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Elusive Empire is the first full account of how during 1670 and 1730 French settlers came to the Americas. It examines how they and thousands of African slaves together with Amerindians constructed settlements and produced and traded commodities for export. Bringing together much new evidence, the author explores how the newly constructed societies and new economies, without precedent in France, interacted with the growing international violence in the Atlantic world in order to present a fresh perspective of the multifarious French colonizing experience in the Americas.
European expansion began in the early modern period, but in the 18th century Europeans were still far from establishing their rule in Africa or Asia. Many attempts at expansion failed miserably. Nevertheless, the belief in European supremacy and civilizing charisma was consolidated. This study examines the reasons for these unrealistic plans and shows how a gap developed between imperial aspirations and the reality of intercultural encounters. Using the history of French attempts at expansion in Madagascar as an example, it analyses the unfolding of colonial fantasy, the production of bureaucratic knowledge and the role of the Enlightenment in the development of colonialism.
The index to the Biographical Archive of the Middle Ages makes accessible about 130,000 biographical articles from nearly 200 volumes. The entries contain short biographical information on approx. 95,000 persons from Europe and the Middle East who shaped the cultural development and the religious life during one thousand years.
Volume 2 of the two-volume set MMed 135: These volumes offer the first critical edition of the Chronique d’Ernoul and the so-called Colbert-Fontainebleau (or Acre) Continuation of William of Tyre in over 150 years. The material is accompanied by an extensive introduction, glossary and bibliography. These two thirteenth-century narratives recount the story of the crusades and the Latin East. Both are anonymous; both employed the French vernacular and both contain accounts that are essential for anyone studying the subject. The Chronique d’Ernoul was completed in the 1230s in northern France. The main part of the Colbert-Fontainebleau Continuation of William of Tyre dates to the late 1240s and is a reworking of Ernoul with material going up to 1277; it was composed in the Latin East.
The first extensive study of the intersection between family and social hierarchy within early modern literary production.