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Part of
A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery: The Atlantic world and beyond
Edited by Madeleine Dobie, Mads Anders Baggesgaard and Karen-Margrethe Simonsen
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXVI] 2024
► pp. 230–242

Chapter 12
Testamentary manumission and emotional bonds in eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue

Plantation slavery brought whites and people of color into constant intimate contact in a system of intense forcible domination and subordination. This generated powerful emotions on the part of both enslavers and the enslaved. A close reading of one testament from eighteenth-century French Saint-Domingue suggests that systems of enslavement prompted a range of emotions on the part of white slave owners. While the emotional responses of the enslaved are much more difficult to identify, this example suggests that emotions played a key role in leading to or discouraging manumission. Why else would the wealthy, childless widow Marie-Magdeleine Rossignol manumit nine slaves in her will?
Keywords: slavery, race, gender, testament, emotion, Saint-Domingue, France, empire, 18th century, relationship
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