Voices in the Legal Archives in the French Colonial World: "The King is Listening"

Voices in the Legal Archives in the French Colonial World: The King is Listening provides a sustained analysis of judicial practices and litigation during the first era of French overseas expansion, interrogating the naturalized equation between law and empire and offering new approaches to writing a history of the French empire.

Format: Hardback
Length: 388 pages
Publication date: 25 September 2020
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Voices in the Legal Archives in the French Colonial World: The King is Listening

Offers a comprehensive analysis of judicial practices and litigation during the first era of French overseas expansion.

The overarching objective of this volume is to elaborate a more sophisticated social history of colonialism, particularly focusing on the eighteenth century, spanning approximately from 1700 to the conclusion of the Age of Revolutions in the 1830s.

By critically examining legal practices and litigation in the French colonial world, encompassing both its Atlantic and Oceanic extensions, this volume of essays aims to challenge the naturalized equation between law and empire, which is premised on the notion of law as a set of doctrines and codified procedures originating in the metropolis and subsequently transmitted to the colonies.

This book pioneers new approaches and methods in writing a history of the French empire, which views state authority as more unstable and contested.

Voices in the Legal Archives in the French Colonial World: The King is Listening

Proposes to rectify the under-theorized state of France's first colonial empire, in contrast to its post-1830 imperial expressions empire, which has received far more scholarly attention.

This book will appeal to scholars of French history, as well as those interested in the comparative history of European empires and colonialism.

Weight: 668g
Dimension: 158 x 236 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367508067