Mémorial de l’abolition de l’esclavage de Nantes : une ville française confrontée à son passé brutal

Infographie : François Descheemaekere

Memorial to Slave Trade : French City Confronts Its Brutal Past

[Spiegel Online]

The slave trade once made the people of Nantes rich, but the French city covered up its dark history for decades. It recently erected a memorial to the victims in a project believed to be the first of its kind in Europe. But the effort to shed light on the Continent's role in the 18th century slave trade with Africa and the New World has not been popular with some residents.

In the 18th century, cruelty had poetic names, like Le Prudent ("The Prudent"), La Légère ("The Light") or Les Trois Maries ("The Three Marys"). The ships, named in the hope of a good voyage or baptized with Christian first names, were part of a brutal business between Europe, Africa and America: the slave trade. During a period of approximately 400 years, at least 13 million people were transported under horrendous conditions from Africa to the colonies of the New World. The northwestern French city of Nantes played a central role in what has been described as the largest forced migration in global history.
Although the city's merchants came late to the lucrative slave trade, long after the Portuguese, Spanish and British, over the course of the 18th century the city on the Loire River became a central hub of the Atlantic triangular slave trade -- and with it the most important port city in France.
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