Race and Empire in 18th Century France

Eighteenth-century France is remembered as the epicenter of the Enlightenment, a period in which people across Europe celebrated individual autonomy, rationality, and empathy. It was also a century of rapid expansion of the French trade in enslaved peoples and the solidification of a colonial empire fueled by enslaved labor. This class will explore the development of French thinking about the non-European world as the French sought to justify, criticize, or simply understand the country's rapidly expanding global reach. P