The Atlantic Slave Trade and the French Revolution, with Laura Mason

When Jean-Baptiste Carrier and thirty-two others were tried for drowning prisoners in the port city of Nantes during the French Revolution, critics claimed that the executions were unprecedented and declared them emblematic of revolutionary depravity.

Historians consider the drownings to be among the worst atrocities of the French Revolution. And yet, no one has examined how the drownings may have been linked to the slave trading that made Nantes one of the wealthiest ports of 18th-century France.

Professor Laura Mason is investigating how the perpetual warfare of slavery entered the metropole through Nantes and shaped the French Revolution.

Join us as she presents recent archival work that overturns traditional narratives of France’s export of liberté, égalité and fraternité, and examines, instead, the import and impact of colonial violence.