Between two worlds: Race, sex, and white-Black intimacy in late New France, 1688-1763

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2024-08

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University of New Brunswick

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This thesis examines the ways in which white-Black intermixing in New France (1688-1760). differed from the more liberal attitudes towards intermixing between French settlers and Indigenous peoples in New France and analyzes how jurists, officials, and society worked together to regulate white-Black miscegenation. The chapters primarily analyze the experiences of enslaved Black women, who were often subjected to sexual assault and concubinage from their white male enslavers under the transatlantic slave system, to examine the complexities of racial intermixing in late New France. In doing so, this research demonstrates how both the French and British regimes in Canada strongly shunned the enslaved mixed-race offspring of Black women. Ultimately, this thesis contributes a nuanced perspective to Canadian Slavery Studies, illustrating how European empires strategically employed conceptions of Black inferiority and white supremacy to shape the discourse surrounding white-Black intimacies thereby reinforcing the racial and class hierarchies of early French Canada.

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