Absolutely Atlantic: Colonialism and the Early Modern French State in Recent Historiography

Abstract

Although it remains, in Allan Potofsky’s words, the “poorer cousin” of scholarship on the British and Iberian Atlantics, research on France’s early modern empire has expanded in recent years. This article examines that growing body of literature, focusing on works that deal with the complex relationships among indigenous peoples, French colonists, and the French state. We argue that these books, articles, and dissertations point toward a new vision of the early modern French Atlantic. Rejecting older notions of a static, moribund monarchy opposed by dynamic colonial societies that flouted the crown’s designs, recent studies instead examine points of connection between a multi‐faceted state and the peoples it engaged, creating a more nuanced portrait of early modern French colonialism.

Constructing a big history of inequality

“…It is no accident that a review of the recent historiography on colonialism and the early modern French state begins with a vignette of Nicolas Fouquet. Emphasising the importance of Fouquet's Atlantic ambitions, Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth suggest that Fouquet's story shows that early modern figures ‘understood well the connections between places as distant as Sainte‐Lucie and Calais’ and they call on modern scholarship to better reflect ‘their precocious sense of integration’ (Hodson & Rushforth, 2009). The implication that suggests itself is that a microscopic view may well be a worthy complement to a macroscopic one in offering insights into the history of specific inequality regimes as well as the relationship among them.…”