Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France

Description

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries| French colonists and their Native allies participated in a slave trade that spanned half of North America| carrying thousands of Native Americans into bondage in the Great Lakes| Canada| and the Caribbean.
In “Bonds of Alliance|” Brett Rushforth reveals the dynamics of this system from its origins to the end of French colonial rule.
Balancing a vast geographic and chronological scope with careful attention to the lives of enslaved individuals| this book gives voice to those who lived through the ordeal of slavery and| along the way| shaped French and Native societies..
Rather than telling a simple story of colonial domination and Native victimization| Rushforth argues that Indian slavery in New France emerged at the nexus of two very different forms of slavery: one indigenous to North America and the other rooted in the Atlantic world.
The alliances that bound French and Natives together forced a century-long negotiation over the nature of slavery and its place in early American society.
Neither fully Indian nor entirely French| slavery in New France drew upon and transformed indigenous and Atlantic cultures in complex and surprising ways..
Based on thousands of French and Algonquian-language manuscripts archived in Canada| France| the United States and the Caribbean| “Bonds of Alliance” bridges the divide between continental and Atlantic approaches to early American his.
By discovering unexpected connections between distant peoples and places| Rushforth sheds new light on a wide range of subjects| including intercultural diplomacy| colonial law| gender and sexuality| and the his of race.