ABSTRACT
This entry surveys the French participation in the Atlantic slavery system from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, illustrating the deep entanglement of state initiatives and private gain, assessing the economic profits generated by the triangular trade for France, Europe, and the Americas and the multilayered losses it caused to Africa. Highlighting both European and African agency in the exponential growth of African enslavement, this chapter examines aspects of slavery’s material and immaterial culture, as well as the unique route taken by France toward its abolition. It posits that lifting the silences around France’s role in a transatlantic slave trade whose most pernicious legacy is racism could repair some of the nation’s contemporary social fractures.
