About Lewis Wade

I am an historian of early modern France, focussing especially on French engagement in global exchanges under Louis XIV. I am a Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Bamberg, having recently completed a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at Leiden University. My monograph, entitled Privilege, Economy and State in Old Regime France: Marine Insurance, War and the Atlantic Empire under Louis XIV, awarded the Society for the Study of French History First Book Prize, is available online Open Access and in paperback. I can be found on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/wadehistory.bsky.social.

NBN Episodes hosted by Lewis:

Mélanie Lamotte, "By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire" (Harvard UP, 2026)

February 18, 2026

By Flesh and Toil

Mélanie Lamotte
Hosted by Lewis Wade

From the beginning of the seventeenth century, French colonies and trading posts sprawled across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In the first pan-impe…