Race, Gender, and Property Ownership in the Eighteenth-Century French Atlantic World

FAIN: FEL-282164-22

Jennifer Lynne Palmer
University of Georgia (Athens, GA 30602-0001)

Research and writing leading to a book on the history of property in the 18th-century French Atlantic.

In the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, the emergence of plantation capitalism alongside modern bureaucratic states reshaped who could own, what they could own, and how ownership was established. In the process, ownership transformed into a white patriarchal privilege. A close focus on the French Atlantic demonstrates the novelty of this development. Race, Gender, and Property Ownership in the Eighteenth-Century French Atlantic World illuminates how this transition occurred by examining the ownership practices of white women and free women of color in the French Caribbean and France at the moment these opportunities disappeared. By focusing on how social relations structured early modern ownership as much as the law, this monograph challenges prevailing narratives of the role of race and gender in the rise of the plantation economy and ultimately capitalism.

Associated Products

Liminality and Cosmopolitanism in the Early Modern World (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Liminality and Cosmopolitanism in the Early Modern World
Author: Jennifer L. Palmer
Abstract: Shared research on women and property ownership in Martinique and Guadeloupe. Pre-circulated a paper; gave an open lecture; discussed research with graduate classes.
Date Range: April 2023
Location: University of California, Los Angeles

Taxation and White Privilege in Colonial Martinique (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Taxation and White Privilege in Colonial Martinique
Author: Jennifer L. Palmer
Abstract: Presented a conference paper in Fort-de-France Martinique on Martiniquan history. The paper focused on the process through which free women of color in Martinique lost access to tax exemptions, which became an exclusive privilege of whites.
Date: 05/10/2023

To Have and to Hold: Race, Gender, and Property in the French Atlantic World (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: To Have and to Hold: Race, Gender, and Property in the French Atlantic World
Abstract: Gave a public lecture on research, focusing on free women of color and property ownership in the French Caribbean. Lecture attracted approximately 200 participants, including faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and other members of the university community; and members of the general public.
Author: Jennifer L. Palmer
Date: 03/23/2023
Location: University of Central Florida

Race, Gender, and Privilege in the French Antilles (Book Section)
Title: Race, Gender, and Privilege in the French Antilles
Author: Jennifer L. Palmer
Editor: Eric Saunier
Editor: Karine Rance
Abstract: This chapter argues that taxation and tax exemptions were used to structure racial privilege as well as tax privilege in the French empire. While historians have long accepted that the French Revolution targeted the taxation and tax exemptions that structured class inequality in the Old Regime, this article argues that they also created racial inequality, which the Age of Revolutions did nothing to redress.
Year: 2024
Access Model: Book
Publisher: Maisonneuve et Larose
Book Title: Race et Révolution française

Women and Property in Eighteenth-Century French Common Law (Book Section)
Title: Women and Property in Eighteenth-Century French Common Law
Author: Jennifer L. Palmer
Editor: Gideon Stiening
Editor: Isabelle Karremann
Abstract: This chapter examines how married women in the French empire could exert control over property in spite of marriage laws that prohibited wives from making contracts. While historians have generally used contracts as proxies for ownership, this chapter argues that shifting towards different sources yields a very different picture. While women commonly played considerable roles in the management of property, they also sometimes purposefully obscured their roles in doing so. A case study demonstrates how women learned about property law, exercised control over property, and obscured their own involvement.
Year: 2024
Publisher: J.B. Metzler

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