Jennifer Palmer’s new book, Intimate Bonds: Family and Slavery in the French Atlantic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), uses the stories of two extraordinary families as the point of departure for a study of the ways that household relationships, and the intimacy they entailed, shaped understandings of race, gender and slavery in the 18th century French Atlantic. Palmer analyzes the bonds of friendship, servitude, sex, and godparentage as they related to shifts in legal regimes regulating slavery. Her reliance on sources including correspondence and wills makes for rich storytelling about the complex lives of enslaved people and their owners, as both enabling and undermining of racial and gendered hierarchies.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices