'There Are No Slaves in France'

Named as an Outstanding Academic Book of 1997 by CHOICE

The repeated efforts by French slaves in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth century to legally seek their freedom left a rich tale of how the demand for freedom paradoxically leads to both the broadening of civil rights and the fostering of racial prejudice. Peabody tells this tale in a lively, informative, and anecdotal narrative.There Are No Slaves in France examines the paradoxical emergence of political antislavery and institutional racism in the century prior to the French Revolution. Sue Peabody shows how the political culture of late Bourbon France created ample opportunities for contestation over the meaning of freedom. Based on various archival sources, this work will be of interest not only to historians of slavery and France, but to scholars interested in the emergence of modern culture in the Atlantic world.