Catholics without a bishop. The influence of religious structures on the agency of enslaved Africans in the French Caribbean (17th-18th centuries)

This paper aims to shed a new light on the way ecclesiastical structures of slave societies in the French Caribbean (Martinique and Saint-Domingue) constrained the agency of the enslaved. Despite multiple attempts by the monarchy and the Holy See to establish a bishopric, it was not until 1850, two years after the abolition, that the first bishopric was established in Martinique. Using Roman archives (Congregations of Propaganda and the Holy Office) and colonial archives (held at the ANOM in Aix-en-Provence), this paper analyses the logic behind the repeated refusal of the colonial administration and planters to establish a bishopric. I will show that the absence of a bishopric was a political choice aimed at perpetuating the precarious socio-racial balance of these societies. The paper will also examine the consequences of this absence of a bishopric on the daily lives of the enslaved: it limited their ability to assert their rights as Christians. This analysis offers thus a new interpretation of the role of Catholicism in slave societies, contrary to the majority of works on Iberian Catholic colonies (Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Brazil), which have highlighted the agency of the enslaved, particularly before ecclesiastical courts, and the integrative role of brotherhoods. While a biographical approach emphasising the agency and resistance of enslaved people is currently prevailing in the historiography of Atlantic slavery, this paper stresses the need to take greater account of the weight of structures, in this case religious ones, in order to fully understand the driving forces behind slave domination.