In 1837 Navarre's family, including Osifekunde, left Brazil for France. D'Avezac indicates that Osifekunde was unfree when he came to France, raising questions about Navarre's assumptions about the journey and of French laws regarding slavery. ${ }^{28}$ Whatever his status, there seemed to be no legal obstacle to bringing enslaved people to France, contrary to d'Avezac's assertion that Osifekunde was free upon landing on French soil. Although in August 1791, the French National Assembly banned slavery thereby granting freedom to any slave who landed in France, by 1802, however, the French had overcome their flirtation with emancipation and were back in the business of slavery. The shortage of sugar in Paris that resulted from the Saint-Domingue revolution in the 1790s and  
[^0]
[^0]:    27 'Kongo'memorializes the old Kongo kingdom, a leading state in early modern Central Africa while Mina originally applied to the gold mining village of El Mina (Elmina (the mine)). On 'Kongo' and 'Mina' identities, see Mariza de Carvalho Soares, "From Gbe to Yoruba: Ethnic Change and the Mina Nation in Rio de Janeiro," in Matt D. Childs and Toyin Falola, eds., 2004, The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2004, pp. 231-47); Douglas Chambers, "Eboe, Kongo, Mandingo: African Ethnic Groups and the Development of Regional Slave Societies in Mainland North America," International Seminar, "The History of the Atlantic World," Harvard University, 3-11 September 1996; Linda Heywood, ed. 2002, Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora, Cambridge University Press; Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, "African Ethnicities and the Meanings of Mina," in Paul Lovejoy and David Trotman, 2003, Trans-Atlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora, London, Continuum, pp. 65-81; and Robin Law, 2005, "Ethnicities of Enslaved Africans in the Diaspora: On the Meanings of "Mina" (Again)," History in Africa 32, pp. 247-67.