This account by Édouard Goubert of four years spent as a priest in Martinique, is strongly opposed to the continued existence of French colonial slavery, which he calls "astonishing given the civilising progress of the mother country" (7). Goubert refers to colonial slavery as "a strangely backward resistance to the spirit of evangelism" (35). He describes the furious debates in the colonies over slavery, religion and the law, and how he was called before the colonial court because of his anti-slavery views. The final chapter of his book, on measures for emancipation, calls for immediate abolition of colonial slavery, without compensation for the slaveowners.