Journal Access / Accès à la revue

The link below provides members access to the current issue of French Colonial History, as well as the back issues. You will be asked to log in in order to proceed.

Le lien ci-dessous donne accès au nouveau numéro de French Colonial History, ainsi qu’aux archives de la revue. Vous devez vous connecter pour y accéder.

FCHS Member Access to the Current Issue / Accès au nouveau numéro pour les membres de la SHCF

About French Colonial History

French Colonial History is the official journal of the French Colonial Historical Society. FCH publishes peer-reviewed research articles, review essays, forums, and reflections addressing all aspects of the history of French colonization and of the French colonies, reflecting the temporal span, geographical breadth, and diversity of subject matter that characterize the scholarly interests of the Society’s members. Since 2002, FCH has replaced the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the FCHS, which appeared from 1977 to 1998.

Submissions are welcomed in English or French concerning any geographical area or chronological period of French overseas expansion, including the metropole and the postcolonial. All submissions must be original research that has not yet been published in either English or French. Translation from other languages may be considered on a case by case basis.

FCH especially encourages submissions by junior scholars and members of groups underrepresented in the discipline of history.

FCH also welcomes proposals for special issues or forums of several articles around a theme. Potential guest editors should contact the journal editor to discuss their proposals.

Please contact the editor at FCH@frenchcolonial.org with any questions or proposals.

Contribution Guidelines

French Colonial History appears annually. Given the review and production schedules of the journal, manuscripts received prior to June 1 will have the best chance of completing the review process in time for inclusion in the following year’s issue. We strive to respond to initial submissions within two months.

French Colonial History is published by Michigan State University Press, with whom the Society has had a long relationship since MSUP began publishing the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting in 1995. In addition to active members of the Society, the journal is available to readers via the JSTOR and Project Muse databases. Back issues of the Proceedings are also available through JSTOR.

Articles, normally 8,000-10,000 words in length (including notes), may be submitted in English or French. Quotations from languages other than English or French should be translated into the language in which the manuscript is written.

Manuscripts should be prepared following the guidelines below and The Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition), which MSUP uses for copyediting, punctuation, endnotes, and style.

Authors should submit their work as an electronic file via the online submission system at MSU Press (see instructions below). Authors should be sure to retain personal copies of their work in the unlikely event that transmitted files are damaged or lost in transit.

Questions may be directed to the Editor at FCH@frenchcolonial.org.

  • Create an author profile at MSU Press.
  • Log in to your author account and then click on “New Submissions” to begin the process.
  • Once submitted, log back in to your author account to track the progress of your submissions through the review and production process.

Once articles are accepted for publication, authors will be asked to provide a short biographical note with their name, current affiliation and rank, and a brief description of their research interests.

Authors should provide two abstracts, one in English and one in French, of not more than 150 words.

All articles should be formatted using 12-point font and double spacing for all text, including quotations, notes, bibliography, and captions, as well as 1-inch margins on all sides of US Letter-sized (8.5″x11″) paper.

In addition to the CMS style guidelines, please follow these guidelines in preparing your manuscript. The time you take to prepare your manuscript in accordance with these guidelines, as well as to ensure correct and consistent spelling, capitalization, and formatting, will help to expedite the production process.

  • File format: Microsoft Word
  • Margins: A simple “ragged” right margin is required, typically referred to as “alignment: Left.” Do not use justified alignment as it complicates typesetting.
  • Use endnotes only for citation, using Microsoft Word’s “insert note” function. The Journal cannot accept submissions containing embedded notes generated by bibliographic programs such as Endnote or Zotero.
  • Employ italics, rather than underlining.
  • Spell out numbers from one to nine. Use Arabic numerals for numbers 10 and above. Exceptions to this rule include: 1) a series of mixed numbers (e.g., 14 cities, 2 small towns, 11 villages, and 8 settlements); 2) when a number precedes an abbreviation for a standard unit of measure (e.g., 3 g, 18mm, 6 m). Use numerals for all dates, times, page numbers and percentages.
  • Time, when presented in even, half, or quarter hours should be spelled out. (e.g., “She did not return home until a quarter to one”; “They did not finish until noon”; “He always arrived at nine o’clock”; “The sun came out at half past three.”) When greater precision is required, numerals (with zeros included for even hours) should be used as follows: 2:00 p.m., 4:25 a.m., 9:10 in the morning.
  • Use continental dating (13 April 1892 or 12 June) throughout.
  • List all accented letters or other special characters used in the text on a separate page at the beginning of the text.
  • Do not skip a line or insert extra spaces between paragraphs.
  • Use the tab key (not the space bar) to indent the first lines of new paragraphs.
  • Do not insert “soft” hyphens at the ends of lines. Turn off the automatic hyphenation feature in your software and do not break words manually. The only hyphens that should appear in your manuscript are those in compound words.
  • Do not center any text anywhere.
  • Do not use “running heads” or headers/footers features.
  • Do not use hanging indents.

Please format your notes according to the Chicago Manual of Style. A few examples are below.

Book
George Orwell, Animal Farm (New York: New American Library, 1974), 26-38.

Chapters in a Book
Sylvia Harris, “Contemporary Continental Philosophy,” in Late Twentieth Century Political Theory. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 110-49.

Journal Articles
Sara M. Fernandez, “The Age of Reform,” Economic Review 14, no. 9 (1992): 78, 80-87.

Any illustrations, including images, maps, or graphs, should be submitted electronically in clearly labeled graphics files separate from the manuscript text. Figures will appear in the journal in black and white or grayscale. Since journal pages are 6 x 9 inches in dimensions, images should be no more than 4 x 7 inches, although smaller is preferable. Figures should be numbered and referenced parenthetically in the text (fig. X).

It is the author/researcher’s obligation and responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright and/or other use restrictions prior to submitting materials to MSU Press for publication. Citations, permissions, and captions are required upon submission for all images. Use the FCH Permissions Request Letterto obtain permission from the image’s rightsholder—we cannot publish such materials until written clearance is obtained. Electronic files accepted; all images must be minimum 300 dpi at planned publication size.