Interview with Dr. Dominique Rogers
By Gabriëlle La Croix.
Dr. Dominique Rogers is a Maîtresse de conférences in History at the Université des Antilles in Martinique. She specializes in the early modern period in the West Indies, and more specifically French Saint Domingue (current day Haiti). Her current research focuses on the role of white women in the Lesser Antilles and she is also part of a research project on bioresources. During the month of October 2022, she visited the In The Same Sea research project at the University of Copenhagen.
Dr. Dominique Rogers presenting at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen, in October 2022.
Q: What made you want to become a historian, or what made you interested in history?
I think history has always been part of my family life. I think everybody loves history in my family. For many people, especially in France, it would be quite uncommon to be speaking of science on a day to day basis, however speaking of history is something which is more common and is a conversation one might have with neighbors or friends. When I was much younger, I think I was doubting between being an engineer in electronics or being a historian. So why a historian? I think I'm interested in people, and I've started to understand the way they think, the way they are, what they want to do and how they try to understand the society and themselves.
Q: What kind of work is done at the history department at the Université des Antilles?
The University of the Antilles is a university which was only established rather recently, in the 1980s, and the history department was part of the university from the start. For a long time, it was the place where you actually started your studies and then you would go on to Bordeaux, Toulouse, or wherever in metropolitan France. The University of the Antilles used to be based in three places: Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana. However, since 2015, it is only based on Martinique and Guadeloupe. I think altogether the history department consists of approximately 15 people, with people specializing in ancient history, antiquity, the medieval period, early modern, modern and contemporary history. Sometimes we also have specialists on, for instance, African History or Vietnam. Most of us work on the Caribbean, and especially Martinique and Guadeloupe. I think my specialization in French St. Domingue is one of the reasons why they recruited me.
Q: Would you say there is more of a focus on local history?
Both yes, and no. What I mean is that, first, if we think of teaching, we need to teach the students everything, including things like European history and sometimes Asian history. But the Caribbean is our main specialty. It is important because for a long time the Caribbean was studied for what it gave or what it allowed European countries to gain: sugar, coffee, cacao, amongst other things, but not for the people. What we try to do in this center is part of a process of creolization of this history, it is looking at this history for the society in which these people lived and taking into account their own trends, their own problems, and not necessarily what's concerned with Europe. This doesn't mean that some of us don’t do Atlantic history, especially because Martinique and Guadeloupe, the French Antilles, are made of people who came from Africa, some from Asia, some from Europe, and some are local. So, we need to compare, and we need to understand, keeping in mind that they were also influenced by what was going on in Africa or in Europe or in the Americas.
Q: What do you think are the advantages of writing Caribbean history from the Caribbean?
I started my dissertation in metropolitan France, I did my viva voce in Bordeaux, and of course most of my archives were in Aix-en-Provence, and part of them in Paris. However, what I learned from being in the Caribbean is that the things I perceived in the documents, I had the opportunity to experience it when I actually lived in the Caribbean. There are also so many things which are not in the archives that you learn through the people. So being there with the people we can see what the problems are, and what the major questions being asked are. It is one thing seeing things in archives, but it is another experiencing the Caribbean, and learning that some things in the metropolitan archives could be experienced differently. What is also interesting in being in the Caribbean is the fact that we work with the colleagues from the other islands more easily than when you are in Europe, also because we have the Association of Caribbean History (ACH). Together we can discuss, but we also manage to find pieces of information or little books that have not been published in the USA or Europe. There are also problems with not writing this history from the Caribbean, for instance, I don't think if I was living in the metropolis the work which I have done on the voices of the enslaved would have been used for museum practices or to have slavery being told in museums and historical sites and so forth. So, I think it is because I'm there, they know me, that I could actually make the connection.
Q: So, writing Caribbean history from the Caribbean allows for greater collaboration?
Yes, it does not mean I was not collaborating with museums previously, but it is not the same. I think this history is the history the Caribbean people. I think it's worth it for them to know it, and you know it more easily if you live there and they see you on a more regular basis. So more collaboration and more direct, let's say, contact with the people and access to archives, especially family archives. Some things you will only get by being there because they're not in the traditional archive, they are family things.
Q: I came across a publication you did in 2020 with Boris (Lesueur) and you wrote about living in a city on the Antilles or in French Guiana from a multidisciplinary perspective. Why do you think such a perspective is important when researching the Antilles?
An archaeologist documents material life in a totally different way from a historian. We have information, for instance, from inventories, but we do not have the technical, the material, the detail, the information. An archaeologist in their own perspective is able to tell us different things. It's the same subject, but their research tells us other things because it uses other materials. I think we know we learn more when we broaden our views by using different perspectives than just the one we are used to. There was a colleague, a musicologist or music specialist, and he would think of things which I have had never thought of before in my own life. Yet it is also difficult when we have an opportunity to work with someone who is specialized in a different discipline, because it really demands an effort of adaptation because their documents, their resources are not the same, their problematics are not the same. But I think it's enriching because it's another aspect of reality that sometimes we cannot really touch without them.
Q: Where do you see the field of French Caribbean history, or Caribbean history in general, going in the next few years?
We have been working a lot on enslaved people and over the last 20 years loads of research work was done on people of color. I have the feeling that it is a question of how long we will be looking at enslaved people as a group, rather than individual cases. It is a bit like what is going on with what we did with enslaved voices, and what I'm doing now with white women. I think we're going into more precise individual cases, rather than the big work sketching out whole periods. My colleagues 20 or 30 years ago when they were proposing a subject to a master's student, they would have them work on centuries, very long periods. But now we sometimes ask them to work on one year, or on two years, we're working in details and not so much in big trends. Next to this, I do think the question of connections between islands is something which is a thing of major importance. One of the big questions is always this question of what are the neighbours doing? What is it to be a French person when you change islands, when your sovereign is somebody who changed all the time and what does that mean? Migration? What is the reality of this Caribbean thing? I have the feeling that for a long-time language was a barrier. However now you've got so many translators and you've got so many opportunities to travel, and it is also much easier to travel. So, I think this is something which must be pushed for and if we don't push for it, it won't realize. But I think the desire is there and I think it's something which is necessary for us as Caribbean people.
I think these developments in the field are something which is going on everywhere throughout the region. Especially this tendency to focus on more precise individual cases. Some work has been conducted on it, not a lot, but some work on histoire connectée, connected history, and beyond sovereignties. So, I think it's something which is on the way. I also have the feeling the heritage question is developing more and more, especially because there is also this question for some of the former, or still, members of the Commonwealth: who are we? Where do we want to go? Who are our heroes and what do we do about history? In the Caribbean, slavery is flesh and bones. What I mean by that is that slavery is still something sensitive, something difficult and I believe that if we manage to work on these questions it may be a way for the people nowadays to understand why they are what they are today and where they want to go.
Q: Do you think that on the islands that remain under various forms of European control, like the Dutch islands or French islands, people want to know more about their history and heritage because they're not independent? Or do you think there's a difference?
I'm sure there's a difference. I think the colleagues, on all those islands who became independent, Jamaica, Barbados, they very quickly understood that their heroes were not local heroes, they were Nelson, they were the King or Queen, but not people that looked like their citizens. So, they really had to write their own history and they started much earlier than we did because they had to teach their own history to pupils and students. They didn't have the books. They didn't have the information. So, they had to uncover their own history much sooner. At a certain point you need to know who you are. Some people on, at least, the French islands don’t want to hear about this, they don’t want to hear about this story, especially of slavery. However, they will be interested to know their history today, contemporary, 19th century, 20th century. But maybe too often I work with people who are interested in history so my point is biased, but I have the feeling that even if you live with all the comfort that being related to the metropole can give you, I have the feeling that there are signs that tell you that people need more than that. They need this, they need to know who they are and where they come from.
Q: What did you think of your stay here at the University of Copenhagen?
It was wonderful. I loved it! We had lots of very nice moments all together. It was also stimulating, scientifically speaking. First, because there were many people working on the Caribbean, other places than my own research within the Caribbean, and sometimes the same places so that allowed for a lot of exchanges. So that was really very nice. The reading sessions we had were also excellent, it was a great occasion of having feedback on your work. It was also great because I could focus on just reading and researching again, especially because one can get so busy with other work and students. But here, it was my job to just do what I love doing, which is researching, although I love teaching as well, but here it was just for me.