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

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.