Chasing Empire Across the Sea

Drawing from official correspondence, merchant's letters, ship's logs, and graphic archival material, Kenneth Banks explores the failure of transatlantic communications in helping to develop and maintain French imperialism during the height of France's first overseas empire in Quebec, New Orleans, and Saint Pierre, Martinique, in the eighteenth century. He provides historical context for the role of communications within the imperial nation-state, using a concept of communications that encompasses a range of human activity, from sailing routes, to mapping, to presses, to building roads and bridges. His comparative analysis integrates three areas usually studied seperately - the settlement colony, the tropical monoculture colony, and the early Enlightenment planned colony. Chasing Empire across the Sea also challenges the very notion of a concrete "empire" emerging by the first half of the eighteenth century.

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.

"The range of this book is vast in terms of both of its topics - transport and communications by land, freshwater routes, and sea - and its geographical scope." H-Net Reviews "A sophisticated treatment of the French Atlantic - the patterns it reveals are important and distinctive." The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord "Banks's material is fascinating and his writing engaging - the book is a delight to read." The Canadian Historical Review "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