The French Encounter with Africans

White Response to Blacks, 1530-1880

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by William B. Cohen,

Foreword by James D. Le Sueur

Indiana University Press

Due/Published October 2003, 384 pages, paper

ISBN 0253216508

Available again (F03)

In this work, William B. Cohen traces the ways in which negative attitudes toward blacks became deeply embedded in French culture. Examining the forces that shaped these views, Cohen reveals the persistent inequality of French interactions with blacks in Africa, in the slave colonies of the West Indies, and in France itself. Now a classic, The French Encounter with Africans supports and participates in current discussions of European relations with non-Europeans and with issues of racism, ethnicity, identity, colonialism, and empire.

"As French and American historians of France are revisiting the history of French racism today, William B. Cohen's book is more important than ever. It has become a classic." --Nancy L. Green

Contents

Foreword -- James D. LeSueur
Preface
Introduction
1. The Impulse ot Inequality
2. The Establishment of Slave Societies
3. The Philosophes and Africa
4. Three Patterns of Interaction: West Indies, France, and Senegal
5. The Issue of Slavery
6. The Rise of Imperialism
7. The Nineteenth Century Confronts Slavery
8. Scientific Racism
9. The Lure of Empire
Afterword
Notes
Index