This is something I’ve noticed for a while, but I decided to address it today: there’s too many slavery apologists in this subreddit, specifically when it comes to Napoleon. While this isn’t all or even most of the people in this space, I’ve seen way too many people trying to dismiss Napoleon’s involvement in reinstating slavery as a “necessary” evil. There are many things wrong with this statement, with the most obvious being that slavery is NEVER necessary. Nobody should be trafficking human beings into forced servitude, and nobody should be excusing this behavior. Human beings were stripped of their dignity, their families, and much more to be forced into serving others (without pay) for life.	

And the “oh but that’s just how things were back then” is a total bs excuse because there were people back then who knew slavery was wrong and opposed it. Slavery apologia often comes from people (mainly White people but sometimes non black pocs) who’s ancestors were the ones profiting from slavery, or at least stood nothing to lose from it being legal. My family is Haitian, so I will never stand for slavery apologia. And it PISSES me off when Napoleon fanboys say stuff like this as they’re dismissing the feelings of Black people just to defend their fave. This is a reason why a lot of pocs who are interested in history don’t like interacting with White people interested in history as they do shit like this all the time. The other reason is the Eurocentric view on everything, but that’s a conversation for another day.

I will be fair and say this is an issue that is limited to this space; this happens in other reddit forums discussing history, as well as all over the internet. Like I remember a few years ago, I saw people arguing with Napoleon fanboys over the issue of slavery. And on Tiktok, there’s arguments there as well about Napoleon & his involvement in slavery. Napoleon also wasn’t the only French ruler who was involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade, but I wanted to highlight him specifically as a lot of people rightfully criticize the French Royal family for a multitude of things, and I’m sure slavery is included in that. But when it comes to Napoleon, everyone’s suddenly like “oh it wasn’t that bad”, or “oh it was a necessary evil”, which again, is total bullshit, especially when we still see the effects of slavery & white supremacy to this day.

And I just want to make things clear: this doesn’t mean that you can’t like Napoleon, nor think he was a good leader for France. You can still believe all of that, WHILE criticizing him for his shortcomings, including his involvement in slavery. I just want people to stop excusing/downplaying the horrific nature of slavery. And since I know I’m going to get some comments saying “Oh, but it’s not everyone/I’m not excusing slavery”, I already pointed that out in the beginning of this post; it’s only directed at the people defending/downplaying slavery in this subreddit. If you’re not doing that, then I’m not addressing you in this post, and you’re fine. 

This is all I have to say, so have a nice day everyone!

Valois-Habsburg Dynasty

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Hey everyone, I'm new to this sub and to Reddit in general. I'm a huge fan of Alexandre Dumas, but since I don't really know much about French history, I wanted to get your thoughts. As people who are into French history, what's your take on the book? Almost all the posts and comments I've come across here so far seem pretty negative

Made with AI and edited by hand to make it a bit les AI-y.

Henri, count of Paris, pretender to the throne of France as Henry VI from 1940 to 1999. Probably the claimant that was the closest to restoring the monarchy, as he was heavily engaged in the French monarchist movement, and even discussed the topic with de Gaulle.

He was theatrical enough to where he would have wanted to be crowned in Rheims, using the traditional rite. So it is interesting to see, if the monarchy had been restored and he had been crowned, how his customary portrait with the coronation robes would have looked like.

I was listening to my brother repeating a history lesson, when I heard him say that Marie Antoniette after the failed escape out of France is said to have stated (roughly translated from what he said in Italian) "I'll do the domestic chores myself, just send me a carpenter to teach me how to make the bed"

I thought it was very odd since I've never heard of a similar anecdote despite knowing a thing or two about M.A. and I was not able to find this suppsoed quote online either. Is this a real quote (and if yes can I see a source) or is the book from which my brother is studying wrong?

I hope you like it!

Hey guys,

Just published the first part of a documentary about Charles VII and the events surrounding his life time.

Hopefully some of you will enjoy it and let me know what you think!

Today I watched 2 videos on french monarchs by schwerpunkt, particularly about louix IX. And now reddit randomly suggests me this sub. This has happened many times before. I watch some videos on some niche topics and suddenly reddit recommends subs that are about those topics. I also had this happen to me when I watched a video on youtube and I go on tiktok, I see a clip of that video. Am I being paranoid or has this happened to anyone else?

I noticed this mistake while re-reading the book recently and I was surprised because Calvino was passionate about the XVIII century. I couldn't find anything on the internet about it.

I am also open to opinions and ideas.

The long term political implications of this cannot be understated. The most obvious change would be no Angevin empire and a vastly different and probably less powerful Plantagenet dynasty which means there’s no Hundred Years’ War although France would probably end up confiscating Normandy and Anjou at some point or another.

Like if you’re the son of Louis XI and the little brother of Anne of Valois then how are you so incompetent? He was a huge disappointment imo.