Pour une histoire de la traite française sous le Consulat et l'Empire

Abstract

Contrary to the historiographical tradition, the French metropolitan slave trade continued throughout the impérial and consular era : the concomitance of the Amiens treaty and the restoration of the slave trade in 1802 allowed to revive a traffic previously interrupted since 1793. Up until 1805, sixty-five armaments — a third of which were from Bordeaux — were, or could have been destinated to slave-trading on the occidental and oriental coasts of Africa, and then to Spanich, Dutch and French colonies of America. The rupture of the peace in 1805 did not definitively wipe out the French slave trade : several ships — which remain to be determinated — became « spanishized » or « americanized » in order to avoid the hold of the Royal Navy. Henceforth, with those formed in the colonies — Guiana, Senegal and Mauritius — , the French slave-trading expeditions of the Napoleonic era can constitute a repertory. This can be situated between that of Jean Mettas of the 18th century and that of Serge Daget for the XIXth illegal century.