The decades between 1670 and 1730 were the most formative in the history of the French colonies in the Americas. A sufficient number of migrants arrived from France and Africa to create settlements, establish economies of production, develop networks of exchange and trade, and adapt institutions of government and law to give substance and form to their resulting societies. Elusive Empire was the first full account of how during these years French settlers came to the Americas. It examines how they and thousands of African slaves together with Amerindians constructed settlements and produced and traded commodities for export. Bringing together much evidence, the author explores how the newly constructed societies and new economies, without precedent in France, interacted with the growing international violence in the Atlantic world in order to present a fresh perspective of the multifarious French colonizing experience in the Americas.

"Some books become must-read classics that no serious student can ignore. James Pritchard's In Search of an Empire: The French in Americas, 1670-1730 will undoubtedly be such a book....[It] is an extremely well written book...This superb study of French colonization in America offers one of the very best introductions to the subject available today. No serious student of French America can afford to bypass this book."
- International Journal of Maritime History

"This well-written work will become an indispensable reference for anyone interested in the history of France's first colonies."
- American Historical Review, Leslie Choquette

"This is an impressively researched work."
- The Journal of American History, John T. McGrath, Boston University, Massachusetts

"The author draws on archival findings as wells as scattered existing studies, and the book, with ample footnotes and an excellent bibliography, constitutes an invaluable resource for anyone interested in comparative colonialism."
- The Journal of Military History, Daniel A. Baugh, Cornell University

"...the author's grasp of a rich and wide-ranging recent historiography [makes this his] ... most ambitious book. Those who lecture to undergraduates in comparative European colonial history will find this particularly useful."
The Northern Mariner

"...highly informative... The author draws on archival findings as well as scattered existing studies, and the book, with ample footnotes and an excellent bibliography, constitutes an invaluable resource for anyone interested in comparative colonialism."
The Journal of Military History

"The book will appeal to schoalrs of French America interested in synthetic treatment of their field by a prominent historian and to readers who are particularly curious about topics that Pritchard handles especially well, such as maritime, economic and military-imperial aspects of French colonial history." The Journal of Modern History Paul Mapp, College of William and Mary

"Pritchard's meticulous dessection of colonial production alone seems certain to generate thousands of footnotes. We owe him a great debt for thsi thorough synthesis." - Christopher Hodson, University of Pennsylvania

"...the work is an essential interpretation of the French colonies and an important resource on many of the details of colonial administration and warfare." -Thomas J. Lappas, H-French-Colonial