January 2007 Newsletter

            Happy belated New Year to everyone. In addition to news from our colleagues, several calls for papers and notices concerning

the Journal of Vietnamese Studies and a new Cambridge University Press book series on Empire, this issue also contains a preliminary program for the upcoming annual meeting in La Rochelle this June. Members are advised to make their La Rochelle hotel reservations early as it is one of the most visited French cities and things accommodations fill up quickly.

            This month’s Presidential Message

contains the results of our on-line poll regarding future meeting locations, the recent expansion of the society’s Executive Board, and the call for a new web master to take over development and management of the society’s website. If anyone has questions about what that entails, please feel free to contact me.

President’s Message

            The 2007 program committee, consisting of Mickaël Augeron, Bertrand Van Ruymbeke Philip Boucher, Robert DuPlessis, John Savage and David Del Testa has been hard at work planning our 33^rd annual meeting, June 6-10, 2007, in La Rochelle. The preliminary draft appears here in our newsletter. Be sure to make your travel arrangements soon.

            Ken Orosz, in addition to his excellent editorship of this newsletter, has been adding some bells and whistles to the society’s website: www.frenchcolonial.org. In collaboration with archivist Michel Lalonde, who oversees the Society’s archives (held Centre de recherche en civilisation canadienne-française [CRCCF] at the Université d'Ottawa), the FCHS is in the midst of digitizing all past conference programs and posting these on the website. This will make our members’ research more visible via the internet and lead to greater readership of our journal French Colonial History. Thanks to Ken, who first proposed the website and has tended it carefully for several years, we receive queries about the society from all over the world. At this point, the website is ready to be updated and we are looking to identify a member of the society who is interested in becoming the new webmaster (Ken will continue to serve as newsletter editor). Please send your nominations (self-nominations always welcome and encouraged!) to Sue Peabody, peabody@vancouver.wsu.edu.

            The Executive Advisory Board of the FCHS has grown this fall to include several new members, listed here in italics: Philip Boucher, Julia Clancy-Smith, Bob Duplessis, Pat Galloway, Ruth Ginio, Kwaku Gyasi, Eric Jennings, John. Johnston, Dale Miquelon, Dale Standen, Greg Waselkov. The current officers (Sue Peabody, President; Michael G. Vann, Vice President; Bill Newbigging, Treasurer; and Kenneth Orosz, Secretary, Webmaster and Newsletter Editor) and other responsible parties (Leslie Choquette and Elizabeth Demers, editors of French Colonial History, and Owen White, Heggoy Book Prize Chair), are grateful for their sage wisdom and sound advice.

            Following the September newsletter, 21 members participated in an on-line poll (and a handful of non-members sent comments directly to the president) regarding their interest in possible future meeting sites. Participants were encouraged to vote for any and all sites that they might attend. Here are the (unscientific) results:

To select the sites for future conferences, it is necessary to have a proposal from one or more FCHS members who can take responsibility for reserving spaces, arranging tours and receptions, etc. We clearly have a number of excellent possible sites. Please notify Sue Peabody (peabody@vancouver.wsu.edu) by May 15, 2007, if you have a proposal for the Executive Advisory Board and membership to discuss at the June, 2007 business meeting in La Rochelle.

            Mark your calendars: Next year’s conference site is set: Québec, May 15-17, 2008. Many thanks to conference organizer Alain Laberge for making the advance arrangements.

Sue Peabody

Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize, 2006-2007

            Each year the French Colonial Historical Society presents a book in honor of one of its founding members, Alf Andrew Heggoy. Book prize recognition includes an award of US $350 for the best book published during the previous year dealing with the French colonial experience from the 16th to the 20th century. Books from any academic discipline will be considered but they must approach the consideration of the French colonial experience from an historical perspective. The deadline for this year is March 1, 2007.

            Applicants or their publishers should send one copy each of books published in 2006 to the members of the book prize committee:

            The award will be announced at the annual conference of the French Colonial Historical Society in La Rochelle, France in June 2007. Members of the Book Prize Committee are Owen White, Chair (University of Delaware), Pat Galloway (University of Texas - Austin) and Martin Thomas (University of Exeter)

Colleagues at Work

            Josette Brun has published a new book on married life and widowhood in 18^th century New France entitled Vie et more du couple en Nouvelle-France: Québec et Louisbourg au XIII^e siècle (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-773-53068-1).

            Nathalie Dessesns is pleased to announce the appearance of her second book entitled

From Saint-Domingue to New Orleans: Migration and Influences (Gainesville: UPF, 2007) ISBN: 978-0-8130-3073-1.

            Ken Donovan has recently published his paper "Gardens, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry in Cape Breton, 1713-1758" in Material History Review, 64 (Fall 2006) pp. 20-37. This journal is distributed throughout more than 30 countries. Ken had presented the garden paper at the FCHS meeting in Toulouse in 2003. In conjunction with his work on landscape gardening, which includes the French mobilization of nature and technique, the French gardens in Cape Breton were also designed with a sense of proportion and incorporated elements of beauty to enhance their aesthetic appeal. French design techniques of the Enlightenment had wide implications and this is seen in Ken's recently published four scholarly articles on the history of golf and golf course architecture in Canada. Ken has also published six articles in the Oxford Companion to Canadian History. Five of these entries concern New France and include Ile Royale, Louisbourg, Cape Breton , the slave Marie Marguerite Rose and Slavery in Canada. See Gerald Hallowell, ed., The Oxford Companion to Canadian History, (Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2004).

            Virginia Donovan is a 4^th year PhD candidate at Ohio State University interested in Quebec studies and 17^th-18^th century French literature.

            Theresa Eddington-Romahn is currently research and writing a dissertation on colonial discourse in French Algeria.

            La Salle and His Legacy, a frequently cited volume edited by FCHS member Patricia Galloway and first published in 1982, is once again being made available as a print-on-demand paperback from the University Press of Mississippi for $25. This book was one of the first to draw attention to the Minet account of the La Salle voyage down the Mississippi. 

            David Geggus has published “Slavery and Emancipation in the French Caribbean: Recent Scholarship,” in Beyond Fragmentation: New Directions in Caribbean Scholarship, ed. David Trotman, Juanita de Barros and Audra Diptee (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2006) : 3-34; “The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in Latin America,” in Darién Davis, ed. Beyond Slavery: the Multifaceted Legacy of Africans in Latin America (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006) : 19-36; “The Arming of Slaves during the Haitian Revolution,” in The Arming of Slaves in World History: From Classical Times to the Modern Age ed. Philip Morgan and Christopher Brown (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) : 209-232; “Moreau de Saint-Méry et la Révolution de Saint-Domingue” in Moreau de Sain-Méry; ou les ambiguïtes d’un créole des Lumières ed. Dominique Taffin (Martinique: Société des amis des archives, 2006) : 129-135; “Toussaint Louverture avant et après le soulèvement de 1791,” in Mémoire de révolution d’escalves à Saint-Domingue ed. Franklin Midi. (Montréal: CIDHICA, 2006) : 135-156; and “The French Slave Trade: An Overview,” in The Atlantic Slave Trade, vol II Seventeenth Century, ed. Jeremy Black (London: Ashgate, 2006) : 101-120.

            Jonathan Gosnell is directing Smith College’s study abroad program in Geneva this year and is looking forward to seeing fellow society members in La Rochelle in 2005.

            Nicolas Landry est le coordinateur du chapitre Canada-Atlantique du projet Lieux de mémoire en Nouvelle-France, en collaboration avec l’université Laval de Québec.

            Dale Miquelon has published the first article that he has written in French: "Les Pontchartrain se penchent sur leurs cartes de l'Amérique : les cartes et l'impérialisme, 1690-1712," Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française 59 (2005): 53-71. It must have been a big effort because he retired as of June 30 after 36 years at the University of Saskatchewan.

            Edith Mulhern received her BA in June from the University of Pennsylvania with a triple major in history, French and International Studies. She is serving as an Assistante de lange in the Ris-Orangis schools just outside of Paris.

            Sue Peabody’s new book, Slavery, Freedom and the Law in the Atlantic World: A Brief History with Documents, co-edited with Keila Grinberg (Universidad de Rio de Janeiro), will be published by Bedford/St. Martin’s this March as part of the Bedford Series in History and Culture. This 190 pp. collection is aimed at the college classroom and contains dozens of original and translated legal texts and images (laws, pamphlets, judicial decisions, treaties, petitions, engravings) describing and regulating slavery and freedom in the French, British, Spanish and Portuguese empires from the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

            Frederick Quinn's book In Search of Salt, Changes in Beti (Cameroon) Society, 1880-1960, has been published as Volume 6 in a Cameroon Studies series by Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford. Information is available at www.berghahnbooks.com The book covers the structure of a traditional African society and its changes under German and French colonial presences. Fred's book The Image of Muslims and Islam in Western Thought will be published by Oxford University Press in October 2007. Chapter headings include: The Prophet as AntiChrist and Arab Lucifer (early times to 1600), "The Time of Araby has Come at Last" (Voltaire )(1600-1800), The Prophet as Hero and Wise Eastener (1800-1900), "Nous revenons Saladin!" (We return, Saladin!) (1900-2000). and Modern Times: Violence and Reciprocity.

            Samantha Rompillon s’interesse dans la vallée de Saint-Laurent/Acadie et les movements migratoires, population et l’espace.

            Victoria Rovine is conducting research on African and other non-western influences on French fashion design. She is particularly interested in the role that the colonial expositions played in this process.

            Paul Sager is a doctoral student in History and French Studies at New York University. His dissertation deals with the social history of French and Vietnamese civil servants and the functioning of the colonial state in Indochina. His working title is “The Politics of State Employment in Colonial Indochina, 1898-1954.”

Notices

            The Journal of Vietnamese Studies, the only peer reviewed English language journal devoted exclusively to the history, politics and culture of Vietnam is now available from the University of California Press Journals. For more information on the journal see http://www.ucpressjournals.com.

            Cambridge University Press has announced the creation of a new book series entitled “Critical Perspectives of Empire.” The aim of the series is to publish innovative new works or those that re-think established analytical categories. The editors invite book proposals on the legacies of early and modern empires, both landbased and transoceanic, their cultural impacts, contexts and cross imperial effects. They are especially interested in interdisciplinary works. Manuscripts of 6-10 page book proposals, including chapter titles, should be sent to Kathleen Wilson (early modern period; Kathleen.Wilson@stonybrook.edu), Catherine Hall (19^th century; c.hall@ucl.ac.uk) or Mrinalini Sinha (mis12@psu.edu).

Call for Papers

            The Belgian Association of Africanists is organizing an international conference on the them of “Borderlands and Frontiers in Africa” to be held in Leuven, Belgium November 22-24, 2007. The conference is designed to explore the issue of frontiers, borders and boundaries in Africa, their impact on political, social and historical realities, and the ways in which African peoples negotiated their restrictions. Paper proposals and abstracts are due no later than September 1. For more information on the conference please see http://www.borderlands.be or contact Steven Van Wolputte at steven.vanwolputte@soc.kuleuven.be

            Commemoration 2007 will mark the 200^th anniversary of the end of slave trade and will commemorate four centuries of black history in Nova Scotia with a conference entitled “Slavery, Anti-Slavery and the Road to Freedom” to be held June 28-30, 2007. Commemoration 2007 will include a variety of cultural activities and events. The suite of activities, which will take place from 27-30 June, is intended to reach members of the public, of heritage organizations, academics, educators and others. Events will include public lectures, concerts, and an academic conference, which will highlight the black experience in North America and the international context(s) that shaped that experience. The conference organizers are seeking papers that explore the topics of slavery, the anti-slavery movement, the legacies of slavery and the transition to freedom. Conference organizers are particularly interested in papers that explore new themes, those focused on the colonial empires of both Britain and France and proposals that offer comparative perspectives. We also welcome proposals that specifically address the ways in which slavery, anti-slavery and related topics have been incorporated into curricular materials for schools or universities, new approaches to interpreting these themes for members of the public, and related topics. Proposals for individual papers, sessions, and workshops should be no longer than one single-spaced page and should be accompanied by a short curriculum vitae for each presenter. Proposals may be submitted in either French or English. The deadline for submissions is 15 February 2007. Submissions will be adjudicated by members of the program committee. Please direct proposals to: Commemoration 2007 at info@commemoration2007.ca Commemoration 2007 is intended to initiate new activities pertaining to the black experience in the Atlantic region, throughout North America and beyond. Presenters will be asked to contribute their abstracts and conference papers to an interactive website that will help to disseminate conference materials to the broadest possible audience. Selected conference papers may also be published in an edited collection.

            <<Tous les hommes sont-ils égaux ? Histoire comparée de la pensée raciale 1860-1930>>

Atelier organisé par Carole Reynaud Paligot, Deutsches Historisches Institut Paris/ Institut historique allemand de Paris, 18 juin 2007. Cet atelier se propose d'engager une réflexion sur l'histoire comparée de la pensée raciale des années 1860 aux années 1930. Le concept de race prend une dimension nouvelle lorsque s'institutionnalise l'anthropologie raciale dans les années 1860 puis connaît, dans les décennies suivantes, de nombreux usages. La réflexion peut s'engager autour des thèmes et questionnements suivants : 1)L'anthropologie raciale : La première société d'anthropologie naît à Paris en 1859, bientôt suivie par celles de Londres, Moscou, Vienne, Berlin, Rome, etc. Que signifie la création simultanée de ces sociétés savantes? Sont-elles comparables en terme d'effectifs, d'organisation, d'enseignement et de recherche? S'interroger sur les processus d'institutionnalisation de l'anthropologie raciale, c'est aussi questionner les liens entre l'anthropologie raciale et les pouvoirs politiques. Est-ce que la «République raciale» fut une spécificité française ? L'étude de l'anthropologie raciale est aussi l'occasion de cerner les représentations de l'altérité en vigueur au sein de ces communautés savantes, la présence des représentations inégalitaires de la différence et de l'antisémitisme. Les débats sur le métissage, sur les liens entre morphologie du cerveau et intelligence, la réception des thèses de Boas, les premières remises en cause du concept de race sont autant de thématiques qui permettent d'étudier les spécificités nationales des pensées raciales. 2) Les usages du concept de race en dehors de la communauté anthropologique. Quels usages historiens, géographes, philosophes, littéraires et sociologues firent-ils du concept de race? La psychologie des peuples renouvela l'approche raciologique, qui s’essoufflait devant les impasses de l’entreprise de classification, en abordant la diversité humaine non plus à travers les caractères physiques mais sous le prisme de la diversité des caractères intellectuels et moraux. Elle semble avoir été largement présente au sein de la communauté intellectuelle des années vingt et trente. Quels furent les usages de l'anthropologie raciale et les représentations de l'altérité en vigueur au sein de la communauté coloniale? De quelle manière la tension entre différencialisme et universalisme a-t-elle traversée le monde colonial? Qu'elles aient été à la source de pratiques ségrégationniste et discriminantes ou qu'elles aient servi à légitimer ces pratiques, les représentations raciales semblent avoir infléchi de manière notable les principes d'égalité, de liberté, d'universalité en faisant primer le droit de civilisation sur l'application des droits de l'Homme, en justifiant la mise en place du régime de l'indigénat, d'un système scolaire indigène peu ambitieux ou encore l'absence de droits civils et politiques. 3) Racisme/ Antiracisme: On peut s'interroger sur la signification de ces termes dans le contexte des années 1860-1930, sur les critères permettant de qualifier une pensée de "raciste", tout comme sur l'identification et le sens d'un antiracisme. Ce dernier est-il synonyme d'un refus des thèses "nordiques" et de l'antisémitisme ou bien a-t-il déjà son sens actuel, c'est-à-dire le refus d'une représentation inégalitaire de la différence ?

            Les propositions (d’une page maximum) sont à envoyer avant le 20 janvier 2007 à carole.reynaud.paligot libertysurf.fr (merci de joindre un CV et la liste de vos publications).

French Colonial Historical Society

Société d’Histoire Coloniale Française

Annual Meeting, La Rochelle, 6-9 June 2007

Logistical Information

            The FCHS is a private society dependant on membership dues. All conference participants must be or become members. Unfortunately, the FCHS does not have funds to subsidize scholars’ participation at the meeting. Please check the FCHS website for further details (http:/www.frenchcolonial.org) or simply google the Society’s name.

            The following hotels are located 15/20 minutes or less on foot from the university. There will be three excursions: a city tour on Saturday afternoon after the general assembly, and on

Sunday a boat trip to l'île d'Aix and a bus trip to l'île de Ré et Rochefort-sur-Mer

            La FCHS est une association qui ne tire ses revenus que des cotisations de ses adhérents. Tous les participants au congrès doivent en être ou en devenir membres. Malheureusement, la Society n’a pas les ressources pour financer les voyages des intervenants au congrès. N’hésitez pas à consulter le site Internet de la Society pour de plus amples informations (http:/www.frenchcolonial.org).

            Les hôtels suivante se trouvent à moins de 15/20 mn à pied de l'université, certains à quelques minutes seulement. Il y aura [deux ou?] trois excursions le dimanche : l'île d'Aix (en bateau), l'île de Ré et Rochefort-sur-Mer (en bus). Nous pouvons proposer une visite de la ville le samedi après-midi, après l'assemblée générale."

Site de l'université de La Rochelle : http://www.univ-lr.fr

Site de la ville de La Rochelle : http://www.ville-larochelle.fr

Site du département de la Charente-Maritime : http://www.charente-maritime.org

Site du Comité départemental du Tourisme : http://www.en-charente-maritime.com

Site de l'office de Tourisme de La Rochelle : http://www.larochelle-tourisme.com

Site avec des hotels et cartes : http://www.larochelle-tourisme.com/en/seloger/hotel.htm