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= Nantes (Atlantic Slave Trade) =





History
France established its first trading posts in Senegal, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Reunion in the middle of the seventeenth century. Several major French cities, including Nantes and Bordeaux, owe most of their economic growth at the time to the slaves and commodities traded between those initial colonies.

The people of Nantes, the Nantais, worked in tandem with royal authorities to implement state-regulation of people of color, under the condition that those officials demonstrated dedication to supporting the interests of slaving ports. However, they were equally likely to resist any royal policies that they felt infringed upon their rights to property as citizens, or the sovereignty of their city.

Any merchant in France was free to participate in the slave trade, as long as they sailed from one of five exclusively privileged ports; Rouen, La Rochelle, Saint-Malo, Bordeaux, or Nantes. Traders paid a tax per slave, which varied based on the French colony in which the sale originated. More slaving expeditions originated from Nantes than the next five most important ports combined: Le Havre, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Saint-Malo and Honfleur. Nantes records a total of 1,708 slaving expeditions that account for 44 percent of all expeditions from France.

The completion of any transatlantic expedition in Nantes, either to the Antilles or from Africa, required a ship’s captain to dictate a detailed report of the voyage to the local Admiralty office. Over 800 of those reports survive today, taken between 1714 to 1778 and accounting for approximately 23 percent of all French slaving ships. Included in the report was the original size of the crew, a detailed itinerary, and a record of the number of slaves purchased along the African coast, as well as the number delivered to the West Indies. One report records 8 percent of crew members on 126 different slaving ships who survived to reach the West Indies had died by the time their captains returned to Nantes. Reports reveal that 1,450 slavers departed from Nantes in total, amounting to 45 percent of total French slavers on average. . These included 54 percent of all French slavers from 1713 to 1755, 42 percent from 1763 to 1777, and 34 percent from 1783 to 1793.

The 50 kilometer passage between the Atlantic Ocean and the port of Nantes, over the Loire River, could prove to be just as treacherous as the rest of the Transatlantic expedition. In 1785, a ship named the “Rose” ran aground a short distance from the port and sank into the Loire River after having almost completed the entire 6,000 triangle.

Following the 1793 Battle of Cap-Français in the former colony of Saint-Domingue, a part of the Haitian Revolution, French citizens fled to Marseille, Bordeaux, Nantes and Le Havre and petitioned the government for aid under secours, or emergency laws. Refugees in Nantes between 1799 and 1800, many of them widows, petitioned the government multiple times to complain of its failure to apply the secours laws that were intended to provide them aid.

Economics
Exported commodities included sugar, cotton, and glass bottles. The sugar that arrived in Nantes was refined nearby and sent mostly to the Netherlands, as well as Germany, Spain, Sweden, Italy, and even back to Guinea. Nantes would export up to twenty-five million livres’ worth of sugar per year. Cotton, dye and glass manufacturers were established starting in the 1720’s.

France’s textile industries enjoyed a growing demand for textiles as barter goods in the Atlantic Slave Trade, most notably the linens of Brittany, whose closest major port was Nantes. Central European linens were imported from Hamburg and then exported again to the colonies. In 1753, Central European fabrics and textiles accounted for 50% of exports from Nantes to Guinea, coming to a complete standstill by 1760 following the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763).

Nantes is also responsible for the transportation of over 550,00 captive Africans that were then sold as slaves to French colonies and the Americas. Shipments of slaves waiting in port were frequently housed in former jails or prisons until the establishment of port depots before the declaration of the Police des Noirs by Louis XVI on August 9, 1777. By December 11, depots had been established at Nantes, Dunkerque, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Brest, La Rochelle, Bordeaux and Marseille. It was specified that depots were to be equipped with a mattress with two sheets, one blanket, and a bolster full of straw, with two slaves sharing one mattress. Food was to be healthy but simple, and the price was to remain the same without exception.

Slaves aboard ships were subjected to extremely close quarters which invited a number of diseases. From 763 surveyed expeditions from Nantes, an average of 14.9% of all slaves perished before reaching their final destination.

Commemoration
The Monument of the Abolition of Slavery was opened in Nantes on March 25th, 2013, in time for a year of commemorations that would take place between May of 2012 and May of 2013 throughout the French Antilles, Reunion Island, Bordeaux, and Nantes. The municipality chose the internationally renowned architect Krzysztof Wodiczko as an ‘outsider’ who had the potential to disentangle Nantes from France’s state-centered narrative and propel the monument to transcend beyond its abolitionist focus. Visitors are encouraged to move freely through the memorial, dropping down from the street-level to the interruption of the past below. Wodiczko created a transitional space that encourages emotion and reflection, allowing multiple meanings and conclusions to occur naturally.

The monument consists of two distinct parts, including a pedestrian esplanade on the exact spot where slave ships would dock on the waterfront, as well as an underground walkway that houses the commemorative exhibition. Built at a cost of $9 million, it occupies 75,000 square feet on the north bank of the Loire River on the Quai de la Fosse.

The municipal museum located in the Château des Ducs de Bretagne has adjusted the emphasis of the permanent exhibition to acknowledge the place of slavery within the context of the civic past. In the early 1990’s, a local association called Les Anneaux de la Mémoire organized an effort to advocate for greater recognition of Nantes’ participation in the Atlantic Slave Trade and a temporary exhibition of the same name was curated at the Château from December 1992 through May 1994, attracting over 400,000 visitors.

Throughout the two year exhibition, the museum became one of the sole spaces in Europe that facilitated the production and diffusion of historical discourse on the subject of abolition. Although the organizers took great care to create a neutral and unbiased exhibition based on what they perceived to be shared cultural values, the exhibition was met with extremely differing reactions from both white and black audiences. In 2007, the Château was reformulated into a new museum of urban history containing a series of 32 rooms, 7 of which are now dedicated to the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Nantes References
=Bordeaux (French Revolution)=

The aspirations of the Bordelais middle classes were most directly reflected in the demands and initiatives of the Third Estate. They consistently pushed for further representation and were supported by a number of the city’s corporations, such as the shoemakers and the goldsmiths. In December of 1788, they sent a deputation to King Louis XVI at Versailles asking for the right representation for the Third Estate, a move which was encouraged by the Chamber of Commerce. The political crisis throughout the 1780’s was rooted in the traditional rivalry between regional parlements and the French monarchy. The parlementaires of Bordeaux were characterized by their defense of local liberties and their robust approach to royal authority. They were also renowned for their religious intolerance. They frequently employed the maréchaussée, or local guard forces, to send constables to homes of local Protestants who refused to baptize their children in the Catholic faith.

Among the largest and most politically-active religious minorities in Revolutionary Bordeaux were the Sephardic Jews. On February 25, 1789, municipal officers to the syndic of the Portuguese Jews of Bordeaux were invited to nominate their own deputies to the Estates General. Ninety delegates were to be appointed to the Sénéchaussée of Guyenne, from whom four would be chosen to represent the third estate in Paris. Three days later the collective corporations of Bordeaux, including the Mayor and Lieutenant Mayor, sent letters to Jacques Necker expressing their wish that the participation of the Jewish corporations be retracted. They were ultimately unsuccessful, and on March 2, 1789, David Azevedo, David Gradis, Lopes Dubec and Abraham Furtado were nominated as the representatives of the Portuguese Jews of Bordeaux to the Assembly of the third estate.

Following the Revolution, conditions gradually improved for the poor and destitute populations of Bordeaux and its encompassing province, Aquitaine. Revolutionary governments would identify poor relief as a national scandal that deserved national solutions. In response, the Constituent Assembly set up the Comité de Mendicité in 1790 which would be responsible for assistance payments to indigent citizens, payments to towns for the upkeep of hospitals, and for the answering of individual petitions. The Revolution was particularly devastating to hospitals and charitable institutions, as Revolutionary legislation had outlawed the feudal dues that constituted the bulk of their funding.

Two rival political clubs were especially prominent in social work and poor relief in Bordeaux, the socially-conservative Amis de la Liberté et de l’Égalité and the Jacobin Club National. On June 1 of Year II of the French Revolution, the Amis claimed to be handing out upwards of two thousand livres per month to destitute citizens they deemed worthy. A predominantly Irish group of Freemasons called the Anglaise enjoyed prominence in the decade leading up to the Revolution. They also identified heavily with charity work and conviviality, which they viewed as an extension of their dedication to the ideals of brotherhood and friendship.

The dissemination of news and political ideas from Paris to Bordeaux via books and pamphlets helped to incubate the radical ideas that would ultimately inform the French Revolution. By 1791, more than one in three items sold by Bordelais booksellers pertained to the Revolution. The book trade would eventually collapse, due in part to the losses incurred by the large numbers of legal and theological books that sat unsold on shelves.

The consolidation of vast estates as viticultural properties further exacerbated the divide between the nobility and the middle classes of Bordeaux. Throughout the eighteenth century, the Ségur family amassed some of the most prolific properties in the Bordeaux region, including Château Lafite, Château Latour, Château Mouton and Château Calon-Ségur. Wine exports to French colonies and colonial commerce were particularly lucrative, but a war with England in 1793 would negatively affect Bordeaux especially. It was revived in 1795 when the United States began to import large amounts of Bordeaux wine.

Bordeaux References
=Rouen (History)=

On the afternoon of Monday, August 17, 1942, at approximately 1530 hours, Brigadier General Ira Eaker of the United States Air Force accompanied twelve Flying Fortresses (Boeing B-17) en route to an offensive bombardment near Rouen. They departed from Grafton Underwood airfield in Northhamptonshire, England. The intended target was the great rail-marshaling yard in the connecting suburb of Sotteville. The rail yard was of particular strategic importance, as all coastal traffic that derived from the east and the south were controlled by the railway switch network at Sotteville. The warning centers employed by the German forces were taken completely by surprise, failing to report the arrival of the Fortresses until most of the distance to Rouen had already been covered. The twelve planes dropped their entire load of 37,000 pounds of bombs on the intended target, enjoying unprecedented visibility for a nighttime raid. As day broke, however, the Allies made for easier targets and they were met with anti-aircraft shells and an air-response of 40 German fighters. Two American planes were minimally damaged and the entire fleet remained intact as they turned back towards their point of origin in the United Kingdom. The Ministry of Information reported the losses of sixty French civilians, including 101 additional wounded and the destruction of forty-six homes. On August 30, 1944, the German forces finally retreated from Rouen and destroyed the train station as they departed. The occupation was finally ended when Canadian forces proceeded to move into the city. The Monument to Railroad Workers, located in the lobby of the current Rouen train station, commemorates the nearly 200 rail workers in both Rouen and Sotteville who lost their lives.