Legacies of Enslavement in the French Republic - (Liverpool Studies in International Slavery) by Nicola Frith (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Legacies of Enslavement in the French Republic explores the complex dynamics between social movements invested in remembering and addressing the legacies of African enslavement and the French State. Exploring 25 years of activism, from the build-up to the 150th anniversary of the Abolition Act (1998) through to the present day, the book:

• Investigates strategies used by the French State to delink the recognition of France's enslaving past from contemporary issues with anti-Black racism and reparation.
• Asks why, in the wake of the first Taubira law that recognized slavery as a crime against humanity (2001), the state has legitimized the work of certain activist groups, while delegitimizing others.
• Uses critical race theory and decolonial theory to examine the extent to which the State's approach to recognizing its past is structured by a 'colonial matrix of power'.
• Highlights and contests political and media misconceptions about reparations by showcasing the work of grassroots activists operating in France, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean.

In doing so, Legacies of Enslavement showcases some of the key shifts that have taken place in the recent history of activist work operating in parallel with the successive metamorphoses of the French state as it responds to social and political pressure to recognize and repair the nation's enslaving past and its racial legacies today.

Review Quotes

'As a direct witness but also as a contributor to the process that Nicola Frith is describing and analysing, I must say that she has done a real tour de force. With great clarity, she takes the reader through the complex and difficult journey of recognising the history of centuries of slave trade and slavery by the French society. Frith explains the specificity of French republican coloniality, its intellectual and political elite (Left and Right) attachment to a national narrative that must save at all cost the idea of France as the « pays des droits de l'homme », that has refused, to this day, to fully acknowledge the damages the French State did to the Republic of Haiti, and to whom the debate on reparation must be avoided. Frith, who has interviewed activists in France, Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana and Reunion and has read extensively about active memory and politics, offers an invaluable analysis of the French (post)colonial debate on slavery, race, citizenship and justice.' Professor Françoise Vergès

'The contribution of this book is fundamental in that it contrasts with the work in the field produced by the vast majority of French historians, sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers, whose precautions or positions do not give rise to such a committed analysis based on the premise of the legitimacy of demands for reparations.'

Professor Christine Chivallon, CNRS