“A Scandalous Commerce”

Abstract

This chapter explores how the slave system weakened the European religious and moral ideal that restricted sexuality and the family to Christian marriage in French New Orleans. Yet, it challenges the common view according to which the prevalence of métissage was the sign of a lenient racial regime. Sexual relationships across the racial line did not undermine racial formation; on the contrary, they contributed to reinforcing the system of racial domination. Rather than a general moral and religious disorder, what developed was a plural set of sexual and family values and practices that differed according to status, gender, and race.