To Be Free and French: Citizenship in France's Atlantic Empire (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781107498471)

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
ISBN-10: 1107498473
ISBN-13: 9781107498471
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 07/10/2017
Pages: 382
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.90d

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