Enslaved Women’s Family Freedom Suits and Amelioration in the French Antilles, 1830–48

During the 1830s and 1840s, French abolitionists argued for the necessity of amelioration policies as preparatory measures for the eventual emancipation of slaves in the colonies. They proposed legislation that was then implemented by Louis-Philippe’s government from 1830-1845—which aimed to relax manumission restrictions, provide religious education for slaves, encourage marriage, curtail corporal abuse of enslaved women and children, and protect the slave family from separation through sale. This amelioration legislation had unintended consequences in Martinique and Guadeloupe: as litigation and court cases during the 1840s attest to a number of women who sued their slaveowners under the provisions of these policies, particularly with respect to family separation. These women, who had previously been manumitted by their owners, demanded the freedom of their children, grandchildren, and/or husbands who remained slaves by arguing that their manumission constituted a violation of the legal clauses that forbade the separation of the family. In many instances, these women were successful with their suits and brought them all the way to the Court of Cassation in France, and in others, they were not. Through case studies of several of these women and their families, this paper will reconstruct how French amelioration laws opened up new spaces for slaves to challenge the authority of their masters and demand freedom for themselves and their families. It will also analyze the obstacles they faced in pleading their cases in a colonial legal context that sought to suppress them.