In this episode, Dr. Christopher Hodson and Dr. Brett Rushforth join Kate Carpenter to talk about their new book, Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolution. It was a book two decades in the making, and when you read it, you’ll understand why. It’s absolutely packed with research and fascinating stories, and it makes a persuasive argument that, when you look beyond its official accounts, France played a much bigger role in the colonization of the Atlantic world than historians have assumed.

Chris is an associated professor of history at Brigham Young University, and Brett is editor in chief of the Huntington Library Quarterly. They bring a dry wit and a spirit of joyful curiosity to their work that comes through in the book and in this interview. You’ll hear about the varied ways they researched their new book, not just in written archives but with visual culture, artifacts preserved across the world, and even at archaeological sites in order to write a history of France’s influence in the Atlantic world that focuses not on the accounts and experiences of officials, but on the daily lives of sailors, indigenous peoples in both North America and West Africa, nuns, smugglers, and much more.

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Mentioned in this episode:

• Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth, Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolution
• Christopher Hodson, The Acadian Diaspora: An Eighteenth-Century History
• Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France
• Laurent DuBois
• Feathered Tupi-Guarani Cape, held by the Musée de Quai Branly
• Foldable ivory spork
• Brett and Chris’s newsletter, Beyond the Ocean
• Garamond Agency
• Huntington Library Quarterly