The French slave trade forced more than one million Africans across
the Atlantic to the islands of the Caribbean. It enabled France to
establish Saint-Domingue, the single richest colony on earth, and
it connected France, Africa, and the Caribbean permanently. Yet the
impact of the slave trade on the cultures of France and its
colonies has received surprisingly little attention. Until
recently, France had not publicly acknowledged its history as a
major slave-trading power. The distinguished scholar Christopher L.
Miller proposes a thorough assessment of the French slave trade and
its cultural ramifications, in a broad, circum-Atlantic inquiry.
This magisterial work is the first comprehensive examination of the
French Atlantic slave trade and its consequences as represented in
the history, literature, and film of France and its former colonies
in Africa and the Caribbean.Miller offers a historical introduction
to the cultural and economic dynamics of the French slave trade,
and he shows how Enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu and
Voltaire mused about the enslavement of Africans, while Rousseau
ignored it. He follows the twists and turns of attitude regarding
the slave trade through the works of late-eighteenth- and
early-nineteenth-century French writers, including Olympe de
Gouges, Madame de Stael, Madame de Duras, Prosper Merimee, and
Eugene Sue. For these authors, the slave trade was variously an
object of sentiment, a moral conundrum, or an entertaining
high-seas "adventure." Turning to twentieth-century literature and
film, Miller describes how artists from Africa and the
Caribbean-including the writers Aime Cesaire, Maryse Conde, and
Edouard Glissant, and the filmmakers Ousmane Sembene, Guy
Deslauriers, and Roger Gnoan M'Bala-have confronted the aftermath
of France's slave trade, attempting to bridge the gaps between
silence and disclosure, forgetfulness and memory.
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