Slaves in Paris: Hidden Lives and Fugitive Histories

Spieler (history and politics, American Univ. of Paris; Empire and Underworld) presents insightful biographical accounts of the lives of five people from the regions of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean who were enslaved during the 18th century in colonial France. She unearths these moving depictions from hidden police files, archives of the admiralty, recovered family papers, notarial documents, and the art of piecing fragmented lives together through place and space. The five accounts in this book explore the various situations that brought enslaved people within the vicinities of prerevolutionary Parisian high society. Even before the French revolution, Paris was seen as a beacon of liberty, leading some enslaved people to flee there in search of freedom. However, by 1780, the French dominance of the global market in enslaved people turned Paris into a dangerous place where those who were escaping bondage might be hunted down, arrested, and deported. Spieler’s biography captures its subjects’ bids for freedom in Paris as well as the moment they discovered they would face a greater battle than they expected in the capital of Enlightenment thinking.