Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions

A bold reinterpretation of French colonialism from its medieval roots to the early nineteenth century Between 1400 and 1800, the people of Europe, Africa, and the Americas grew ever more connected by overseas trade and colonization. Histories of this transformative era have been dominated by Iberian and British experiences, overlooking the vast reach of the pre-Napoleonic French Empire. Yet by the mid-eighteenth century, France claimed nearly a third of North America, ruled over the Caribbean's most profitable and brutal plantations, and controlled a substantial proportion of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In Beyond the Ocean, Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth reveal the significant role that France played in the history of the Atlantic world and the ways the Atlantic shaped France in return. Drawing on expansive original research in multiple languages, they craft an unconventional history of empire that highlights the experiences, priorities, and influence of Native Americans and West Africans, both free and enslaved. French sailors, nuns, smugglers, and weavers also appear as dynamic historical actors who shaped the emerging empire as much as kings and bureaucrats. Driven by compelling individual stories woven into a sweeping chronological narrative, Beyond the Ocean offers a bold new interpretation of French colonialism that recovers the full complexity of a misunderstood empire and reveals its profound significance to the interconnected Atlantic basin and the early modern world.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: The Two Lives of Jacques Devaulx Chapter 1: Kingdoms and Crusaders Chapter 2: Going to Guinea Chapter 3: New Worlds Chapter 4: Diverse Progenies and Lineages Chapter 5: Incorporating Colonialism Chapter 6: Absolutely Atlantic Chapter 7: Insinuating Empire Chapter 8: Negotiating Power Chapter 9: Lawless Empire Chapter 10: An Empire at War Chapter 11: Worlds Remade Chapter 12: Empire Unchained Conclusion: Echoes Notes Index

About the Author :
Christopher Hodson is Associate Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is the author of The Acadian Diaspora: An Eighteenth-Century History (OUP, 2012). Brett Rushforth is Editor in Chief of the Huntington Library Quarterly. He previously held positions at the University of Oregon and the College of William and Mary. He is the author of the award-winning Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France.

Review :
In this epic, powerful, and transformative telling of the history of the French Atlantic world, Hodson and Rushforth offer us a new way of understanding empire and its many contemporary legacies. Crafted from a remarkably rich set of archives and material culture and a deep understanding of cultural, economic, and intellectual history, Beyond the Ocean foregrounds African and Indigenous voices and the role of women as it brings alive little-known historical figures and astounding moments of encounter and exchange. Beyond the Ocean is a revelation. Hodson and Rushforth retell the story of France's engagement in the Atlantic world not from the aloof perspective of kings and courtiers but from the intimate viewpoint of sailors, traders, and entrepreneurs in France, West Africa, and the Americas who together fashioned vital and dynamic transatlantic communities. Magisterial in scope, Beyond the Ocean restores to view a French Atlantic world whose reach and complexity matched those of its more famous Iberian and British rivals. Perhaps most remarkable, the never-before-heard stories of countless Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans share equal billing in Hodson and Rushforth's reconstruction of four centuries of transatlantic trade and conquest. All students of empire will want to read this landmark work. Hodson and Rushforth have crafted a stunning retelling of France's historical entanglements with the Atlantic world centering on the human experience and on the overseas rather than an institutional metropolitan perspective. This book is sweeping in its scope, rich in its visual program, painstaking in its details, and delightful in its prose.