Qualla: Statue of the Empress Josephine https://qualla.com/statue-of-the-empress-josephine en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Statue of the Empress Josephine https://qualla.com/statue-of-the-empress-josephine Statue of the Empress Josephine: Introduction https://qualla.com/statue-of-the-empress-josephine/ The head was never found. On the night of September 21, 1991, someone climbed the marble statue of Empress Josephine in Fort-de-France's La Savane park and cut it off. No one was arrested. No group claimed responsibility. Local authorities considered replacing the head but concluded it would simply be removed again. So the statue stood on, headless, for nearly three decades -- red paint renewed on the white marble each year so it never faded, a visual accusation that transformed a colonial monument into something its creators never intended: a memorial to the people Josephine's family helped enslave.

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]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/d/s/e/statue-of-the-empress-josephine-wp/ddse-statue-of-the-empress-josephine-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Statue of the Empress Josephine: The Empress from Trois-Ilets https://qualla.com/statue-of-the-empress-josephine/ Marie Josephe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie was born on June 23, 1763, at the family sugar plantation in Trois-Ilets, a village across the bay from Fort-de-France. The plantation, like all sugar estates in the French Caribbean, ran on the labor of enslaved Africans. She left Martini...

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]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/d/s/e/statue-of-the-empress-josephine-wp/ddse-statue-of-the-empress-josephine-the-empress-from-trois-ilets.mp3 0:06 2 full Statue of the Empress Josephine: The Decree of 1802 https://qualla.com/statue-of-the-empress-josephine/ France's revolutionary government had abolished slavery in the colonies in 1794. For eight years, the enslaved people of the French Caribbean were legally free. Then, on May 20, 1802, Napoleon signed a decree reinstating slavery. The law restored the entire apparatus of forced la...

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]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/d/s/e/statue-of-the-empress-josephine-wp/ddse-statue-of-the-empress-josephine-the-decree-of-1802.mp3 0:06 3 full Statue of the Empress Josephine: Red Paint and a Missing Head https://qualla.com/statue-of-the-empress-josephine/ The beheading in 1991 was not an act of vandalism. It was an act of protest with a clear political vocabulary: the revolutionaries who had executed the king and queen of France used the same method, and the gesture applied that logic to a woman whose husband had reversed the revo...

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]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/d/s/e/statue-of-the-empress-josephine-wp/ddse-statue-of-the-empress-josephine-red-paint-and-a-missing-head.mp3 0:06 4 full Statue of the Empress Josephine: The Toppling https://qualla.com/statue-of-the-empress-josephine/ On July 26, 2020, during protests following the murder of George Floyd in the United States, activists in Fort-de-France pulled the headless statue from its pedestal. A police source told the press that officers had received orders not to interfere. Around the same time, proteste...

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]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/d/s/e/statue-of-the-empress-josephine-wp/ddse-statue-of-the-empress-josephine-the-toppling.mp3 0:06 5 full