| Book Review | The American Historical Review, .

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Book Review

Methods/Theory

Bouda Etemad. La Possession du monde: Poids et mesures de la colonisation (XVIII^e-XX^e siècles). (Questions à l'Histoire.) Paris and Bruxelles: Èditions Complexe. 2000. Pp. 351. 139fr, 898 F.

The historiography of colonialism is huge. Why, asks Bouda Etemad in the introduction to his new synthesis, should another stone be added to an already imposing edifice? First, he argues, there are still gaps in the factual record. Second, current hopes and uncertainties prompt us to ask new questions of the past. Last, the sheer import of colonialism for the making of the modern world demands works of synthesis and global studies privileging the longue durée and comparative analysis. Does his book justify itself in these terms? Broadly, yes. It fills factual gaps by quantifying the territorial extent of the overseas colonial empires at different points in time—and the cost in European and non-European lives of acquiring them by conquest. There are no estimates of colonial trade or the contribution of colonial inputs to the material resources of the metropolitan powers, which seems a strange omission in a synthesis of this kind. Nevertheless, the data Etemad has compiled in "taking colonialism's measure" will prove useful to students and teachers alike. . . .

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