Escapes from Cayenne - (Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900) by Léon Chautard (Paperback)

About the Book

"Written by a French political refugee from the Revolution of 1848 for an American audience, Escapes from Cayennetraces the details of Leon Chautard's many imprisonments and attempts at escape. Initially imprisoned in France (Le Havre, Brest, and Belle Ille), Chautard was then sent to Algeria and, eventually, to the penal colony of Cayenne. He was assigned the number 170 upon his arrival in French Guyane in September 1852 and escaped five years later. The bulk of the narrative details his escape from Cayenne along with two of his fellow prisoners. It also illuminates their encounters with various colonial officials, free and enslaved Africans, Indigenous peoples, and English, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, and American colonists. The narrative also serves as a brief explanation of what "socialism" meant to the folks he encountered. Roy's critical edition of Escapes not only includes an annotated version of Chautard's narrative, but also a substantial introduction that discusses the French Revolution of 1848; republicanism and socialism; forced exile to Algeria and Cayenne; French republican exiles who ended up in the United States; their antislavery activism; the connections between the European spirit of '48 and American abolitionism; the pamphlet itself; and its publication and reception. Roy has also included several adjacent primary sources ("supplementary readings") that help fill out Chautard's story and the broader context of his experiences"--

Book Synopsis

In September 1857, Léon Chautard, Charles Bivors, and Hippolyte Paon arrived in Salem, Massachusetts. These refugees from the French Revolution of 1848 were "homeless, penniless, friendless, strangers in a strange land, among a people of strange speech," as one of their advocates, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, later put it. The only thing they had was a story to tell--an affecting, yet thrilling story of revolutionary upheaval, forced exile, and hairbreadth escapes over three continents.

Following the June Days uprising in Paris, the three French socialists had been transported first to Algeria, then to Cayenne. After years of hard labor, they had escaped the penal colony and made their way to the United States via British Guiana. These experiences brought them into close contact with the colonial frontiers and slave societies of the Americas. In Salem, Chautard soon published an account of their trials under the title Escapes from Cayenne (1857). His pamphlet, which has long sunk into oblivion, deserves rediscovery.

Escapes from Cayenne sheds light on the ideological connections between the European "spirit of 1848" and U.S. radical abolitionism and reveals the scope of cosmopolitan solidarities available to fugitives of different national and racial origins in the mid-nineteenth-century Atlantic world. Written in English by a Frenchman, and reminiscent of literary traditions such as the slave narrative and the picaresque novel, it is a tale of adventure as well as a passionate cri de coeurfor universal justice.

Review Quotes

This excellent republication of the forgotten narrative of the French socialist-abolitionist Léon Chautard is long overdue. Michaël Roy's wonderful introduction carefully delineates the interconnections between French republicanism and American abolitionism. He adeptly situates the story of Chautard's and his compatriots' political exile in the Americas, supplemented with the response of abolitionists like Garrison and Douglass, in transnational radicalism. This book would be useful in courses on American as well as French nineteenth-century history and the history of abolition. I cannot recommend it enough.--Manisha Sinha "author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition"

Escapes from Cayenne sends readers on an emotional roller coaster, resonating with bitter tragedies and unexpected triumphs, curious characters and exciting plot twists. Chautard is a gifted writer with an authentic voice that captures the utopian longing and political seriousness that Roy ascribes to the French romantic-socialist tradition.--Mischa Honeck "author of We Are the Revolutionists: German-Speaking Immigrants and American Abolitionists after 1848"

Michaël Roy has done such an extraordinary job of recovering a lost history of abolitionism and socialism, I feel like inventing a new course just so I can teach his rich, exciting book!--Marcus Rediker "author of The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist"

About the Author

Léon Chautard (Author)
LÉON CHAUTARD (1812-1890) was a French socialist and abolitionist.

Michaël Roy (Editor)
MICHAËL ROY is an associate professor of American studies at Université Paris Nanterre and a fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is the author of Fugitive Texts: Slave Narratives in Antebellum Print Culture and the editor of Frederick Douglass in Context.