| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670–1730. By James Pritchard. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xxviii, 484 pp. $75.00, ISBN 0-521-82742-6.)
This study examines a large and diverse geographical area during a fairly narrow time period, namely, North America and the Caribbean during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, from the perspective of French colonial history. It is a welcome contribution to historical literature, especially since English-language historians have given the subject relatively little attention.	1
James Pritchard largely accomplishes two difficult goals. The first is to provide a unified historical framework for subject matter that, aside from the broad theme of French colonialism in the New World, is quite varied. To do so, he pulls together historical topics that previous historians have examined but that have seldom been studied collectively. Second, he uses that synthesis to point out similarities and differences in the social, political, and economic paths taken by the colonies. Pritchard argues that it is possible to treat each society as a part of a larger historical movement, specifically as relatively independent and diverse expressions of a French imperial initiative that was first given serious momentum by the royal government of Louis XIV.	. . .

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