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.