Sugar and Slavery, Family and Race: The Letters and Diary of Pierre Dessalles, Planter in Martinique, 1808-1856

Diaries of nineteenth-century plantation managers are rare; diaries of French sugar planters are rarer still. Although such works as the diaries of Ella Gertrude Thomas and James Henry Hammond provide insight into the plantation societies of the antebellum South, virtually no contemporary source treats planter-slave relations as extensively, or presents a white planter's views on slave society in as much detail, as do the letters and diary of Pierre Dessalles.

Now Elborg Forster and Robert F...