Chasing Empire: Across the Sea

Olaf Uwe Janzen is a professor of history at Memorial University,
reviews editor of The Northern Mariner, and the editor of Northern Seas.

With Chasing Empire, Kenneth Banks attempts to explain why France, a
powerful country with a long maritime tradition, was unable to preserve
its New World empire beyond the late 18th century. Central to his
interpretation is the importance of communications and information in
binding metropolis and colony together. Banks’s analysis provides a
commendably intercolonial perspective, with particular attention to New
France, Louisbourg, the French Sugar Islands, and Louisiana. Banks is
careful to emphasize that “empire” implies more coherence than
actually was the case; overseas colonies began to be established early
in the 17th century, but the notion of a French “empire” emerged
only in the 18th century, and was always more “an unsorted collection
of peoples and possibilities” than a reality.

Central to the analysis is the notion of a “French Atlantic”:
Banks’s goal “in this study is to understand how the French Atlantic
worked at its ... height.” He opens with a succinct explanation of the
early history of the French overseas empire—its origins, the critical
developments of the mid-17th century (when the metropolis was
preoccupied by events at home), and the centralizing efforts of the
state during the absolutist era of Louis XIV. Students will appreciate
the clarity with which Banks explains the complex metropolitan and
colonial forces that shaped the events and the emerging practices and
policies of the French Atlantic. He then concentrates on how the
metropolis exercised its authority through its influence over
information and communications. This entailed not only official
dispatches but also informal news, fiscal mechanisms, diplomacy,
merchant networks, legal codes, and so on. Case studies of specific
events show how information was disseminated and used to support
rituals, ceremonies, and celebrations, all key elements in the state’s
efforts to bind its overseas subjects to the Crown. In the final
analysis, the complex network of communications proved too fragile to
withstand the interruptions of war; British naval superiority severed
the threads of empire and undermined the state’s ability to maintain
its authority. This is a fine study, one sure to interest all
specialists in the Atlantic world.