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Politico-ideological projections on Africa’s prominence as the “world economy’s last frontier” raise particularly acute challenges for researchers interested in the relationship between law and politics on the continent. Based on a case study of the “African” bar in Paris, this article suggests a new entry-point to build a broader research agenda. This bar is a key site for the negotiation of contracts between multinational corporations and Francophone states on the African continent. Through an analysis of the individual trajectories of agents operating within this social microcosm, the “African” bar is characterized as a “crossroads space.” Namely, Paris is both the former colonial métropole and the beachhead of the US-led globalization of corporate law in continental Europe since the 1980s, and now Africa. While this research agenda builds on the structural sociology of globalization carved out by Dezalay and Garth, it also espouses a research strategy reflecting the global turn in history. The collective biography of this professional microcosm provides insights on the ways in which the unequal and uneven relationship between Africa and the world economy is negotiated, transformed and justified in the longue durée: as a Big Bang on the market for corporate law embedded in palace wars molded by competition between imperial pasts and presents.