To Be Free and French: Citizenship in France's Atlantic Empire

The Haitian Revolution may have galvanized subjects of French empire in the Americas and Africa struggling to define freedom and 'Frenchness' for themselves, but Lorelle Semley reveals that this event was just one moment in a longer struggle of women and men of color for rights under the French colonial regime. Through political activism ranging from armed struggle to literary expression, these colonial subjects challenged and exploited promises in French Republican rhetoric that should have contradicted the continued use of slavery in the Americas and the introduction of exploitative labor in the colonization of Africa. They defined an alternative French citizenship, which recognized difference, particularly race, as part of a 'universal' French identity. Spanning Atlantic port cities in Haiti, Senegal, Martinique, Benin, and France, this book is a major contribution to scholarship on citizenship, race, empire, and gender, and it sheds new light on debates around human rights and immigration in contemporary France.

Author: Lorelle Semley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 07/10/2017
Pages: 382
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.21lbs
Size: 9.14h x 6.49w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9781107498471

Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2018

About the Author
Semley, Lorelle: - Lorelle Semley is an Associate Professor of History at the College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts, where she teaches courses in African history, the African diaspora, and gender studies. Her research has been facilitated by fellowships at the John Carter Brown Library, the W. E. B. Dubois Research Institute, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. Research grants have supported travel to Benin, Brazil, France, Great Britain, Martinique, and Senegal. Previous works include Mother Is Gold, Father Is Glass: Gender and Colonialism in a Yoruba Town (2010) and articles for Law and History Review, Radical History Review, and Gender and History.