Mélanie Lamotte, "By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Feb 18, 2026

Mélanie Lamotte, Assistant Professor of History at Duke University who studies French colonialism and the Black diaspora. She traces how interracial sex, sexual violence, and labor shaped the early French Empire. She maps transoceanic connections across Atlantic and Indian Ocean colonies. She explains intermarriage, bans, and how people of African, Malagasy, South Asian, and Native American descent shaped imperial law and society.

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INSIGHT

Sex, Violence, And Population Formation

Sexual relations and extreme violence structured population and hierarchies across early French colonies.
Controlling interracial sex later became central to formalizing racial labor regimes.

INSIGHT

Trans‑Oceanic Repertoires Unite Policy

Connecting the Atlantic and Indian Oceans reveals shared imperial repertoires and policy circulation.
Trans-oceanic links helped unify racial policies and practices across the French Empire.

ANECDOTE

Fort Dauphin Marriages Shaped Settlements

In Fort Dauphin Frenchmen married Malagasy noblewomen and enslaved women, shaping local settlements.
Jacques Pronis married a Rwandria princess, linking French power to Malagasy elites.

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From the beginning of the seventeenth century, French colonies and trading posts sprawled across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In the first pan-imperial history of the early French Empire in the English language, Mélanie Lamotte shows how an increasingly cohesive legal culture came to govern the lives of enslaved and free people of African, Malagasy, South Asian, and Native American descent. She also illuminates the important role played by these populations in the development of the empire, from Louisiana to Guadeloupe, Senegambia, Madagascar, Isle Bourbon, and India.

The early French Empire has often been portrayed as a fragmented conglomerate of isolated colonies or regions. Yet Lamotte shows that racial policies issued by the metropole, as well as by officials in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, significantly influenced one another. Rather than focusing on the actions of administrators, however, Lamotte also reveals the extensive influence of people on the ground—especially those of non-European descent. Through their sexuality and their labor, along with their socio-economic and political endeavors, they played a critical role in building the empire and setting its limits. As they sought justice for themselves, strove to protect their kin, and aimed to improve their social conditions, these individuals also pushed against the advancement of white dominion in unexpected ways.

Archivally rich and rigorously documented, By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire (Harvard UP, 2026) illuminates the transoceanic connections that united the French colonial world—and recasts people of African, Malagasy, South Asian, and Native American descent as key actors in the story of empire-building.

This interview is conducted by Dr Lewis Wade, a Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Bamberg. He is the author of the prize-winning Privilege, Economy and State in Old Regime France and can be found on Bluesky @wadehistory.bsky.social.

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