose. * Cecile Fromont, Harvard University *