Local Affairs or Imperial Scandals?

Abstract

What is the historical part of minorities and foreigners in the modern process of citizenship-building outside the French Kingdom? The study of legal claims and disputes shows that from the end of the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697) to the French Revolution (1789), many foreign inhabitants of the French Atlantic colonies shared a common understanding of their individual rights. The study of foreign subjects’ legal culture, defined as a set of attitudes and perceptions towards the law, also reveals governance tactics such as the gathering of certain foreign groups into trustworthy “colonial communities”. This opened a particular framework of relationships between the French administration and members of three of these communities: Acadians, Converso Jews, and Irishmen. Settled in the French Caribbean islands, they all progressively understood their legal status through a new category of “citizen” prior to the age of Atlantic Revolution (1776–1791).