French Anti-Slavery: The Movement for the Abolition of Slavery in France, 1802-1848 (review)

Jennings, Lawrence C., French Anti-Slavery: The Movement for Abolition of Slavery in France, 1802-1848. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Pp. 320 ISBN 0-521-77249-4

Lawrence C. Jennings's French Anti-Slavery: The Movement for Abolition of Slavery in France, 1802-1848 provides, in the author's words, "a comprehensive and definitive account of the French movement against colonial slavery in the first half of the nineteenth century" (x), the fruit of two decades of research in official governmental records from the period; press materials from the leading port cities of Bordeaux, Nantes, and Le Havre; and papers and writings of the abolitionist societies. It comprises a preface, nine lengthy chapters, a conclusion, and an extensive bibliography. Although the specificity that Jennings provides will prove invaluable to historians and other scholars, non-specialists may find the book excessively detailed and at times ponderous reading.

In the first chapter, after describing the stifling of abolitionist activity under Napoleon, Jennings focuses on the Restoration, showing how abolitionism was suspect because of its association with republicanism and pro-English sentiment and how, despite the activity of the abolitionist Société de la morale chrétienne during the 1820s, its effectiveness was diminished by the elitism and extreme cautiousness that were to plague French abolitionism until the end of slavery was brought about by the revolution of 1848. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the early years of the July Monarchy, which initially seemed well disposed to the abolitionist society, of which Louis Philippe had been a member. Jennings describes the high hopes raised in France when the British emancipated slaves in 1833 and the formation, one year later, of a new abolitionist society, the Société française pour l'abolition de l'esclavage, presided over by the duc de Broglie, former president of the Société de la morale chrétienne. But he also describes how those hopes faded as the new French society, even though it was larger, more specialized, and more influential than the Société de la morale chrétienne, proved itself to be largely ineffectual, for reasons that include its unwillingness to operate outside legislative channels, its commitment to gradualism instead of immediate emancipation, its restrictive membership, and its unwillingness to seek mass support.

Chapters 4 and 5 describe, year by year, the legislative events relating to slavery in the 1830s. Jennings goes into great detail to describe the various plans and proposals that the abolitionists brought forth as well as their lack of success, attributable in large part to the fact that the government had put abolition on the back burner and consistently resorted to such tactics as advocating waiting until 1841 when the English apprenticeship system could be evaluated or exaggerating the amount of the indemnity owed to slave owners. In addition to these tactics, Jennings argues, emancipation did not occur before 1848 for reasons that include the effective opposition mounted by the colonial party, the do-nothing policy of the July Monarchy, the extremely moderate nature of mainstream French anti-slavery, their unwillingness or inability to appeal to public opinion, government restrictions on public assembly, and the association of abolition with the English at a time of rampant Anglophobia. But in the final analysis, Jennings maintains, the King was the true impediment to French emancipation, which only occurred when he was overthrown.

Chapters 6 to 9 describe the slow shift in the 1840s from gradualism to immediatism. The two major players at this time were the mulatto Cyrille Bissette and the white abolitionist Victor Schoelcher, whose stature in the former French colonies and in French history generally appears to irk Jennings. Contrasting Schoelcher with Bissette and Félice, another immediatist from the 1840s, Jennings grudgingly acknowledges that "[w]hile Schoelcher is fully deserving of his fame as the liberator of French slaves in 1848, the team...