Landscapes of Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century French Guiana

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Materialities of (Un)Freedom: Examining the Material Consequences of Inequality within Historical Archaeology", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

French colonial chroniclers characterized plantation slavery in Guyane as consistently lacking in funds and labor. Despite a small population and marginal profits, French enslavers sought to manifest their imaginings of a productive colony through landscapes that shaped the material realities of captive Africans. These efforts were especially pronounced during the post-revolutionary period before abolition in 1848. This paper analyzes pre- and post-emancipation landscapes in Guyane using two archival sources combined with GIS-based analyses. An 1832 map illustrates the breadth of slavery in the colony across 14 districts producing a variety of commodities using enslaved labor. Civil registers post-1848 provide clues about shifts in labor, movement, economies, demographics, and space that occurred following enslavement, including the introduction of new forms and sites of coercion. These two sources combined clarify the spatial and social consequences of plantation slavery in a region where myth has been the primary force shaping historical narratives.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Materialities of (Un)Freedom: Examining the Material Consequences of Inequality within Historical Archaeology

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow