The Slaves’ Economy: Independent Production and Trade By Slaves on Ile Bourbon, 1663–1767

Despite the large number of Africans subjected to enslavement in the early modern French empire, the material life of these captives has rarely been investigated. Moreover, few historians have focused their attention on the history of the early modern French southwest Indian Ocean. By examining the organization of slave communities with respect to production and consumption on Île Bourbon, this paper will partly remedy these omissions. The Letters Patent of 1723 (an ordinance regulating slavery on Île Bourbon) allowed slaves to possess a peculium (savings) and in practice, enslaved people across the French empire were able to own property.

As shown in the paper, in addition to obtaining rations of food, drinks and clothes given by their masters, slaves could also acquire goods through gratifications given by free people or through theft. They could cultivate their own patches of land, fabricate handicrafts, and commercialize their own products and services. The paper will examine the legislation that attempted to regulate the economic life of enslaved people across the empire. On Île Bourbon and in the broader French empire, numerous laws endeavoured to prevent enslaved people from selling goods and thereby counteract economic competition, theft and inflation.

The paper will explore the nature of these commercial exchanges: they could be based on money, barter, credit and/or trust. It will, in addition, focus on the demands of the enslaved, whether dictated by human needs, responses to the availability of goods and money to buy them, the politics of fashion, the needs to fulfil social obligations or to obey sumptuary laws. Île Bourbon will be placed into a broader French imperial context through the use of comparisons and the consideration of trans-imperial networks. The paper will draw upon a large variety of sources including legislation, court proceedings, correspondence, travel accounts and notarial records.

See more of: Slaves and Masters on the Margins of the Law in the Early Modern French Empire, c. 1660–1760
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