Economistes and the Reinvention of Empire: France in the Americas and Africa, c.1750-1802

Exploring the myriad efforts to strengthen colonial empire that unfolded in response to France’s imperial crisis in the second half of the eighteenth century, Pernille Roge examines how political economists, colonial administrators, planters, and entrepreneurs shaped the recalibration of empire in the Americas and in Africa alongside the intensification of the French Caribbean plantation complex. Emphasising the intellectual contributions of the Economistes (also known as the Physiocrats) to formulate a new colonial doctrine, the book highlights the advent of an imperial discourse of commercial liberalisation, free labour, agricultural development, and civilisation. With her careful documentation of the reciprocal impacts of economic ideas, colonial policy and practices, Roge also details key connections between Ancien Regime colonial innovation and the French Revolution’s republican imperial agenda. The result is a novel perspective on the struggles to reinvent colonial empire in the final decades of the Ancien Regime and its influences on the French Revolution and beyond.