This visualization shows that a coherent body of policies targeting people of non-European ancestry emerged throughout the early modern French empire, across both the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.

It is an interactive table showing clusters of matching policies which targeted people of non-European ancestry across different French colonies, between 1603 and 1758. The policies in the dataset deal with racial issues such as intermarriage, but also with some wider issues pertaining to people of non-European ancestry, such as their conversion to Catholicism.

Each row in this interactive table identifies one cluster of policies which were either identical to each other word for word or bore a strong semantic resemblance. Within each row, each policy issued for an Atlantic colony is represented with a blue dot under the heading “Atlantic,” while each law or legislative proposal issued for an Indian Ocean colony is represented with a green dot under the heading “Indian Ocean.”

How to use it

Clicking on a row reveals a sub-table enumerating the policies belonging to the corresponding cluster, with a citation for each of them, as well as the name of their author and date of formulation.

Clicking on the Start button allows the user to follow the issuance of policies through time.

Some numbers

The visualization is based on a dataset of 67 policies and identifies 17 clusters of matching policies. Out of these 17 clusters, 13 contain policies formulated in identical or similar terms for the French Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. At least six different laws concerning the enslaved, manumitted slaves, and their descendants reiterate word for word a law previously issued for another colony. Moreover, at least 31 policies have the same objective as a prior policy issued for another colony, despite being phrased differently. Finally, for nine of the policies represented in this table, officials explicitly justified the issuance of the policy by referencing an earlier policy in the same cluster, which had been previously issued for a different colony.

Data curation

The dataset was curated manually, mostly from primary source material gathered in the French Overseas Archives in Aix-en-Provence, and in the Departmental Archives of Réunion Island.

Authors

The research and data collection were performed by Prof. Melanie Lamotte, and the visualization was designed and built together with Daniel Ohayon.