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  • Claims to Memory: Beyond Slavery and Emancipation in the French Caribbean
  • Doris Y. Kadish
Reinhardt, Catherine A. . Claims to Memory: Beyond Slavery and Emancipation in the French Caribbean. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006. ISBN 1-84545-079-5.

I am eager to call Catherine A. Reinhardt's Claims to Memory: Beyond Slavery and Emancipation in the French Caribbean to the attention of readers of NCFS, despite the fact that it does not focus specifically on the years from 1800 to 1899. Rather, the author chooses to treat materials from the second half of the eighteenth century and the last decade of the twentieth century. Claims to Memory is an important book for [End Page 657] nineteenth-century scholars nonetheless: first, because Reinhardt's book illuminates the "long nineteenth century," a term that reminds us that the issues that arise in the beginnings and ends of centuries overlap and are inextricably linked; and second, because Claims to Memory illuminates colonial history, which is so crucial for an understanding of nineteenth-century French history and literature. The wealth of information that Reinhardt provides, which derives from archival research and field work in the Caribbean, justifies including Claims to Memory on a list of important new works that nineteenth-century scholars should consult.

The theoretical underpinning of Reinhardt's book and the basis of its coherence are provided by Pierre Nora's notion of realms of memory, or "microhistories," which symbolize a community's heritage but which also often tend to become atrophied and accordingly to play a dominant but distorting role. In the five chapters of the book, devoted to five such realms – the enlightenment, the maroon, freedom, assimilation, and memory – Reinhardt takes on the task of providing a more accurate account of the heritage of Francophone communities today. As Reinhardt explains in her introductory chapter, in 1998 the descendants of slaves raised fundamental questions about who and what was being celebrated and whether there was cause to celebrate the single date of emancipation in 1848 from among all the events connected with slavery. As she sums up one of her key points, "Celebrating the abolitionary decree as a symbol of France's commitment to freedom and democracy, the commemoration honored contributions of French individuals to the exclusion of Caribbean initiatives" (4).

Chapter 1 juxtaposes the writings of anti-slavery philosophes such as Montesquieu and Voltaire with those of pro-slavery writers: for example, Le Romain's essay in the Encylopédie; and writings by white planters. By showing the commonalities among pro- and anti-slavery writers, Reinhardt succeeds in questioning "the received notion that the philosophes constituted an uncompromising front against slavery" (17). Even the most enlightened writers of the late eighteenth century, Raynal and Condorcet, who articulate the slaves' right to freedom or the need to destroy slavery, deem slaves unfit for emancipation in the near future. Reinhardt concludes that ultimately the concerns of the philosophes were more economic than humanitarian.

Chapters 2–4 shift focus to the role that blacks played in the construction of their own destinies. Chapter 2 considers the figure of the maroon. Reinhardt begins by tracing the history of the resistance that this figure embodies and then turns to showing how maroons were mythicized through their depictions in eighteenth-century writings as either brutishly violent (Saint-Lambert, Mercier, Raynal, Prévost) or as amenable to "civilization" (Mailhol, Gouges, Pigault-Lebrun). Reinhardt deconstructs both depictions as ways of undermining the notion of resistance by the oppressed. Her analysis echoes the revisionist representations of the maroon that, as Reinhardt emphasizes, numerous Martinicans and Guadeloupeans have constructed in recent times, a topic discussed more fully in Chapter 5. Chapter 3 juxtaposes letters and political pamphlets produced by three disparate groups during the French revolutionary period: the French abolitionist Société des amis des noirs, Martinican planters, and Martinican slaves. By showing in this chapter that all three of these groups brought the notion of freedom to the forefront of political thought – and thus not just whites – Reinhardt succeeds in demonstrating the need to redefine the realm of freedom in terms that include black agency. Her analysis of the "independent, insubordinate, and even aggressive [End Page 658...

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