"First-rate study of the Protestant merchant whose wide travel experience and liberal convictions made him France's most impressive abolitionist and architect of the 1848 decree of abolition. Schmidt analyzes his social and political thought and its origins - from Abbé Grégoire to Fourier. She traces Schoelcher's impact in the French Antilles: his conversion into an iconic figure and his action inspiring a new republican colonial doctrine, or schoelchérisme. She follows his subsequent career as an indefatigable and impartial advocate of human rights, a feminist, and a republican politican who introduced important reforms in colonial administration and whose competence in colonial economy and labor force organization was widely influential. The appendix is a rich source that shows Schoelcher to be a gifted writer, whose lucidity and sophistication are noted by the author"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.