This study explores the shared history of the French Empire from a perspective of material culture in order to re-evaluate the participation of colonial, creole and indigenous agency in the construction of imperial spaces. The decentered approach to a global history of the French colonial realm allows a new understanding of power relations in different locales. Traditional binary models that assume the centralisation of imperial power and control in an imperial center often overlook the variegated nature of agency in the empire. In a selection of case studies in the Caribbean, Canada, Africa and India, several building projects show the mixed group of planners, experts and workers, the composite nature of building materials and elements of different "glocal" styles that give the empire its concrete manifestation and contributed to the emergence of emotions as a means of forming communities and identities. | Building the French empire 1600–1800 by Benjamin Steiner, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters