Voices of the Enslaved - (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American Histo) by Sophie White (Paperback)

About the Book

"In eighteenth-century New Orleans, the legal testimony of some 150 enslaved women and men--like the testimony of free colonists--was meticulously recorded and preserved. Questioned in criminal trials as defendants, victims, and witnesses about attacks, murders, robberies, and escapes, they answered with stories about themselves, stories that rebutted the premise on which slavery was founded. Focusing on four especially dramatic court cases, Voices of the Enslaved draws us into Louisiana's courtrooms, prisons, courtyards, plantations, bayous, and convents to demonstrate how enslaved people viewed and experienced their worlds. Sophie White offers both a richly textured account of slavery in French Louisiana and a powerful meditation on the limits and possibilities of the archive"--

Book Synopsis

In eighteenth-century New Orleans, the legal testimony of some 150 enslaved women and men -- like the testimony of free colonists -- was meticulously recorded and preserved. Questioned in criminal trials as defendants, victims, and witnesses about attacks, murders, robberies, and escapes, they answered with stories about themselves, stories that rebutted the premise on which slavery was founded.

Focusing on four especially dramatic court cases, Voices of the Enslaved draws us into Louisiana's courtrooms, prisons, courtyards, plantations, bayous, and convents to understand how the enslaved viewed and experienced their worlds. As they testified, these individuals charted their movement between West African, indigenous, and colonial cultures; they pronounced their moral and religious values; and they registered their responses to labor, to violence, and, above all, to the intimate romantic and familial bonds they sought to create and protect. Their words -- punctuated by the cadences of Creole and rich with metaphor -- produced riveting autobiographical narratives as they veered from the questions posed by interrogators.

Carefully assessing what we can discover, what we might guess, and what has been lost forever, Sophie White offers both a richly textured account of slavery in French Louisiana and a powerful meditation on the limits and possibilities of the archive.

Review Quotes

"Voices of the Enslaved is a remarkable achievement of historical interpretation from fragmentary documents, even sources as comparably rich as court transcripts, and is an impressive contribution to scholarship on the African diaspora in the French Atlantic."--H-Net Reviews

"A compelling and insightful chronicle of the lives of individual enslaved men and women in French colonial Louisiana."--Journal of Southern History

"Any effort to review this work can only fall short because of the sheer beauty of White's written word and the profound depictions that she pens."--Journal of Early American History

"Through meticulously recorded and preserved legal testimony derived from criminal trials in 18th-century New Orleans, White details how slaves perceived their own cultural reality as well as that of the ruling masters. The stories provided offer insight into their morals, societal values, and views on labor, violence, and familial bonds. The author intersperses her narrative with records in French and includes multiple paintings, samples of documented testimony, maps, and architectural sketches that help bring these figures and their plight to life. . . . Graduate students and professionals will find it uniquely enlightening."--CHOICE