Digital history projects in progress. Updates posted here.
Enslaved by the Church, Sold for the Republic
When French revolutionaries seized the assets of the Catholic Church as "national property," the enslaved people living on those properties in the colonies were not spared. This first-of-its-kind interactive atlas documents all sites of slaveholding by Roman Catholic orders and congregations in the French colonial world and beyond. A separate digital narrative feature zooms in on what happened on Réunion Island in 1793, when an agent of the French Republic oversaw the final appraisals or auctions of 365 men, women, and children. Read "between the lines"—his detailed reports show glimpses of resistance by enslaved people and their allies as they intervened in the process to keep families united.
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Arkansas Créole: Recovering a Lost Vernacular Landscape
Map App Companion to Arkansas Créole. Click the points on the map to reveal the stories behind the place names.
- Layers: Toggle layers via the "Layers" button.
- Info: Click map points for information pop-ups on the left.
- Search: Search the database of historic names, or locate contemporary geographical features using the search function.
This digital history project documents the contributions of French-speaking people to early Arkansas history and geography. It focuses on the diverse Creole community—composed of people of European, Indigenous, and African descent—that lived alongside the Ogahpah, Osage, and Caddo nations under French, Spanish, and early U.S. dominion. For generations, the “French period” of Arkansas history has been romanticized, whitewashed, and dismissed as inconsequential. This map recovers the people behind the placenames—especially rivers, bayous, and streams.
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This Unalterable Friendship: New England Merchants in the French Indian Ocean Islands
From 1786 to 1810, Boston was the top point of origin for ships calling at Port Louis, Mauritius. Why was this distant French island port such a draw for Yankee captains? This map-based overview explores the reasons—documenting American merchants in the French islands of the Indian Ocean. The French free trade zone, the U.S. consulate (1794), and a desire to bypass British markets helped spur this transoceanic connection.
The project also examines the ripple effects of the Haitian Revolution and France’s 1794 Abolition Decree. In 1796, American merchants supported a coup that expelled French commissioners enforcing abolition. Research supported by a Boston Athenaeum Library Fellowship from ASECS.
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Creoles Far From Our Native Place: Mapping the Global Peregrinations of Jean-Baptiste Tabardin
Jean-Baptiste Tabardin, born to an enslaved mother in Mauritius, left behind an illustrated manuscript chronicling his voyages throughout the Indian and Atlantic Oceans during the French Revolutionary Wars. Over five voyages (1798–1811), often aboard privateering vessels, Tabardin reflected on race, religion, masculinity, slavery, and abolition.
This project traces Tabardin’s journeys through a global maritime world shaped by revolution. His memoir, now held at the Carnegie Library of Mauritius, is both intensely personal and historically rich.
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