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Slavery & Freedom in the French Indian Ocean World with Dr. Sue Peabody

·33 min·3 clips

Fersi, a former slave, used his candy shop profits to purchase two slaves of his own.

Dr. Sue Peabody, a leading historian of French slavery, joins the show to discuss her award-winning book "Madeleine's Children." Her work traces an enslaved Bengali woman named Madeleine and her family across the Indian Ocean colonies of Ile Bourbon (Réunion) and Mauritius from 1750 to 1850. This episode explores how one family's legal battles illuminate France's complex colonial history. France established Indian Ocean trading posts in the late 1600s, seeking spices and textiles, and encountered systems of debt peonage that functioned as slavery. French law famously held that any slave setting foot on French soil became free, a principle central to Madeleine's story. Born in Bengal around 1759, Madeleine was sold to a French colonist and taken to France in 1772, though her owner illegally failed to register her arrival. She was then transferred to the wealthy Routier family, who returned with her to Ile Bourbon, where she had three children. Dr. Peabody presents DNA evidence indicating the Routier's son fathered her children, Constance and Furcy. The widow Routier freed Madeleine in 1789 but never informed her, creating a legal nest egg of back wages intended for Madeleine's use. After the widow's death, her son-in-law, the slave smuggler Joseph Lory, swindled the illiterate Madeleine out of this money, preventing her from buying her son Furcy's freedom. Furcy's decades-long legal struggle began in 1817, aided by his sister Constance and a new attorney general. His lawyers argued for his freedom based on the "free soil" principle from Madeleine's 1772 trip to France and on racial grounds, claiming Madeleine's Indian origin meant she was born free. Furcy was imprisoned and later transferred to a Mauritius sugar plantation, where British authorities declared him "free in fact" after discovering his illegal importation. With his freedom valid only in British territory, Furcy became a pastry chef in Mauritius and, surprisingly, purchased two slaves to expand his business. Following British emancipation in 1835, Furcy received compensation for his two slaves and used the funds to sue for his freedom in Paris. He won his case in 1843, along with substantial reparations from the Lory family, and retired as a landowner in Mauritius. Furcy's landmark case led to the 1836 Ordinance, which formalized France's free soil principle but also implicitly secured colonies as spaces for slavery. Dr. Peabody discovered Furcy's story in 1990 but returned to it after the 2001 Taubira Law, which recognized slavery as a crime against humanity and spurred new research. Furcy has since become a cultural figure in Réunion, inspiring a novel, plays, documentaries, and an upcoming feature film. Local activists initially criticized Dr. Peabody, mistaking her for a Canadian historian withholding the story, but collaboration and the French translation of her book resolved tensions. The conversation is deeply educational, structured around Dr. Peabody's meticulous archival research and narrative storytelling. The tone is scholarly yet accessible, focusing on the human drama within global legal and economic systems. Listeners interested in microhistory, legal battles, and the personal dimensions of slavery and empire will find this episode compelling. Those seeking a broad military or political overview of the French Revolution might find the specific, family-focused lens too narrow.

As heard by us

A single family case opens onto slavery, freedom, and legal status in France's Indian Ocean colonies.

This interview follows slavery and freedom in the French Indian Ocean colonies through Madeline, Fersi, and the widow's estate. Dr. Sue Peabody, a historian of slavery, race, and law in France and its colonies, uses manumission, inheritance, and census records to show how status…

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Press play if one family's paper trail should lead you into French colonial slavery.

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