Unfreedom: Theme and Variations in Eighteenth-Century France

In metropolitan France, enslaved people and free people of color alike navigated a treacherous and shifting legal landscape and confronted a host of policing methods. Even the most privileged among this group—like the emancipated, mixed-race, and famed fencer, violinist, composer, and military officer Joseph Bologne, the chevalier de Saint-George (1745-1799)—were constrained by anti-Black cultures and policies in France. Taking Saint- George, his mother Nanon, and other free people of color in Paris as examples, I argue that historians must develop a more nuanced understanding of unfreedom and its role in solidifying white supremacy in France, while shaping tactics of resistance.