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Conférence
Mercredi 14 janvier 2026, 18 h 30-20 h
Commentaires : Anne Lafont (EHESS), Pierre Singaravélou (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), et Jennifer Boittin (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).
Date et heure : 14 janvier 2026, 18h30.
Lieu : 6 Rue du Colonel Combes, 75007 Paris (salle Q-801).
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« A pioneering biographical study of enslaved people and their struggle for freedom in prerevolutionary Paris, by an award-winning historian of France and the French Empire. In the decades leading up to the French Revolution, when Paris was celebrated as an oasis of liberty, slaves fled there, hoping to be freed. They pictured Paris as a refuge from France’s notorious slave-trading ports. The French were late to the slave trade, but they dominated the global market in enslaved people by the late 1780s. This explosive growth transformed Paris, the cultural capital of the Enlightenment, into a dangerous place for people in bondage. Those seeking freedom in Paris faced manhunts, arrest, and deportation. Some put their faith in lawyers, believing the city’s courts would free them. Examining the lives of those whose dashed hopes and creative persistence capture the spirit of the era, Miranda Spieler brings to light a hidden story of slavery and the struggle for freedom. Fugitive slaves collided with spying networks, nosy neighbors, and overlapping judicial authorities. Their clandestine lives left a paper trail. In a feat of historical detective work, Spieler retraces their steps and brings to light the new racialized legal culture that permeated every aspect of everyday life. She pieces together vivid, granular portraits of men, women, and children who came from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean. We learn of their strategies and hiding places, their family histories and relationships to well-known Enlightenment figures. Slaves in Paris is a history of hunted people. It is also a tribute to their resilience. »
(https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674986541).
Miranda Spieler joined the Department of History and Politics at the American University of Paris in 2013. Miranda Spieler is an historian of France and the French overseas empire. Her areas of expertise include European legal history, slavery and emancipation, the history of French Guiana and the Caribbean, policing and carceral systems, human rights, and the history of Paris.
Anne Laffont is an art historian and director of research at EHESS. She is interested in art, images, and material culture in the Black Atlantic region, as well as historiographical issues related to the concept of African art. Her latest book, co-written with François-Xavier Fovelle, is entitled "L’Afrique et le monde. Histoires renouées de la préhistoire au XXIe siècle" (Paris, La découverte, 2022).
Pierre Singaravélou has been a professor of contemporary history at Paris 1 University since 2015. In 2022, he succeeded Neil MacGregor, former president of the British Museum, as holder of the Louvre Chair dedicated to the study of lost museums of the 19th century (ethnographic museum, Algerian museum, Mexican museum, Spanish museum, Chinese museum, etc.).
Jennifer A. Boittin is the Frank Porter Graham Distinguished Professor of Global History. She received her Ph.D. in History from Yale University and was previously a professor at Penn State University. Her research and teaching look at how colonial spaces in West Africa, Southeast Asia, North Africa, and the French Caribbean were shaped by intersections between class, politics, and urban culture around the world wars and decolonization.
Page créée le mercredi 14 janvier 2026, par Webmestre.
