Historiography and open questions about postemancipation and gender in the French West Indies
This article is dedicated to a region which is often neglected in comparative history of slavery and postemancipation, which moves frequently inside the former colonial empires. It explains how gender history is connected with the historical research about slavery and abolition the French Caribbean, particularly St. Domingue / Haiti, Martinique and Guadeloupe, and resumes some results of this research in respect of genderspecific division of labour, gender roles in slave families and manumissions. With regard to postemancipation studies This article refers to studies about coercive forms of plantation labour after slavery and immigration, comments the still existing shortfalls concerning investigations of family patterns, couple relations and conflicts in gender relations of the Afromartiniquian population and problems of sources to write a postemancipationgenderhistory from below.