Full Description
These papers are intended to demonstrate the complexity of the historical processes leading up to the abolition of slavery in 1793-1794, and again in 1848, given that Bonaparte had restored the former colonial regime in 1802. Those processes include the slave insurrections and the many forms of resistance to slavery and servile work, the philosophical and political debates of the Enlightenment, the attitude of the Church, the action of anti-slavery associations and the role of revolutionary assemblies, not forgetting the importance of the economic interests that provided the backcloth to philosophical discussions in the matter.
The close interweaving of the colonial spheres of the majority of European powers inexorably raised slavery to an international plane: from then on anti-slavery too became a cosmopolitan movement, and these present studies strive to take account of this important innovation at the end of the eighteenth century.
This work, written in tribute to Léger Félicité Sonthonex, who was responsible for the first abolition in Santo Domingo in 1793, and to Victor Schoelcher, principal architect of the abolition of 1848, is intended to link two highly symbolic dates in the tragic history of the "first colonization": 1793 marks the beginning of the age of abolitions, yet it was not until half a century later that France, now republican once more, renewed links with the heritage of the Enlightenment and of Year II.
Contents
Chapter 1. Introductory Note - Slavery and Late Serfdom
Chapter 2. Resistances to Slavery in the Different Colonial Spheres (1750-1791)
Chapter 3. Was There a Demand for Abolition in Western Thought in the Eighteenth Century?
Chapter 4. The Revolution and the First Abolition: Insurrections in the Islands, Debates in the Revolutionary Assemblies, Abolitions (1789-1802)
Chapter 5. The Restoration of Slavery and the Reconstruction of the Abolitionist Movements (1802-1848)
Chapter 6. 1848: The Suppression of Slavery: Debates and Modalities of Implementation
Chapter 7. Afterword - On the Abolition of Slavery by the First Republic
Appendix: Summary Chronology of abolitions of the Slave Trade and Slavery
Bibliography
Index
