Posts – Colonial Networks

France’s Art Museums Remain Silent on Haiti

New Article Announcement Project directors Meredith Martin and Hannah Williams have published a new article in Public Books, “France’s Art Museums Remain Silent on Haiti.” The article examines how French museums and heritage institutions addressed—or failed to address—the bicentenary of the 1825 indemnity imposed on Haiti by France. Focusing in particular on exhibitions devoted to …

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Sugarcoating Slavery: Enslaved Confectioners in Saint-Domingue

Alicia Caticha (Northwestern University) In memory of Doris Garraway In 1820, Jean Charles Develly produced a series of drawings of various “objets de dessert” for a porcelain service by the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory. The subjects of his designs, each to be transferred onto porcelain plates, included the production and sale of tartelettes, ice cream, biscuits, …

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Land and Loom: Louis de Noailles’ Nouvelles Indes Tapestries

Carole Nataf (Courtauld Institute of Art) The Gobelins tapestry set known as the Nouvelles Indes ranks among the most spectacular visual representations of colonialism and slavery in eighteenth-century French art. At first glance, the eight Nouvelles Indes tapestries present bountiful visions of fruit-bearing trees, luxuriant vegetation, and the variegated patterns of rearing zebras, pouncing leopards, …

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Mapping the Aesthetics of Power: The Montalembert Family between Paris and Saint-Domingue

Amanda Maffei (Università degli Studi di Milano and Institut Catholique de Paris) Maps and other images associated with the family of Jean-Charles and Marc-René de Montalembert offer an unusually clear window onto the visual culture that connected Enlightenment Paris and colonial Saint-Domingue in the final decades of the eighteenth century.[1] At once noble, technical, and …

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René de Rabié, the Hunter, and the Ti Plonjon

Victoria Dickenson (McGill Library and Collections) On 19 February 1766, a French engineer who had lived almost half his life in the French colony of Saint Domingue (now Haiti) sat down to paint a moth. This would not have been a remarkable event, if it had not heralded the beginning of a project of natural …

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Counter-Mapping Haitian History: An Artist’s Interview with Maksaens Denis

Meredith Martin (NYU) and Hannah Williams (Queen Mary University of London) Throughout 2025, we have had the honor and pleasure of working with the Haitian-born international digital and video artist, Maksaens Denis. Maksaens generously agreed to work with us to produce an animation and digital collage which will feature as the introduction and framing design …

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The Many Monies of the 1825 Haitian Indemnity

Arielle Xena Alterwaite (Brown University) On June 26, 1826, the French merchant vessel L’Hébé left Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Captained by Mr. Forsans, it contained the purported monetary value of one million Haitian gourdes in coins, carried in 20 chests, each filled with five numbered boxes, totaling 100 boxes.[1] One of these chests (Fig. 1) survives in …

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Louis Julien Clarchies, c. 1767–1815: A Transatlantic Musical Legacy

Julia I. Doe (Columbia University) Louis Julien Clarchies was a violinist, composer, and director of dance orchestras who achieved transatlantic fame in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.[1] Clarchies was born into slavery in Dutch colonial Curaçao, and first rose to prominence on the public stages of Saint-Domingue. Manumitted on the eve of the …

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Mapping Slavery in the Metropole: Launch of “Slaves in Paris: A Digital Mapping Project”

Meredith Martin (NYU) and Hannah Williams (QMUL) We are excited to announce the launch of Slaves in Paris: A Digital Mapping Project, a collaboration between historian Miranda Spieler and Colonial Networks. This new website aims to uncover and visualize the drastically overlooked histories of enslaved people within the heart of France’s capital in the eighteenth-century. …

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Fleuriau’s Skin

Oliver Wunsch (Boston College) In a pastel portrait by Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, an array of colors define the face of the French plantation owner Aimé-Benjamin Fleuriau (1709–1787) (Fig. 1). A shadow of bluish grays and earthen browns creeps across his right side. On the left, yellow striations give his jaw a warm glow. Touches of pink …

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