Kourou – The final struggle for A french Dream, 2015

-Recension « American Historical Review » (par Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall)

About the book

Kourou and the Struggle for a French America explores the French monarchy’s attempt to establish a colony in South America that emulated the successful British colonies to the north. Initiated in the aftermath of the Seven Years War that had resulted in the loss of France’s Canadian possessions, the new colony of Kourou was to be a wonderful revenge. Directed by the brightest scientific minds of the Enlightenment and based on mass emigration of settlers, many French, but many recruited from the German lands to the east of the Rhine, the aim was to create a new settlement akin to El Dorado.

Marion Godfroy’s study examines the high politics of the colonial impulse and the mass movement of settlers across the Rhine, across France to the Atlantic seaboard and thence into the territory of Guiana. She analyses the migrants’ origins and motives, and the means by which they were attracted to the enormous enterprise, as well as the manoeuvrings of the elites in Paris and Versailles before and after the attempt.

The fantastic ideal of a new French colonial world was a grand failure, a huge human tragedy and a political disaster. Kourou marked the end of French attempts to establish an American colony, and the shift of attention to Africa and Asia, her ‘second’ world empire.

CONTENTS

Introduction
1. Farewell Quebec
2. The Kingdom of the Golden King 3. Americas
4. White Colony
5. Forces Present
6. Mirages
7. From the Rhine to the Atlantic 8. Disaster Ahead
9. Kourou
10. The Trap was Sprung
11. Turgot’s Disgrace
Conclusion