Children Bound to Empire: Coercive Child Labor in the French Atlantic, 1763-1870

My dissertation examines the history of coercive child labor regimes across the French Atlantic World between the end of the Seven Years’ War (1763) and the fall of the Second Empire (1870). Specifically, I focus on the labor and lives of African and African-descended youth in three former French colonies: Saint-Domingue, Louisiana, and Senegal. My research will compare different sites of child labor, including plantation slavery, craft apprenticeship, and urban wardship. By evaluating age alongside race and gender, my research seeks to understand why boys and girls of African descent were specifically sought after as laborers, to what extent their experiences were determined by their age, and how unfree labor altered the meaning of "childhood" in colonial society.

With the generous support of the France-Stanford Center, I will spend academic year 2026-27 at the Archives Nationales D'Outre-Mer in Aix-en-Provence, France. I will work with Henri Médard, a historian at the Institut des Mondes Africains and Aix-Marseille University.