Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau

Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau (born the April 20th 1962 with Rumilly), is professor at the institute of political study of Paris and specialist in the Histoire of slavery.

He studies since 1990 the milked négrières and more particularly the draft négrière of Nantes.

Biography

Born from a father factor and a working mother in a factory of Cookie ery who had three children, there passes all its childhood in the Nantes suburbs and will remain always close to this city, although he teaches with the Université of Brittany-South.

He teaches during ten years in Collège then he supports his thesis of History on the slave trader medium of the town of Nantes in 1994 and begins his university career in 1995, as an university lecturer, before becoming professor in 1999.

In May 2007, it succeeds Jean-Pierre Azéma as professor of the Universities in history to the Institut of political studies of Paris.

The drafts négrières

Of 1999 with 2004, it is named like member junior of the Academic institute of France, it is thus able to write a work of synthesis which makes available of the French readers the many work carried out by the American or English historians on the subject: the Drafts négrières. Test of total history . It reconsiders the subject of the Traite Blacks, a total way, and under its various aspects:

Treats Arab;
treats intra-African;
treats European.

With a question about the quarrel of the figures concerning the number of slaves of the various drafts he answers: It should initially be said that the abominable character of the draft is not correlated with the figures. The fact that the Eastern draft - in direction of Middle East and North Africa - has affected more people should not by no means result in minimizing that of Europe and Americas. On the other hand, I am surprised that certain are scandalized that one dares speech of the nonWestern drafts. All the victims are honourable and I do not see why it would be necessary to forget some of them. The transatlantic draft is quantitatively the least important: 11 million slaves left Africa towards Americas or the islands of the Atlantic between 1450 and 1869 and 9,6 million arrived there. The drafts which I prefer to call “Eastern” rather than Moslem - because Coran does not express any color or racial prejudice - approximately 17 million black Africans between 650 and 1920 concerned. As for the draft interafricaine, an American historian, Patrick Manning, estimate that it represents the equivalent of 50% of all the deportees out of Black Africa, therefore half of 28 million. It is probably more. Thus one of the best specialists in the history of Africa précoloniale, Martin Klein, explains it why, about 1900, only in French Western Africa, one counted more than 7 million slaves. As it is undoubtedly not exaggerated to say as there was perhaps more than 14 million, for the continent, over one duration of thirteen siècles.

Its work was several times rewarded in 2005: it thus received the price of the Test of the French Academy and the price of the Senate of the Book of History. It shows that the draft forever been of a genocidary nature , because it there forever have will other than mercantile on behalf of the slave traders and certainly not that to exterminate their “goods”.

Polemic

Following a maintenance given to the Sunday newspaper of the June 12th 2005, the Collective of the West-Indians, Guianese, Réunionnais carries felt sorry for negation of a Crime against humanity, the draft of the blacks having been recognized like such a crime by the French Loi n° 2001-434 of the May 23rd 2001, “tending to the recognition of the draft and slavery as a crime against humanity”, so called “law Taubira”. In this maintenance, on the question of anti-semitism conveyed by Dieudonné , the historian answers that This charge against the Jews was born in the American black community from the years 1970. It rebounds today in France. That exceeds the case Dieudonné. It is also the problem of the law Taubira which regards the draft of the Blacks by Europeans as a " crime against the humanité" , including of this fact a comparison with Shoah. The drafts négrières are not génocides.
The purpose of the draft was not to exterminate people. The slave was a good which had a commercial value that one wanted to make work as much as possible. The Jewish genocide and the draft négrière are different processes. There is no scale of Richter of the sufferings. There are a difference between genocide and crime against humanity. According to the criteria of the International penal court (CPI), the draft of the blacks is well a crime against humanity, because there were in particular slavery and deportation. But the genocidary character is not present according to Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau.

Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau is supported by the French university community through a call published in the daily newspaper Libération , launched by nineteen historians of reputation which defends the freedom of the scientific research and in particular criticizing the mémorielles laws. Finally, the West-Indian collective withdraws its complaint in February 2006, by explaining why the reason is, inter alia, not to make their actions against-productive have regard of the bad reception of this complaint by the media and the community of the historians.

Works

Me, Joseph Mosneron, ship-owner Nantes slave trader (1748-1833). Cultural portrait of a middle-class negotiating at the Age of Enlightenment , Rennes, Apogee (diffusion P.U.F.), 1995,240 p.
money of the draft. Slave trader medium, capitalism and development: a model , Paris, Sapwood, 1996,424 p.
draft of the Blacks , Paris, P.U.F., Which do I know? , 1997 (republication 1998), 128 p.
French maritime trades (XVIIe-XXe century) , Paris, Belin Sup, 1997,256 p.
Nantes at the time of the draft of the Blacks , Paris, Hatchet, 1998,280 p.
the democracy in the United States and in Europe of 1918 to 1989 , Paris, Bréal, 2000,172 p.
Saint-Simon (1760-1825). Utopia or reason in acts , Paris, Payot, 2001,514 p.
Pétré-Grenouilleau (O.), (ED.), Slavic From Trade to Empire. Europe and the Colonization off Black Africa (1780s-1880s) , (“Introduction”, and “Farming systems off Representation, Economic Interests and French Penetration into Black Africa, 1780s-1880s”), London, Routledge, 2004, p. 1-17; 157-184. Lorient conference, 2001.
Nantes, history of a city, Quimper, Palantines, 2003,300 p.
drafts négrières , Paris, French Documentation, 2003,64 p.
the drafts négrières. Test of total history , Paris, Gallimard, “Library of the Stories”, 2004,468 p. Traductions in English and Italian in progress.
Slavic From Trade to Empire. Europe and the Colonization off Black Africa (1780s-1880s) , London, Routledge, 2004,248 p.
Pétré-Grenouilleau (O.), (ED.), Abolitionism and company (France, Switzerland, Portugal, XVIIIe-XIXe centuries), (“Introduction” and “Abolitionism and nationalism: the painful positioning of the French abolitionists”), Paris, Karthala (to be appeared, first quarter 2005). Conference Lorient, 2004.

In co-edition, with Pieter Emmer, has Revisited Deus ex machina. Colonial Trade and European Economic Development (1500-1940) , Brill, to appear, in 2005 (acts of an international symposium organized in Lorient in September 2001).

Articles on Pétré-Grenouilleau

Antoine de Baecque, “It was made treat”, Libération , March 15th 2006.
Daniel Hemery, Claude Liauzu, Arnaud Nanta, “To put forward the duty of history. Beyond the tyranny of the companies of memories and lapses of memory, it is necessary to retain the lesson of the historian Marc Bloch”, Libération , June 8th 2006.

References

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