Madeleine’s Children

This microhistory explores the nature of freedom and slavery in France’s Indian Ocean colonies. Drawing on archival collections in France, Réunion, Mauritius and the United Kingdom, Sue Peabody painstakingly reconstructs the lives of Madeleine and her children Maurice, Constance and Furcy. The story begins in India when a young Madeleine became the slave of a woman named Despense who later brought her to France. Significantly, she was not registered as a slave upon arrival and, in accordance with French law, ought to have been freed after arriving in France. Instead, she was transferred (either sold or given as a gift) to the Routier family whom she accompanied to the Isle Bourbon in the Indian Ocean. While working for this family, Madeleine had three children who may have been fathered by her master. Following the death in 1787 of Monsieur Routier, his widow registered Madeleine’s manumission. Later accounts indicated that Madeleine was never informed of her free status and continued to serve the family as before. Following the widow’s death in 1808, Madeleine learned she had been freed and was owed back wages. When she tried to use this information to secure her son Furcy’s freedom from Joseph Lory, son-in-law and heir to the estate, she was tricked into signing papers that affirmed Furcy’s enslaved status. What followed was a struggle spanning multiple decades in which Furcy, with assistance from his sister, sought to gain his complete, uncontested freedom. Furcy’s pursuit of freedom unfolded during a period marked by considerable political upheaval and debate about slavery, including the Napoleonic Wars and France’s revolutions of 1830 and 1848

Estate · Genealogy · Political science · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law