In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670-1730

Abstract

James Pritchard, Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Queen’s University, has produced an impressive work of comparative colonial history. Not since W. J. Eccles’s France in America (Harper and Row, 1972) has such an ambitious project appeared in English. Whereas Eccles’s work spanned two centuries and was largely geopolitical in focus, Pritchard has shortened the chronology to the 60 years that, he argues convincingly, were formative in the establishment of French American colonial societies, and he expands his focus beyond the geopolitical to take account of much intervening scholarship in colonial social history. He succeeds in his objective of providing both a synthesis of scholarship and a reappraisal.The reappraisal confirms some established interpretations and challenges others. Following the direction of much social history in the past generation, he gives primary agency to colonists in the creation of colonial institutions and economic and social structures. What colonists did, rather than what policy makers and legislators at Versailles proclaimed, is a recurring theme that rejects an earlier, uncritical, top-down historiography of colonial development. Similarly, drawing upon the extensive recent scholarship in the histories of Amerindians and of African colonists from the forced migration of the slave trade, Pritchard assigns decisive import to these previously neglected participants in shaping different colonies.Pritchard’s paramount objective is to debunk the idea that the absolute monarchy and its successive governments established and molded the French colonies in any significant way. Every chapter — covering topics such as immigration, settlement, social organization, economic development, commerce, government, and war — makes substantial arguments, based on broad evidence, for Versailles’ ineptitude with, indifference toward, or neglect of the American colonies. The idea of a coherent imperial policy is an anachronism of later generations, found nowhere in Pritchard’s search. On the contrary, he confirms the stunning lack of interest in colonies that pervaded Versailles, even the Marine Department, and the unwavering focus on continental ambitions in Europe. Even the policies of the redoubtable Jean-Baptiste Colbert (who is usually held aloft as the champion of rational French colonial expansion) are depicted as “confused, shortsighted, and frequently contradictory” (p. 18). Colbert, described as “overbearing [and] arrogant” (p. 279) in approaching the Franco-Dutch war (1672 – 78), underestimated the Dutch and, abandoning the colonies to their own devices, proved himself to be as continentalist as Louis XIV. Despite having built a formidable navy, neither Colbert nor his successors gave priority to colonial defense or the development and protection of an integrated colonial commerce in its use. As a consequence, colonists and local officials developed their own strategies as best they could. Paradoxically, the West Indian colonies prospered throughout the War of the Spanish Succession through extensive contraband commerce. The Peace of Utrecht revealed just how little interest the French crown had in colonies, let alone designs for a larger overseas empire, when it sacrificed colonial possessions in order to retain its European continental territories. Professor Pritchard’s deep knowledge of the Marine Department provides particularly valuable insight into the maritime dimensions of French American colonial development, and he makes reference to relations with English, Spanish, and Dutch American colonies where relevant.Pritchard uses the striking dissimilarities among the diverse and geographically distant colonies to underscore how malleable colonists were in the face of environmental and circumstantial demands, and how irrelevant metropolitan policies and institutions were in forming colonial societies and economies. The greatest contrast, of course, is between the plantation-complex societies of the West Indian island colonies and the peasant homestead society of Canada. The innovation of the institution of slavery is compelling evidence for Pritchard’s argument that colonists responded pragmatically to local contingencies. Canada’s circumstances led to a system of social reproduction most closely resembling the metropolitan model of peasant farms. However, Pritchard traces the divergence of all colonies both from metropolitan norms and from one another: the divergence even among West Indian island colonies is well described and explained.This book will provoke debate. Professor Pritchard asserts his perspective in forceful language, dwelling upon the evidence of colonists’ pragmatism and independence in creating their societies while minimizing the influence of custom, culture, and institutional inheritance from France (for which much evidence nevertheless exists) on their behavior. Some will see, with justification, a variant of the old Frontier Thesis, in which New World environments liberated Old World people from their institutional shackles. “Colonial populations were among the most free during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” (p. 70). However, whereas the old Frontier Thesis assumed progress and improvement through liberty, Pritchard has shown that freedom from metropolitan restraints produced widely diverse outcomes, including the brutal and sadistic institution of slavery.In Search of Empire is a clearly articulated study and a welcome addition to the scholarship of the Atlantic colonial world. It should excite interest among undergraduate students as well as among specialists in the field.