Dr. Sue Peabody

Sue Peabody is the Meyer Distinguished Professor of History and Liberal Arts at Washington State University Vancouver, and author of numerous books and articles on slavery, race and the law in France and its colonies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Her books and articles have shaped the field of French history over the last quarter century, beginning with “There Are No Slaves in France”: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (Oxford, 1996).  Today we’re here to discuss her most recent book, Madeleine’s Children: Family, Freedom, Secrets, and Lies in France’s Indian Ocean Colonies (Oxford, 2017), the story of a family founded by an enslaved Bengali woman, Madeleine, in Isle Bourbon (Réunion) and Isle de France (Mauritius), during the Age of Revolution and Emancipation, from 1750 to 1850. Madeleine’s Children has won three prizes, including the French Historical Studies’ Pinckney Prize for the best book on French history. It has been translated into French by Pierre H. Boulle as, Les enfants de Madeleine, in the series, Centre International des Recherches sur l’ESClavage (CIRESC) (Karthala, 2019).