The Revue des Colonies Colloquium
February 14th, 2025, France
Diasporic Networks and the Struggle for Abolition
February 14th was the launch day of a traveling exhibition dedicated to the Revue des Colonies and of a conference dedicated to the periodical. At this conference, organized by Maria Beliaeva Solomon(Univeristy of Maryland), Dr. Jessica Balguy presented a paper entitled “In the Name of Free People of Color: Cyrille Bissette and the Principle of Compensation”. Both events took place at Archives nationale d’outre mer in Aix-en- Provence (France).
Founded in 1834 under the impetus of Cyrille Bissette, a Martinican abolitionist, the Revue des Colonies advocated for the cause of the disenfranchised from Paris, spreading its ideas across the French colonial empire and reaching as far as the British colonies, the United States, and Haiti. As the first French periodical directed by men of color, it established itself as a space of intellectual resistance and political protest, at the heart of the struggle for abolition and equal rights.
