Free African and Eurafrican Women and the Trading Companies of the French Atlantic

This paper explores interactions between French trading company officials, soldiers, and traders in Senegal, Saint-Domingue and Gulf Coast Louisiana, and the free African and Eurafrican women they encountered during the first decades of the eighteenth century.  In the face of kinetic uncertainty, free African and Eurafrican women living and trading in the ports of the French Atlantic made creative and provocative choices about their own livelihoods.  By forming alliances, families and business partnerships with French officials, soldiers, and traders, these women created distinctive lives at the intersection of colonial hegemony and African autonomy.  Their endeavors helped structure coastal society and free black life in the trading posts of Senegal.  In the French outposts of Saint-Domingue and Gulf Coast Louisiana, complicated ties between trading company officials, soldiers, and traders, and enslaved women also influenced access to manumission and commercial networks.  Throughout the French Atlantic, imperialism, slavery, and patriarchy colluded to constrain early black Atlantic women’s opportunities.  However, within the interstices of French slaveholding regimes, women of African descent made self-conscious choices for themselves and their families.