Jennifer Pitts has been invited by the assembly of the Collège de France, at the suggestion of Pr Antoine Lilti.
Quobna Ottobah Cugoano'sThoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (1787), one of the most radical anti-slavery treatises published in the eighteenth century and the first published by a black author in the Western world, appeared in an anonymous French translation the following year. In research undertaken with my colleague Michael Suarez, S. J., of the University of Virginia, we present arguments tending to show that the translation could be the work of Nicolas de Caritat, the Marquis de Condorcet, and examine the implications, for our understanding of Condorcet's thought and the French antislavery movement, of this effort to make Cugoano's remarkable political, philosophical and religious treatise rapidly available to the French public. The full history of Condorcet's abolitionist activities remains to be written, and his likely engagement with Cugoano's spirit and writings should figure in that history.
