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

Author:   Kenneth J. Banks ,  Kenneth J. Banks
Publisher:   McGill-Queen's University Press
ISBN:  

9780773524446


Pages:   344
Publication Date:   21 November 2002
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

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


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Overview

"Drawing on a vast array of official correspondence, merchant's letters, ship's logs, and graphic material from archives and research libraries in Canada, France, and the United States, Kenneth Banks details how France, as the most powerful nation on the Continent and possessing a tradition of maritime interest in the Americas and West Africa dating back to the earliest years of the sixteenth century, seemed destined to take a leading role in exploiting and settling the Americas and establishing posts in West Africa. That it largely failed to do so can be explained in large part by problems emanating from information exchange in an early modern authoritarian state. Banks provides a historical context for the role of communications in the development of the imperial nation-state and offers an Atlantic World perspective on the growing body of literature revising the historical role of absolutism. 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."

Full Product Details

Author:   Kenneth J. Banks ,  Kenneth J. Banks
Publisher:   McGill-Queen's University Press
Imprint:   McGill-Queen's University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.90cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.667kg
ISBN:  

9780773524446


ISBN 10:   0773524444
Pages:   344
Publication Date:   21 November 2002
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

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Reviews

An ambitious study of an important, but difficult-to-reach dimension of European colonialism in America. The systematic comparison of the port towns of Quebec, New Orleans, and St Pierre is in itself a major contribution, but Banks' analysis offers much more. He explores an array of texts and information generated by the mundane operation of empire through the exciting lens of new cultural history, providing vital material and interpretation for a better comparative understanding of imperial communications systems across space and time. Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Department of History, Cornell University The comparative nature of the study is most welcome. Histories that compare and contrast the different parts of the French colonial world are few and far between. Banks is to be congratulated for having undertaken an ambitious inter-colonial study. A.J.B Johnston, author of Life and Religion at Louisbourg


Author Information

Kenneth Banks is an NEH fellow at the American Antiquarian Society. He is currently researching a book on French contraband in the Early Modern Atlantic World.

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