In the West, we still have trouble seeing the former empires of our respective nations objectively. Gabriel Paquette's history of European maritime empires from roughly 1620 to 1820 fills a gap. Designed as an introductory overview for students and scholars new to the subject, his volume is a tour de force and immensely readable. He begins by setting out the factors that enabled a mere handful of countries on the western edge of Europe to run huge swathes of the globe by 1800. At the outset of his period, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, England, and France were bit players compared to the massive terrestrial empires of the Ottomans, Mughals, Aztecs, and Qing dynasty, among others. Although the world economic system was centered on Asia until at least 1750, western European nations accumulated enormous power through their seaborne empires, heralding globalization.

Paquette's approach in The European Seaborne Empires is partly chronological and partly thematic. This generally works well, although Stuart history is condensed to the point of ambiguity. He takes his survey to the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 and then considers six themes: political and legal institutions, political economy, coerced and voluntary migration, slavery and other labor regimes, the creation of creole societies, and the role of collaboration and resistance in shaping seaborne empires. He concludes by analyzing the breaking away of European colonies in the Americas, and the resulting effect worldwide. Useful maps help the reader to follow his narrative, although supporting illustrations are of disappointing quality.

As Paquette sifts through competing explanations for aspects of European colonization, he draws on the latest scholarship to debunk myths and correct errors. National stereotypes have long distorted imperial histories. Paquette points out that despite England's claims to have built an empire founded on liberty in contrast to the alleged barbarism of Spanish rule in the Americas, no empire could function without systemic violence and exploitation; and the American Revolution was not a “nationalist” revolt. He also emphasizes that subjugation was never a complete process in the colonies. Due to scant funds, insufficient soldiers, huge distances, and the myriad forms of resistance encountered, Europeans were often limited to the margins of lands over which they claimed hegemony. And since “the tentacles of European states were rather stubby before the early eighteenth century” (181), early colonizing efforts allowed lawless groups like pirates to infiltrate and thrive.

Non-Europeans were hardly passive bystanders or helpless victims in the colonization process; the unilateral imposition of power was impracticable, so European and indigenous institutions often existed side by side. Violence was always an option for invading Europeans, but for the most part, the colonizing process proceeded by negotiation and collaboration—still the case during the Age of Revolutions. Paquette reminds us that the business model of the Dutch East India Company was premised on intra-Asian trade; that the massive land-based empires of Eurasia first tolerated European maritime activity for the benefits it brought; that Europeans needed Asian rulers, not the other way around; and that in America and Africa, the Portuguese relied on European go-betweens who went native. In colonies, the balance of influence meant that Europeans often acculturated to indigenous societies. Colonizers administered laws, institutions, and policies that differed from those in Europe, accommodating local practices and accepting hybrid legal regimes. Syncretic religious practices emerged thanks to the interaction of different cultures. Interestingly, in Spanish America, the Inquisition extended to social practices like bigamy, helping to enforce a vision of a well-ordered society.

Paquette describes how landscapes were transformed as colonizers introduced new animals and cleared land for crops. In New England, early settlers consumed firewood at a spectacular rate to survive harsh winters: a typical household consumed an acre of forest each year. Colonial endeavor did produce some incipient environmentalism, but Europeans’ study of botany, astronomy, and mineralogy was firmly pressed into the service of empire; the English even used sports to win over native elites and keep settlers in check.

Throughout, Paquette remains scrupulously even-handed. This is evident in his treatment of transatlantic slave trade. Enslaved Africans were a key export from 1440s. Although slavery had existed in Africa, the entry of European merchants galvanized it into a major trade that would stretch from the Pacific coast of Peru to the Indian Ocean ports of South Asia. The stigmas attached to slavery and other forms of forced labor (indentured servants, convicts) reinforced the subordinate position of colonies within the system of empire.

This survey is backed up with detailed statistics, often yielding little-known insights. For instance, in 1640 there were more English slaves in North Africa than there were African slaves under English control in the Caribbean; by the eighteenth century the Jesuits owned more slaves than did any other institution or family in the Americas; half the ships servicing Madras in the 1740s were Indian-owned; the British parliament delayed the passing of the act abolishing the slave trade to allow the final purchase of the more than 13,000 male slaves from West Africa who helped fight Napoleon; and, in 1832, free people of color owned about a fifth of all Jamaica's slaves.

As Paquette notes, though empire was marked by the violent imposition of authority, the results were not always what was intended; heterogeneity may even have helped colonies to exist longer. In his epilogue, he considers how what seemed to be a contraction of empire during the Age of Revolutions just set the stage for a new phase of formal and informal empire after the 1820s. Overseas territory remained a major component of metropolitan economies. Britain now aped Napoleon in its treatment of colonial possessions and exported staggering amounts of guns into West Africa long after the slave trade ended. The inequalities these empires shaped remain pressing issues today; Paquette offers an excellent entry point for understanding maritime empires and their legacy.