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Did Native people have the same rights as French people in the colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? They did, according to a law enacted in all the colonies. Indeed, once converted, aboriginal people could go and live in France, get married to French people, and inherit their wealth. However, the implementation of this law, which was specific to the French colonies, posed some problems. Marriages between French settlers and aboriginal women constituted a non-negligible loss of income for the colony. The law allowed an aboriginal widow to inherit the goods and wealth of her deceased husband. In these cases, the French judges, among other members of Louisiana's Conseil supérieur, were faced with the dilemma of either upholding the missionary vocation of the French colonies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--a vocation used to justify the colonization of the New World--or preventing the loss of part of the colony's wealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts in French and English for French-language articles within the issue on topics related to social sciences and history, including "Lectures de Mauss," by Carlo Ginzburg on the work of sociologist Marcel Mauss, "La nature du droit au corps dans le mariage selon la casuistique des XIIe et XIIIe siècles," by Marta Madero on marriage law during the Middle Ages, and "La liberté du sacrement: droit canonique et mariage des esclaves dans le Brésil colonial," by Charlotte de Castelnau-L'Étoile on slave marriages in colonial Brazil.

The article discusses Canon law related to slave marriage in colonial Brazil, with information on a petition sent by African slaves in Bahia, Brazil to the Catholic Church in Rome, Italy in 1708 on the subject of the legal marriage of slaves. Topics include Portugese and canonical law related to marriage in 18th century Brazil; the study of slave societies and the selective application of law due to their status as res humana; a 1585 Papal bull in defense of slave marriage in colonial Brazil; and the idea of the freedom of sacrament among Christian slaves navigating domestic sovereignty and individual rights.

Le texte pose le probleme general de la conception de «l'identite des germains» que se fait une societe donnee, conception qui conditionne la notion d'inceste et l'ensemble des regles qui president aux echanges matrimoniaux. En occident, le christianisme impose, a la fin de l'Antiquite et pendant le Haut Moyen Age, a travers la notion d'una caro, une complete identite des germains: freres et sœurs sont des etres semblables et l'affinite qu'ils nouent par leur mariage rejaillie sur tous les germains d'allies, voire sur les allies de ces allies (affinite de 2e et 3e genre). En 1215, le Concile du Latran limite l'affinite au 1er genre (les germains de l'allie du seul Ego). Freres et sœurs restent identiques mais chacun acquiert une «autonomie» matrimoniale par rapport a l'autre: les echanges de sœurs, les mariages «doubles» (deux freres avec deux sœurs) redeviennent possibles. Les XVIIIe et XIXe siecles sapent completement cette conception chretienne des germains: freres et sœurs redeviennent des etres differents. Les interdits d'alliance fondamentaux tombent: le levirat et le sororat sont legalises, les empechements dans la consanguinite sont limites a des degres tres proches (cousins germains ou oncle/niece). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]