By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire

In By Flesh and Toil, Mélanie Lamotte explores the rise of the French Empire across both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Charting the development of a pan-imperial legal culture of race, she also shows how people of African, Malagasy, South Asian, and Native American descent played key roles in shaping the Empire and setting its limits.

• | Author: Melanie Lamotte
• | Publisher: Harvard University Press
• | Publication Date: Jan 27, 2026
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Hardback
• | ISBN-13: 9780674272835
• | ISBN-10: 0674272838