The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal

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Description

During the night of April 10, 1734, Montréal burned. Marie-Joseph Angélique, a twenty-nine-year-old slave, was once arrested, tried, and found guilty of starting the blaze that consumed forty-six buildings. Suspecting that she had not acted by myself and angered that she had maintained her innocence, Angélique’s condemners tortured her after the trial. She confessed but named no accomplices. Before Angélique was once hanged, she was once paraded throughout the city. Afterward, her corpse was once burned. Angélique, who had been born in Portugal, faded into the shadows of Canadian history, vaguely remembered as the alleged arsonist in the back of an early catastrophic fire.

The result of fifteen years of research, The Hanging of Angélique vividly tells the story of this strong-willed woman. Afua Cooper draws on extensive trial records that offer, in Angélique’s own words, a detailed portrait of her life and a sense of what slavery was once like in Canada on the time. Predating other first-person accounts by more than forty years, these records constitute what is arguably the oldest slave narrative within the New World.

Cooper sheds new light on the in large part misunderstood or ignored history of slavery in Canada. She refutes the myth that Canada was once a haven on the end of the Underground Railroad. Cooper also provides a context for Canada within the larger picture of transatlantic slavery at the same time as re-creating the tragic life of one woman who refused to just accept bondage.

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