Madeleine's Children: Family, Freedom, Secrets, and Lies in France's Indian Ocean Colonies

The life stories of Madeleine and her three children are especially precious because, unlike scores of slave narratives published in the United States and England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no autobiographical narrative of a slave held by French-published or unpublished-exists. The Cour Royale de Paris, France's highest court of appeal, finally ruled Furcy ne libre (freeborn) in 1843. In 1759 a baby girl was born to an impoverished family on the Indian subcontinent. The struggle for justice, respect, and equality for former slaves and their descendants would not be realized within Furcy's lifetime. However, the French ruling that Furcy was free by Free Soil and the rejection of the racial argument offer a historical counterpoint to the infamous Taney opinion of 1857. This story is also significant because of the legal arguments advanced in Furcy's freedom suits between 1817 and 1843. Following the master's death in 1787, Madame Routier registered Madeleine's manumission, making her free on paper and thus exempting the Routiers from paying the annual head tax on slaves. While Lory invested in slave smuggling and helped introduce sugar cultivation to Ile Bourbon, Furcy spent the next quarter century trying to obtain legal recognition of his free status as he moved from French Ile

. About the Author Sue Peabody is Professor of History at Washington State University Vancouver and the author of "There Are No Slaves in France": The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Regime and co-editor of The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France; Slavery, Freedom and the Law in the Atlantic World; and Le droit des Noirs en France au temps de l'esclavage

Sue Peabody is Professor of History at Washington State University Vancouver and the author of "There Are No Slaves in France": The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Regime and co-editor of The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France; Slavery, Freedom and the Law in the Atlantic World; and Le droit des Noirs en F