There Are No Slaves in France

Due to our interests in the history of Saint Domingue/Haiti, we at the blog took a brief look at Peabody's short "There Are No Slaves in France": The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Regime. While not a detailed history of "blacks" in 18th century Paris, as it focuses more on the Freedom Principle or free soil ideology, and the legal and juridical position of free and enslaved "blacks" before the French Revolution, it still provides some useful information on the movement of Saint Dominguans to and from France in the 1700s. Moreover, the key case of an Indian named Francisque, petitioning for his freedom, exemplifies the shift in French racial thought where Indian "blacks" from the subcontinent were beginning to be separated "racially" from people of African origin. Since we at the blog have an interest in the fate and experience of Native American and "East Indian" slaves or free people in Saint Domingue, we thought the case of Francisque of Pondichery might be illustrative of growing racial/racist ideology in the second half of the 18th century. Of course, Peabody's sources are usually written from the perspective of the white lawyers or representatives of "black" people, so we still cannot deduce to what extent this nascent racial ideology shaped how "Indians" perceived "blacks." Overall, however, this was an interesting read that has contributed to our burgeoning rekindled interest in the history of French slave trading and Saint Domingue.