Chasing Empire Across the Sea: Communications and the State in the French Atlantic, 1713-1763

by Kenneth J. Banks

Banks defines and applies the concept of communications in a far broader context than previous historical studies of communication, encompassing a range of human activity from sailing routes, to mapping, to presses, to building roads and bridges. He employs a comparative analysis of early modern French imperialism, integrating three types of overseas possessions usually considered separately - the settlement colony (New France), the tropical monoculture colony (the French Windward Islands), and the early Enlightenment planned colony (Louisiana) - offering a work of synthesis that unites the historiographies and insights from three formerly separate historical literatures. Banks challenges the very notion that a concrete "empire" emerged by the first half of the eighteenth century; in fact, French colonies remained largely isolated arenas of action and development. Only with the contraction and concentration of overseas possessions after 1763 on the Plantation Complex did a more cohesive, if fleeting, French empire first emerge.

Genres: France

344 pages, Hardcover

First published November 21, 2002

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Banks is a student of Pritchard I think, so this book can be read in conjunction with "In Search of Empire." Banks is answering the question - why was there no real coherent empire for the French in the early 18th century? He says communication problems. It was very hard to transfer the kind of top-down but also reciprocal absolutist experimentation (see William Beik) that was going on in France to the colonies, which were quite a distance away. And even if you tried to transfer these practices/ideals, it was so easy for everything to get muddled. All the colonies were different, for one thing. Quebec is not a lot like St. Domingue or Louisiana. The same message hits different people/places differently. And there are so many compexities - the local population of farmers/laborers/slaves is tough to effectively control. Merchant networks operating out of the Americas are very hard to control. Local colonial elites are not united. People aren't always looking to France for information, especially when it arrives from neighboring colonial sources a lot faster. In other words, it was very difficult to get people to toe the party line or even understand exactly what the party line was, or even decide on a party line that made sense for such a divergent set of colonies. All the more justification for France to say the hell with it, we are prioritizing domestic, continental things.

[Eric Pecile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very original administrative history of French Atlantic Empire. Banks successfully challenges postmodern notions of panoptic empire in the French colonial context.