Jacques Pierre Brissot founded the Society of the Friends of the Blacks in Paris in early 1788. Although primarily operational in Paris, the society was very much an Atlantic organization. Through superficial examinations of the efforts of the Friends of the Blacks, scholars have categorized the French movement as based solely in the printed word and engagement through revolutionary assemblies. Taken in isolation from other Atlantic philanthropic activity, the movement appears diminutive, sporadic, and ineffectual. Yet, France granted rights to free people of color and abolished slavery – lasting from 1794 to 1802 – before England, the United States, and other countries deeply entangled in the Atlantic struggle over the status of peoples of African descent. The French movement was not a failure; it was part of a longer process of abolition. While late eighteenth-century efforts did not bring about the permanent end to slavery in the French Caribbean – something only achieved in 1848 – those like Brissot advocated for peoples of African descent during the French Revolution, laying the groundwork for the later success of the nineteenth-century abolitionists.

What is known as the American Revolution or the American Independence War, was much more than what its name suggests. What started in April 1775 as a revolt turned into a revolution within a year. With the intervention of France in July 1778, it became a transatlantic war, which in June 1779, when Spain entered the conflict, was transformed into a global war. This global conflict, fought in four continents as well as on the high seas, was rooted in the centuries-old confrontation between France, Spain, and Britain for the expansion and control of their empires. France and Spain shared a mutual interest in weakening the British. During the first stages of the conflict, both countries “secretly” supplied the American rebels, but as the war spread, their approaches differed. While France, with no territories in North America, allied with the recently proclaimed independent United States; Spain, with a vast American empire to protect, would only consider France as its official ally. Despite their different interests and tactics, Franco-Spanish joint operations in Europe, the Caribbean, and the South of North America, were decisive for the final British defeat.

A landmark orients, signals a turning point, indicates a boundary. Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves (1678) was immediately recognized, both by those who disliked it and those who appreciated it, as announcing a new approach to plot structure, representation of society, plausibility (or its lack), and character development. Later the terms ‘psychology’ and ‘analysis’ were used to point to the narrative’s approach to portraying the feelings and thoughts of the protagonist. One of the most obvious ways in which the text distinguishes itself from other novels of its period is its brevity. This quality gives it particular staying-power as a landmark, making it useful in school curricula as an example of the literature of its period—though this use risks skewing the view of seventeenth-century novels by presenting a striking, innovative exception, as the norm. Because landmarks indicate boundaries, they can serve as symbols of the territories they define. La Princesse de Clèves serves today as a marker of the cultural tradition of France itself. It is thus at the centre of debates about the literary canon and of national identity. For both the seventeenth century and for the twenty-first, Lafayette’s work fuels debate.

Charles Baudelaire’s notion of the flaneur – a figure who mingles with crowds and street scenes but also observes and documents the sights from a distance – captures well the early life of John Kennedy Toole and the character of Ignatius Reilly at the center of his famous novel. Ignatius is modeled upon a colleague of Toole’s at a small college in Lafayette, Louisiana, a scholar of Medieval culture and history who came from New Orleans. It also traces the novel’s publication history and extraordinary success in the Spanish-speaking world, as well as the tragic end to young novelist’s life by suicide.