La petite histoire of the Blacks of France

 –> Lire la version française de cet article 
Time of reading: around 1 minute 30.

The May, rich in public holidays, is not the best month to go to the Archives! So today, I’m not talking about my little discoveries, but Julie Duprat‘s. She had taken it as a good resolution at the beginning of 2018 to open a history blog; we can be happy that she has done so. On La petite histoire, Julie offers anecdotes and portraits of Blacks in France in the Modern Era. Ordinary people with remarkable backgrounds let us discover other aspects of France’s colonial and slavery history.

I am particularly interested in the freed people of colour, the revolts and resistance, the lives of individuals who show the complexity and diversity of stories in the Caribbean; Julie shows us these stories from the other side of the ocean, particularly in Bordeaux. I shared with you the stories of Marc Cyrus of Martinique and Marie Rose Cavelan Fédon in Grenada, who each fought in their own way in colonial society; on La petite histoire, we discover the resistance of the slaves who marrononed in the port city of Bordeaux.

Julie also shows us the diversity of each other’s backgrounds: the love story and marriage of two Freed in their old age. Moreover, we can note some notable differences with the colonies: where interracial marriage concerned only women of colour on the islands, she found in France several black men who married white women, such as Louis Saint sylvestre. There are also the stories of Dominique Toscan an African on the ships of Bordeaux or Jean-François Février metis in the world of trade, and then a Creole entrepreneur Marie-Louise Charles who is probably one of my favorite articles in this blog.

If you read french, in this month of commemorations of the French abolitions, I suggest you discover and follow La petite histoire, because slaves or Free people of colour, there are many of our ancestors that life led from one end of the world to the other and on each side of the Atlantic. From her recent trip to Martinique, Julie shows us the forced journey of the Dubuc slaves.

On this day, on the occasion of the commemorations of the abolition of slavery, discover the history of Sibilly: plead for its freedom!