Report: Society for French Historical Studies Annual Conference 2014
Montreal, Canada, 24-26 April
I had an absolutely brilliant time at the conference and made some immensely useful contacts. I
gave my paper entitled ‘Illicit Consumption, Smuggling, and the French State: Toiles Peintes and
Asian Textiles 1680-1760’a session called ‘Les relations de la France avec l'Orient aux 17e et 18e
siècles’ which was chaired by Nicholas Dew. The panel also included Massimiliano Vaghi from the
University of Milan (‘Paris 1763, «la paix la plus honteuse qu’eut signée la France depuis le traité de
Bretigny». Les élites françaises face à la perte de l’Inde (1763-1783)) and Irini Apostolou from the
University of Athens (‘Les Antiquaires français et le voyage en Méditerranée orientale XVIIe-XVIIIe
siècles’).
I also had the chance to meet and talk to some really fantastic historians in my field, Michael Kwass,
Lauren Clay, Kenneth Margerison, Nicholas Dew, and Anoush Terjanian and I spoke to John Shovlin
who offered to read through part of my monograph for me. I also met some really nice graduate
students doing some very interesting work in my field and I’m currently in touch with one of them,
Blake Smith, who, together with another PhD student from Harvard who also works on the French
East India Companies, is organising a panel on India in French C18th political economy for the next
ISECS conference which I will join.
The best panels I went to were:
Commerce, State, Citizen: The Business of Belonging in Modern France
Chair / président : John SHOVLIN, New York University
Lauren CLAY, Vanderbilt University. Negotiating Equality in Old Regime
France: Chambers of Commerce and the Question of 'Corporate
Citizenship'
Tyson LEUCHTER, University of Chicago. Settling Accounts: The Émigré
Indemnity and Financing Citizenship in Restoration France
Alexia YATES, Harvard University. Territorial Revolution: Mortgages,
Patrimony, and the Nation in Nineteenth-Century France
Commerce, Competition, and Colonial Reform: The French in India
during the Eighteenth Century
Chair / président : Anoush F. TERJANIAN, East Carolina University
Gregory T. MOLE, University of North Carolina. The Political Economy
of Joseph Dupleix: Mercantilism, Doux Commerce, and the Second
Carnatic War, 1751-1754
Blake SMITH, Northwestern University. Balances of Trade and Power:
Debating France’s South Asia Policy, 1769-1789
Kenneth MARGERISON, Texas State University. The French Challenge to
British Power in India after the Seven Years’ War
Comment / commentaire Thomas E. KAISER, University of Arkansas at
Little Rock
The French in India: Commerce, Law, War
Chair / président : Jessica NAMAKKAL, Duke University
Erin M. GREENWALD, The Historic New Orleans Collection. Abandoning
Louisiana, Embracing India: The French Company of the Indies in the
1720s and ’30s
Danna AGMON, Virginia Tech. The Customs of Empire and Customary
Law: Courts of Law in Eighteenth-Century Pondichéry, India
Akhila YECHURY, St. Andrews University. Collaboration or Resistance:
The Dilemmas of a Marginal French Colony
Franco–British Connections in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Chair / président : Brian COWAN, McGill University
Laurent TURCOT, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. Loisirs et
divertissements à Londres et à Paris au 18e siècle
Simon MACDONALD, McGill University. British expatriates in late
eighteenth-century France
Harry STOPES, University College, London. Exhibiting French art in
Manchester in the late nineteenth century
Comment / commentaire : Charles WALTON, Warwick University
Chasing Justice across the Seas (and Centuries): Law in the Early
Modern and Modern French Empires
Chair / président : Emmanuelle SAADA, Columbia University
Matthew GERBER, University of Colorado, Boulder. Colonial Appeals in
the Conseil Privé in Pre-Revolutionary France
Laurie M. WOOD, University of Wisconsin Law School. Recovering the
Debris of Fortunes between France and its Colonies in the 18th Century
Sarah GHABRIAL, McGill University. The House of Correction: Marital
authority and spousal abuse in the civil and criminal courts of colonial
Algeria (1880-1930)
Claire EDINGTON, Harvard University. A background to confinement: the
legal category of the insane person in French Indochina
Comment / commentaire : Emmanuelle SAADA, Columbia University