Lewis Wade Wins First Book Prize for 'Privilege, Economy and State in Old Regime France'
The inaugural Society for the Study of French History First Book Prize has been awarded to Lewis Wade’s monograph 'Privilege, Economy and State in Old Regime France: Marine Insurance, War and the Atlantic Empire under Louis XIV (Boydell Press, 2023)'. Lewis is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the economic and social history section of the Institute for History.
Announcing their decision at the Fifteenth Douglas Johnson Memorial Lecture in French History on 13 January 2025, the prize panel remarked:
This book deploys substantial archival research in a highly technical field – seventeenth-century marine insurance – and clearly demonstrates the significance of the Paris chamber of insurance for Louis XIV’s monarchy and its European rivals. Privilege, Economy and State in Old Regime France situates its case study within wider historical debates about economic policy, state formation and conflict resolution in the early modern world to make a broader argument about the financial resilience of the absolute monarchy, within the limits of political will. It is beautifully written, and has found some wonderful source material that introduces its characters effectively and makes a book about insurance compelling reading.
After the announcement, Lewis gave the following statement:
I am stunned and delighted to have been awarded this prestigious prize. The Society for the Study of French History has been instrumental in my intellectual development since I began my PhD, so I am most grateful to the prize panel for recognising my work in this way. This book was only possible because of the support I received from so many people – more than I could possibly name here! Alongside the institutions that funded the research for the book (the European Research Council, the Economic History Society and the Institute of Historical Research), I am especially indebted to the academics who guided me throughout the book’s composition, including Maria Fusaro (and her team on the AveTransRisk project), Nandini Chatterjee, Cátia Antunes, Renaud Morieux and James Davey. As the prize panel hints at, marine insurance is an unusual case study for a book grappling with the nature of absolutism in Old Regime France! Nevertheless, Boydell & Brewer and Peter Sowden, my editor, placed their faith in the book and went above and beyond in bringing it to print. It is a pleasure to be able to reward their faith and hard work with this prize.
The book is available in Open Access through Boydell & Brewer, JSTOR and De Gruyter. At the Institute for History, Lewis is currently working on a project that examines French participation in global commerce under Louis XIV.