'There Are No Slaves in France'

There Are No Slaves in France examines the paradox of political antislavery and institutional racism in the century prior to the French Revolution. In vividly told vignettes, Peabody examines the actual court cases that decided the fates of petitioning slaves to demonstrate the ever increasing tensions arising between an ancient juridical commitment to freedom and a growing national belief that blacks were an inferior race. Through studying the confrontations between the principal of freedom and the fact of slavery, the book examines how French national myths concerning liberty and race were transformed by the presence of enslaved blacks in the metropolis.