How do beliefs about Creole languages influence the their descriptions by 19th-century creolists? This issue of 'Archipélies' seeks to answer this question, focusing on the beliefs, representations, and, more broadly, ideologies that permeate descriptions of Creole languages from the documentation of Haitian Creole by Ducœurjoly in 1802 to the naturalistic portrayal of Creoles around the turn of the century. Far from being reduced to simple nomenclatures, descriptions of Creole languages reprodu