S08 E05 | Napoleon and the Caribbean

C19: America in the 19th Century

In this episode, Marlene L. Daut (Yale University) and Grégory Pierrot (UConn-Stamford) revisit Ridley Scott's big-budget 2023 biopic, Napoleon, out of Apple Studios. The film’s writers promised to tell the story of France’s first emperor, Napoléon Bonaparte, in a novel way. Designed to focus on his relationship with his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais, the film instead harnessed much of its energy on rehearsing Bonaparte’s well-known wins and losses at the Battles of Toulon, Austerlitz, Wagram, the Russian campaign and Waterloo. But there were important battles in Napoléon’s life that viewers did not get to witness—namely, those Bonaparte ordered across the Atlantic in France’s Caribbean colonies in Saint-Domingue (today Haiti) and Guadeloupe. With this conversation, Daut and Pierrot hope to engage the public in one of the most relevant conversations of our time: how to teach histories of slavery, racism, and colonialism in both national and international contexts. Post-production support by Genevieve Johnson-Smith (Newcastle University). Full transcript available at https://bit.ly/S08E05Transcript.