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The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold History of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal by AFUA COOPER
On April 10, 1734, a fire ripped through Montréal, destroying forty-six buildings, including the famed hospital/convent L’Hôtel Dieu. No one died, but in the aftermath it was discovered that the slave woman Angelique had escaped, allegedly in the company of her white lover, Claude Thibault, an indentured servant from France. Authorities soon apprehended her.
Angelique, an assertive and rebellious Portuguese-born slave woman owned by a local bourgeois, endured a two-month trial. In the tradition of French criminal justice, the chief investigator took her “confessions” of the story of her entire life, which constitute the first slave narrative in North America, a century before the stories that electrified nineteenth-century United States.
On June 20, theday of her execution, Angelique underwent confession under torture. She confessed that she was the arsonist, but stated emphatically that she acted alone.
On the evening of June 20 a rubbish cart carried her to the parish church, where she made honourable amends, as was traditionally required of convicted criminals in both France and New France. Crying in a loud voice, and resting on bended knees, she begged pardon of the king, God, and fellow citizens. Then the cart took her to the public gallows, where the hangman, another slave named Mathieu, placed the noose around her neck and ended her life. Her body was later burnt and the ashes “cast to the four corners of the earth.”
The Hanging of Angelique flips the script on the idea of Canada as a haven from slavery, yet this is also a story with international appeal. Angelique was Portuguese, and she had lived in what is now the United States. Her story resonates across time and space, back and forth across the Atlantic, traversing borders, language, race, and nations. Cooper's original research has assembled not only the first account of this story ever published in English, but also the first English-language histories of slavery in Canada and of the Atlantic slave trade that includes Canada.
READ AN EXCERPT FROM THE HANGING OF ANGELIQUE
On April 10, 1734, a fire ripped through Montréal, destroying forty-six buildings, including the famed hospital/convent L’Hôtel Dieu. No one died, but in the aftermath it was discovered that the slave woman Angelique had escaped, allegedly in the company of her white lover, Claude Thibault, an indentured servant from France. Authorities soon apprehended her.
Angelique, an assertive and rebellious Portuguese-born slave woman owned by a local bourgeois, endured a two-month trial. In the tradition of French criminal justice, the chief investigator took her “confessions” of the story of her entire life, which constitute the first slave narrative in North America, a century before the stories that electrified nineteenth-century United States.
On June 20, theday of her execution, Angelique underwent confession under torture. She confessed that she was the arsonist, but stated emphatically that she acted alone.
On the evening of June 20 a rubbish cart carried her to the parish church, where she made honourable amends, as was traditionally required of convicted criminals in both France and New France. Crying in a loud voice, and resting on bended knees, she begged pardon of the king, God, and fellow citizens. Then the cart took her to the public gallows, where the hangman, another slave named Mathieu, placed the noose around her neck and ended her life. Her body was later burnt and the ashes “cast to the four corners of the earth.”
The Hanging of Angelique flips the script on the idea of Canada as a haven from slavery, yet this is also a story with international appeal. Angelique was Portuguese, and she had lived in what is now the United States. Her story resonates across time and space, back and forth across the Atlantic, traversing borders, language, race, and nations. Cooper's original research has assembled not only the first account of this story ever published in English, but also the first English-language histories of slavery in Canada and of the Atlantic slave trade that includes Canada.
READ AN EXCERPT FROM THE HANGING OF ANGELIQUE