Description
Book SynopsisSheds light on the ideological connections between the European ‘spirit of 1848’ and US radical abolitionism and reveals the scope of cosmopolitan solidarities available to fugitives of different national and racial origins in the mid-nineteenth-century Atlantic world.
Trade ReviewEscapes from Cayenne sends readers on an emotional roller coaster, resonating with bitter tragedies and unexpected triumphs, curious characters and exciting plot twists. Chautard is a gifted writer with an authentic voice that captures the utopian longing and political seriousness that Roy ascribes to the French romantic-socialist tradition." - Mischa Honeck, author of
We Are the Revolutionists: German-Speaking Immigrants and American Abolitionists after 1848"This excellent republication of the forgotten narrative of the French socialist-abolitionist Léon Chautard is long overdue. Michaël Roy's wonderful introduction carefully delineates the interconnections between French republicanism and American abolitionism. He adeptly situates the story of Chautard's and his compatriot's political exile in the Americas, supplemented with the response of abolitionists like Garrison and Douglass, in transnational radicalism. This book would be a useful in courses on American as well as French nineteenth-century history and the history of abolition. I cannot recommend it enough." - Manisha Sinha, author of
The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition"Michaël Roy has done such an extraordinary job of recovering a lost history of abolitionism and socialism, I feel like inventing a new course just so I can teach his rich, exciting book!" - Marcus Rediker, author of
The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist
