Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth, "Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions" (Oxford UP, 2026)

In Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions (Oxford University Press,

2026), Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth reveal the vast and

complex world of France's Atlantic enterprises in the premodern era.

Drawing upon years of archival work, Hodson and Rushforth demonstrate

how France's overseas activities created its empire, intentionally or

not, and how these distant places built the French state and used it for

their own ends. Beyond the Ocean covers an impressive sweep of

history, from the late eleventh century through the early nineteenth,

and yet the authors manage to retain a human element. Their judicious

inclusion of micro-histories and primary-source quotation, as well as

their lively prose, helps the reader enter into what it may have felt

like to live through these developments, to participate in the era when