In 1953 the proprietor of the chateau of Bonneval at La Haye-Aubrée par Routot in the Norman department of Eure presented the French National Archives with a collection of eighteenth-century papers. They had been brought to the chateau by previous owners at the time of the French Revolution. The proprietor was unrelated to these shadowy figures, and the papers concerned neither his family nor the estate. Now deposited at the Archives Nationales in Paris, the 45 cartons of letters and business papers tell the story of the business activities of the Dugard family of Rouen. The earliest item in the collection is a bill of exchange dated 3 January 1658/59, and the last letter is from 1794. Most of the papers concern Roben Dugard, 1704-70, and a number of companies formed by him and several other Rouen merchants, among them the societé du Canada. Dugard and Company, as the societé may be called with less formality, was founded in 1729 to exploit the trade of Canada with France and the West Indies. Soon it directed its attention to the development of a Franco-Caribbean trade independent of its North-Atlantic commerce. The present history is a case study of a business partnership. The size and structure of eighteenth-century French business enterprises, the nature of French business finance, methods and maritime insurance, French commodities of trade and markets, and the relation of French business to government are all examined. So too is the manner and extent of the penetration of French business into Canada and the West Indies.

Herbert Klein's book makes several distinctive contributions to our understanding of the slave trade. It offers us the first systematic comparative study of major European slave traders based exclusively on archival sources. The author's minimization of the effect of overcrowded slave ships contributes to a longstanding debate regarding the mortality rate of the slaves. His emphasis of the African influences on the character of the slave trade offsets the more frequent emphasis placed on the European influences. Furthermore, Klein maintains that basic similarities existed among the slave-trading practices of all nations, with no one nation being any better than another. Using demographic and other quantitative data, Professor Klein describes the trans-Atlantic slave trade as it was practiced by all of the major European powers during the period of its maximum development. His work spans a century and a half of European trading activity and an area from Senegal to Mozambique in Africa and from the Chesapeake to Guanabara Bay in the Western hemisphere. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The first local history of Napoleonic France to appear in the English language, Inside Napoleonic France: State and Society in Rouen, 1800-1815 redresses the traditional neglect of regional history during this period. Relying on extensive French archival sources, Gavin Daly sets out to investigate the nature of the Napoleonic state and its short and longer-term impact upon local society. Specifically, it examines the question of state power and its implementation and reception at a local level, the relationship between central government and the regions, the social and economic impact of war and how the Napoleonic regime addressed Rouen's revolutionary past. Having carefully studied these issues, Daly argues that despite an unprecedented degree of social control, the Napoleonic state was not all-powerful, and that the central government's power was tempered by local considerations. It is this interaction between the representatives of central government and the regional elites which provides the central focus of the book.

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

Banks defines and applies the concept of communications in a far broader context than previous historical studies of communication, encompassing a range of human activity from sailing routes, to mapping, to presses, to building roads and bridges. He employs a comparative analysis of early modern French imperialism, integrating three types of overseas possessions usually considered separately - the settlement colony (New France), the tropical monoculture colony (the French Windward Islands), and the early Enlightenment planned colony (Louisiana) - offering a work of synthesis that unites the historiographies and insights from three formerly separate historical literatures. Banks challenges the very notion that a concrete "empire" emerged by the first half of the eighteenth century; in fact, French colonies remained largely isolated arenas of action and development. Only with the contraction and concentration of overseas possessions after 1763 on the Plantation Complex did a more cohesive, if fleeting, French empire first emerge.

In The Danish Slave Trade and Its Abolition, Erik Gøbel offers an account of the well-documented Danish transatlantic slave trade. Denmark was the seventh-largest slave-trading nation with forts and factories on the Gold Coast and a colony in the Virgin Islands. The comprehensive Danish archival material provides the basis for Gøbel’s descriptions of the volume and composition of the slave trade and trade cargoes, as well as the shipping and conditions on board along the Middle Passage. Attention is also paid to the 1791 Danish Slave Trade Commission report and the final decision to abolish the slave trade altogether. *The Danish Slave Trade and Its Abolitionis now available in paperback for individual customers.