Episode 13: The Revolution and the Colonies
Living the French Revolution and Age of Napoleon
Dr Suzanne M Desan
Film Review
In early 1791, the free mixed race residents of St Dominque* (who were recognized as French citizens) hired a lawyer to present a proposal to abolish slavery to the French National Assembly. The proposal was supported by a handful of prominent revolutionaries, including Mirabeau, Henri Gregoire and Lafayette.* They advocated ending the slave trade first and then gradually ending slavery over 7 years – to enable slaves to “learn how to be free citizens.”
Fifty of the 1789 grievance lists had demanded an end to slavery. However most of the first National Assembly was very pro-slavery, deriving the wealth that qualified them as deputies from the slave trade and slave plantations. They argued that coffee and sugar were essential to the French economy and that France could never compete effectively against the English by employing free labor to produce it. In the end, the National Assembly specifically exempted the colonies from the Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.
St Dominque had a roughly equal number (25,000-30,000) of whites and free people of color. Although the latter owned approximately one quarter of the plantations and slaves who ran them, they were barred from participating in a number of occupations, riding in carriages, dressing or styling their hair like white colonists.
Undaunted, in 1790 free Black leader Vincent Ogé returned to St Domingue to organize an armed uprising among local free Blacks that occupied the city of Grande Riviere. While some escaped to the Spanish part of the island, most were captured, with 23 executed and 13 sentenced to lifetime service as galley slaves.
In 1791 the National assembly granted full citizenship (and vote) to all French free men of color born born to two free parents. The following year they extended it to all free women of color. However the law never took effect in the French colonies.
In 1792, in the largest slave revolt in history the slaves of St Domingue won full emancipation by declaring independence from France.
*St Domingue subsequently became Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
**In French Guiana, where he owned property, Lafayette secretly oversaw a 1785-92 initiative in which the colonies slaves were emancipated.
Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.
The Most Revolutionary Act 