Maria Beliaeva Solomon

The Revue des colonies (1834-1842) was the first French periodical by and for people of color. With a network of readers and contributors extending from Europe to the Caribbean to North Africa to the Indian Ocean, it covered the abuses of colonial administrators and played a key role in the global struggle for emancipation ahead of the abolition of slavery across the French empire in 1848. It also gave international prominence to texts by writers of color and actively promoted Afrodiasporic literature, including the first known work of published fiction by an identified African American author, which appeared in the Revue in 1837. This project offers the first extended scholarly study of this politically and formally innovative journal, illuminating both its cultural impact and its cosmopolitan character, and advancing an understanding of abolitionist publications as inherently diasporic.