Project: A book that examines the relationship between western European societal values in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, colonialism and the shaping of the concept of the « other » through musical events - particularly those music dramas relating specifically to the French colonial system in the Caribbean. While France was embroiled in a struggle with other European nations for overseas superiority, Louis XIII and his successors continuously waged a cultural political campaign. In the performing arts, the recurring theme was the glorification of the military, political and religious powers of France abroad as well as at home. These productions chronicled current events (wars, treaties, conquests), honored events in the royal family (births, marriages and so forth), and were main participants in lavish ceremonies for visiting dignitaries from other countries. Such works occurred throughout the French empire. in Paris at the royal residences, in the provinces and in the colonies. Music played a vital role in this cultural political campaign from mid-seventeenth century onward. Ministres of the islands organized spectacular events comprising military marches, religious music, symphonies and divertissements. By mid-eighteenth century, the musical theater was a thriving enterprise in the colonies with at least eleven theaters (eight in Saint-Domingue, two in Guadeloupe and one in Martinique), surpassing in grandeur and bon goût the most renowned structures of this kind in Europe. The audience primarily consisted of white citizens; and a small section of the balcony, called Paradis pour les gens de couleur, was reserved for a «select portion» of free gens de couleur (skilled tradesmen and their families who seemed to have immersed themselves in French culture). Such an arrangement insured absolute respect for the social hierarchy and clearly illustrated the French view of the performing arts as a positive motivating influence on the individual. Several divertissements featured slaves performing galant dances of the French court and a variety of «proper» songs (French airs and ariettes)—all of which glorified the power of the monarchy through their texts, movements and gestures. Several gens de couleur had significant roles as musicians in the orchestra and as vocalists, with a few singers assuming leading roles in some of the most successful operas and eclipsing the most talented French artists. In determining the level of mutual influences between the musical theater and colonial society, the focus is on how such events affected the relationship between Western European societal values, colonialism and the shaping of the concept of the other; and how these events ignited and prepared the way for the increasing antipathy against enslavement of human beings, the beginning of the breakdown of the vast French colonial empire and the abolishment of slavery in the French Antilles in the next century.