To Be Free and French

Lorelle Semley is an Associate Professor of History at the College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts, where she teaches courses in African history, the African diaspora, and gender studies. Her research has been facilitated by fellowships at the John Carter Brown Library, the W. E. B. Dubois Research Institute, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. Research grants have supported travel to Benin, Brazil, France, Great Britain, Martinique, and Senegal. Previous works include Mother Is Gold, Father Is Glass: Gender and Colonialism in a Yoruba Town (2010) and articles for Law and History Review, Radical History Review, and Gender and History.

• List of figures; List of maps; List of tables; Preface: coincidental crossings; Acknowledgments; Part I. Revolutionary Foundations: Prologue: citizens of the world; 1. To live and die, free and French; 2. Signares before citizens; Part II. Colonial Constructions: 3. When Blacks broke the chains in the 'Little Paris of the Antilles'; 4. The trans-African origins of Porto-Novo; 5. An 'evolution revolution' in Paris; Part III. Planning after Empire: 6. A more perfect French Union; Epilogue: the art of citizenship; Bibliography; Index.

'Semley seeks to understand the intersection of citizenship, race, and gender within the 19th- and 20th-century French Atlantic empire. She does this through a series of engaging and well-researched chapters centered on important imperial events where the local and imperial intersect and where imperial subjects see themselves within both French and local identities. … As a whole, the work illustrates the complexity of race, citizenship, and gender in that they often worked together while they were also at odds. Many of the figures described in the book embraced the larger revolutionary ideals of citizenship, but then had to negotiate them within their local contexts. Finally, even as slaves became free and freed men became citizens, women had to wait. … Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.' T. M. Reese, Choice