French Anti Slavery

This book provides a detailed study of French anti-slavery forces in the nineteenth century.

Anna Julia Cooper's dissertation, "L'Attitude de la France à l'égard de l'esclavage pendant la revolution," offered a bold interpretation of the French Revolution. In it, she examined the relations between the 18th-century revolutionists in Paris and the representatives and inhabitants of the richest of French colonies, San Domingue. Historian Frances R. Keller now makes this unique work available in English for students and scholars alike. Through Keller's interpretive essays, one is able to better understand the incredible story of Anna Julia Cooper and the importance and originality of her scholarship.

Toussaint L’Ouverture was the leader of the Haitian Revolution in the late eighteenth century, in which slaves rebelled against their masters and established the first black republic. In this collection of his writings and speeches, former Haitian politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide demonstrates L’Ouverture’s profound contribution to the struggle for equality.

Britain's rarely-examined, nineteenth-century diplomatic efforts for abolition took contemporary pre-eminence over most questions and almost sparked war with France in 1845. Kielstra examines the issue in Anglo-French relations: how conflicting moral, economic, and nationalist pressures and lobby groups affected domestic politics and high diplomacy. To preserve peace and their positions, statesmen had little margin for error as they framed policies which attacked the trade and satisfied mutually incompatible domestic opinions, in a struggle which holds lessons for current efforts to include human rights concerns in foreign policy.

The anti-slavery movement, which followed in the wake of the European slave trade, has attracted much less attention than the latter. This is particularly true for the abolition movement in the French colonies.

By comparing a diversity of documents including letters by slaves, free people of colour and planters, as well as literary works, royal decrees and court cases, Catherine Reinhardt untangles the complex forces of the slave regime that shaped the collective memory of slaves and free coloureds.