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Yes, after hesitating long, Napoleon Bonaparte re-established slavery. Yes, the generals he sent to the West Indies ferociously suppressed the revolts of the Blacks and mulattoes. His project was however not racial but primarily geopolitical, and his ambition was «global». The article underlines how the re-establishment of slavery took place in a world where abolitionism was in its infancy and where for a sector that employed one in ten French people at the time the economic cost of abolition was thought to be exorbitant. In these six chapters, Pierre Branda and Thierry Lentz consider the issue of slavery and the colonies piece by piece, with the help of complete and sometimes unpublished documentation, they compile a dispassionate balance sheet.