Forests and French Sea Power, 1660-1789

By choosing to concentrate upon discovering what forest resources were available to the French navy during the ancien rÉgime and what use it was able to make of them, Mr. Bamford has not only provided the first monograph on that subject in the English language, but has gone far toward explaining why France was the loser in the long duel with England for the control of commerce and the extension of empire. Two years of research in the Archives Nationales and in the Archives de la Marine in Paris, Toulon, and Rochefort enabled him to draw on contemporary sources of information of which little, i f any, use has been made before, and a further year of research in the libraries of New York City, particularly in the rich Proudfit Naval Collection, also yielded new material. It is Mr. Bamford's achievement to have handled this vast store of primary sources with such skill and judgement that the reader, by turning over letters from disgruntled forest proprietors, reports from harassed...