In Search of Empire
The French in the Americas, 1670-1730
Published on 22. January 2004
Book
Hardback
514 pages
978-0-521-82742-3 (ISBN)
Description
The decades between 1670 and 1730 were the most formative in the history of the French colonies in the Americas. A sufficient number of migrants arrived from France and Africa to create settlements, establish economies of production, develop networks of exchange and trade, and adapt institutions of government and law to give substance and form to their resulting societies. Elusive Empire was the first full account of how during these years French settlers came to the Americas. It examines how they and thousands of African slaves together with Amerindians constructed settlements and produced and traded commodities for export. Bringing together much evidence, the author explores how the newly constructed societies and new economies, without precedent in France, interacted with the growing international violence in the Atlantic world in order to present a fresh perspective of the multifarious French colonizing experience in the Americas.
Reviews / Votes
"Some books become must-read classics that no serious student can ignore. James Pritchard's In Search of an Empire: The French in Americas, 1670-1730 will undoubtedly be such a book....[It] is an extremely well written book...This superb study of French colonization in America offers one of the very best introductions to the subject available today. No serious student of French America can afford to bypass this book."- International Journal of Maritime History "This well-written work will become an indispensable reference for anyone interested in the history of France's first colonies."
- American Historical Review, Leslie Choquette "This is an impressively researched work."
- The Journal of American History, John T. McGrath, Boston University, Massachusetts "The author draws on archival findings as wells as scattered existing studies, and the book, with ample footnotes and an excellent bibliography, constitutes an invaluable resource for anyone interested in comparative colonialism."
- The Journal of Military History, Daniel A. Baugh, Cornell University "...the author's grasp of a rich and wide-ranging recent historiography [makes this his] ... most ambitious book. Those who lecture to undergraduates in comparative European colonial history will find this particularly useful."
The Northern Mariner "...highly informative... The author draws on archival findings as well as scattered existing studies, and the book, with ample footnotes and an excellent bibliography, constitutes an invaluable resource for anyone interested in comparative colonialism."
The Journal of Military History "The book will appeal to schoalrs of French America interested in synthetic treatment of their field by a prominent historian and to readers who are particularly curious about topics that Pritchard handles especially well, such as maritime, economic and military-imperial aspects of French colonial history." The Journal of Modern History Paul Mapp, College of William and Mary "Pritchard's meticulous dessection of colonial production alone seems certain to generate thousands of footnotes. We owe him a great debt for thsi thorough synthesis." - Christopher Hodson, University of Pennsylvania "...the work is an essential interpretation of the French colonies and an important resource on many of the details of colonial administration and warfare." -Thomas J. Lappas, H-French-Colonial
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 35 mm
Weight
977 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-82742-3 (9780521827423)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
05/2006
1st Edition
Cambridge University Press
€32.49
Available for download
Person
James Pritchard is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Queen's University. He is the author of Louis XV's Navy, 1748-1762 (1987), and Anatomy of a Naval Disaster (1995), which was awarded the Keith Matthews Prize by the Canadian Nautical Research Society and received a John Lyman Book Award from the North American Society for Oceanic History.
Content
List of tables; Maps and graphs; Illustrations; Preface; Dates, weights, measures and currencies; List of abbreviations; Part 1: Colonies Formed: 1. Colonial populations; 2. Settlements and societies; 3. Production; 4. Trade and exchange; 5. Government and politics; Part 2: Colonies Defended: 6. The Franco-Dutch War in the Americas, 1672-8; 7. France and the Nine Years' War in the Americas; 8. The War of the Spanish Succession in the Americas; 9. Elusive empire; Appendices.