Seventeenth-century French commentators did not think of race as an immutable attribute in their early colonial encounters with non-Europeans. Instead, they generally considered difference to be fluid, and were convinced that non-Europeans could be “improved” through “civilizing” influences and evangelization. The categories of difference affecting opinion formation in this worldview included distinctions between “savagery” and “civilization,” Christianity and paganism, and the simple perception of unfamiliar physical features. This vision encouraged French authorities to promote policies of assimilation toward non-Europeans in their colonies. To date, the scope and impact of these early assimilation policies remain underestimated because the current historiography does not embrace a global perspective on French territories. This paper examines the French empire in a global context: it looks at the way the French endeavored to integrate non-Europeans into French society through intermarriage, miscegenation (métissage), and naturalization, and it highlights the global scope of this phenomenon, as well as its complexity and limits.

Dr Mélanie Lamotte is currently a Newton Trust/Moody Stuart Research Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, with a Bachelor’s Degree in History at the Université Paris IV-Sorbonne and at the University of Cambridge, and a Master’s Degree in Early Modern History at the University of Cambridge. Her PhD dissertation focused on colour prejudice in the early modern French empire, and is a comparative study based on Guadeloupe, French Louisiana, and Île Bourbon (now called “La Réunion”) in the South-West Indian Ocean.