The Meaning of Freedom: Slave Self-Purchase and the Making of Free Labour in Martinique (2020)
This article examines the introduction of legalized slave savings and compulsory slave self-purchase—the pécule légal and rachat forcé—by the Mackau Laws in the French colony of Martinique in the last years of the July Monarchy. Drawing on official correspondence, political debates, published pamphlets and individual cases of slave self-purchase, it examines official efforts to replace a system of bondage rooted in direct, personal domination and explicit violence with a system of colonial labour based on free labour and impersonal social controls. Their efforts were profoundly shaped by two sets of actors: members of the pro-slavery lobby and the enslaved. Together these two groups defined a minimal standard of free labour that would have far-reaching impact on colonial labour policy in the post-emancipation period.
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