Vital Negotiations

Focusing on the field of health care and disease control as a field of policy that was of pivotal importance for the existence and stability of European colonies in the south-eastern areas of the North American continent, the book analyzes modes of local organization and regulation in French Louisiana and British South Carolina during the first half of the eighteenth century. The work shows that, in spite of completely different imperial strategies and systems of rule, striking similarities existed between French and British colonies with regard to governance modes and the nature of agents involved in political organization. This attests to the fact that governance practices on the local and the colonial levels were informed at least as much by local conditions as by the nature of the empire to which the colonies respectively belonged. The work offers a fresh and unique perspective on the realities of colonial rule in early modern North America, thus challenging traditional notions which stress the differences between the French and British colonial empires in North America with regard to administrative practices.