Freedom Deferred

Slavery, Resistance, & the Politics of Race in France’s Indian Ocean Colonies During the Age of Revolution

A Documentary Reader

Nathan E. Marvin

Contents

Preface

In the annals of slavery and emancipation, the French Revolution is often remembered as a time of liberation. It is true that in 1794, a group of elected representatives of African descent from French-colonial Haiti, fresh from securing their own freedom in the Caribbean, arrived in Paris and persuaded their colleagues in the National Convention to abolish slavery across the empire and grant suffrage to all adult men. Yet, freedom did not reach the one hundred thousand enslaved people in France’s Indian Ocean islands (Mauritius, Réunion, Seychelles). In these regions, colonial elites openly rejected France’s emancipation proclamation, maintaining this population in illegal bondage for another forty to fifty years. The formal end of slavery in the region would only arrive in 1835 on Mauritius (by then under British control) and in 1848 in Réunion.

How were elites able to maintain the status quo, in defiance of French law? How did enslaved people experience this moment? What and how did they learn about ongoing resistance efforts in the Atlantic world? What resistance strategies did they themselves employ? What about free people of color? How did their movement for social and political equality shape events?

Eyewitnesses to these events left behind traces in the archives—traces we can use to answer some of these questions. This primary source reader introduces the documents by contextualizing them in time and space and offering clues on how to read them critically and creatively for what they reveal—and, in some cases, obscure—about the past. Collectively, these traces speak volumes about the particular laws and traditions of the Western Indian Ocean region. They also illuminate the many connections between that region and the wider world, shedding light on how increasing maritime connections between the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic world during the Age of Revolutions fostered new ways of thinking about identity, community, and citizenship.

In presenting a diverse range of voices from the French Indian Ocean world, this reader aims to broaden our perspective on the Age of Revolutions and its consequences, and complicate conventional narratives of the period. Culled from a global array of archives, this anthology features firsthand accounts by free men of color on the politics of equality, revelations from planter elites and their allies (including American merchants) as they plotted to uphold slavery at any cost, and eyewitness reports of an insurrection against government officials tasked with implementing imperial laws against slavery. This primary source collection is the first to curate documents from France’s Indian Ocean colonies and present them in translation for English-speaking readers.

Map depicting territories occupied by France from the 17th to 20th centuries, created by Kayac1971 (2012), Wikimedia Commons.
Map depicting territories occupied by France from the 17th to 20th centuries. Wikimedia Commons.

Background: France and the Indian Ocean

This set of documents invites us to shift our focus from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean in examining the histories of race, slavery, and revolution in the French colonial world. As you read, consider the following questions: How were the events of the “Age of Atlantic Revolutions” perceived in France’s Indian Ocean colonies? What social, political, economic, and cultural effects did these developments produce locally? What were the meanings of the French and Haitian Revolutions for various groups in these colonies? How did systems of racial categorization in the Indian Ocean differ from those in the Caribbean, and how did these differences influence responses to the Revolutions? How did outsiders perceive the French Indian Ocean colonies within the context of France’s and Europe’s global empires?

These sources also help us understand the Haitian Revolution as an event of global significance. Recent historiography confirms that Haiti was politically, economically, and culturally active on the international scene during and after its Revolution. The persistence of contrary myths can be attributed to the framework of white supremacy through which information about Haiti was filtered to the rest of the world. Reports often depicted African and African-descended actors as incapable of participating in democratic politics, denying them agency and portraying them as pawns of sinister agitators.

Parties intent on maintaining slavery tried to block and manipulate information about the Haitian Revolution. However, they could not prevent news of emancipation from spreading in the Atlantic world through American ship crews and the Mascarenes’ populations of free and enslaved people of color—an extension of the word-of-mouth network explored in Julius Scott’s Common Wind. These censorship efforts explain the complex responses to the Haitian Revolution across European-colonial spaces marked by chattel slavery and racial hierarchy, and why some actors responded to news of Haiti in unexpected ways given their racial identities. As we read their perspectives, it is crucial to consider the multilayered motivations of these historical actors in the Mascarenes and the audiences they addressed.

Unlike the Atlantic, where Europeans were the first to sustain transoceanic navigation, trade, and colonization, the Indian Ocean was a region where indigenous peoples from around the entire ocean’s rim had been traveling and trading for more than a millennium before the maritime arrival of Europeans at the end of the fifteenth century. For the most part, Europeans were vastly outnumbered (the devastating population decline that accompanied European expansion in the Americas did not occur there) and were often at the whim of more powerful local imperial states. For the first three centuries of European history in the region, their presence was limited mostly to maritime routes and small islands and enclaves clinging to larger, more powerful empires.

Among European powers, France was a latecomer to the Indian Ocean. After some tentative initiatives by private merchants, the first French East India Company was founded in 1664. The French monarchy was eager to catch up with England and the Netherlands, which had founded companies of their own at the beginning of the seventeenth century to compete with the Portuguese. France gradually established a network of colonial footholds that included the island colonies of the Mascarenes in the southwestern Indian Ocean (Réunion and Mauritius) as well as trading posts along the shores of the Indian subcontinent and on the east coast of Madagascar. Each of these became a locus of cultural and commercial exchange.

The Indian Ocean was a key area of French military, diplomatic, economic, and cultural interest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and beyond. French merchants and investors in trading companies made handsome profits selling Indian textiles in France, as well as coffee (and eventually sugar) from the Mascarenes. Moreover, Indian Ocean goods were bartered for enslaved captives in Africa, linking the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean in a global commercial system.

Throughout the eighteenth century and into the next, France vied for control of Indian Ocean territory and shipping routes with the British Empire, enlisting the support of allies in South Asia and its own creole populations. By the middle of the nineteenth century, France had lost most of its claims to enclaves in the Indian Ocean, retaining only Réunion and Pondicherry in South Asia. These outposts inspired nostalgia, regret, and new colonial ambitions. At the turn of the twentieth century, France launched its ultimately successful invasion of Madagascar from Réunion.

Examining questions of slavery, race, and revolution in the Indian Ocean (the purpose of this documentary reader) helps us understand France’s expansive oceanic empire more fully, demonstrating that it was not as bifurcated—between Atlantic and Indian Ocean spheres—as once believed. There was a disconnect, of course, posed by geography and the limitations of navigation in the eighteenth century. It took two months for news to cross the Atlantic, three to four months to reach the Mascarenes, and many more if headed to India or China. Often, if vessels did not make it to the southern tip of the African continent soon enough for the monsoon winds that governed navigation in the Indian Ocean to be favorable (i.e., blowing from west to east), they could expect to spend additional months in the Dutch Cape, waiting for the winds to change. All in all, it often took as long as eighteen months to complete a round trip from France to Asia. Orders from the metropole were thus heavily delayed. Certain parties charged with political affairs, whether in France or the colonies, sometimes lamented the unreliable communications caused by weather conditions and sheer distance; more often, it seems, they used them to their advantage.

Just as in French enclaves in West Africa, the Caribbean, Guiana, and North America, slavery and racial hierarchy were key features of all French colonial societies in the Indian Ocean and had indeed been part of the local landscape long before the arrival of Europeans. Beginning in the seventeenth century, the French had adapted and expanded local forms of unfree labor in their enclaves in India and Madagascar. In the Mascarene Islands of Bourbon (today’s Réunion) and Île de France (Mauritius), which had no indigenous populations at the time of European settlement, a form of chattel slavery emerged that mirrored that of the Caribbean. By the early eighteenth century, the Mascarenes had developed into agricultural colonies producing staples and cash crops, including coffee and, in the nineteenth century, sugar. Planters relied on thousands of enslaved laborers from Madagascar, East Africa, and South Asia.

Indeed, as in the Atlantic world, European slave trading was a significant enterprise in the Indian Ocean basin. European slave traders forcibly removed many thousands of men, women, and children from their homes, disrupting and reorienting whole societies, economies, and political dynamics. Between 1600 and 1860, European slave ships transported a half-million captives from the Indian Ocean into the Atlantic and transported another half-million between points within the Indian Ocean itself.1 Nearly one-fifth of all French slaving voyages were carried out in the Indian Ocean.2 Moreover, Indian Ocean commodities were integral to France’s own “triangle trade” (le circuit, in French), which brought captives from Africa to the Antilles and sugar and coffee from the Antilles to France. Textiles from South Asia and cowries from the Maldives, shipped on French vessels to the Breton entrepôt of Lorient, were later exchanged for slaves on Africa’s coasts.3 For much of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, European slaving voyages, supplemented by slave raids by Malagasy warriors and other non-European entities, were carried out in large part to satisfy what historian Richard Allen has called “the constant demand of the French” particularly on their plantations in the Mascarene Islands.

The Mascarene archipelago was the epicenter of French settler colonization and plantation slavery in the Indian Ocean. Officially, by the late 1780s, Bourbon Island and Isle de France (along with that colony’s dependency, the Seychelles), were home to a free population of more than 16,000, over 12,000 of whom enjoyed “white” status, and 75,899 slaves. That number was likely higher, however (120,000 according to some estimates), as slaveholders underreported their dependents on censuses in order to avoid paying full taxes. At the twilight of the Old Regime, the Mascarenes and their dependencies (the Seychelles and other islands) thus housed 12% of the total population of France’s slaveholding empire—a proportion that rose to one-third in the wake of Haitian Independence. Isle de France (Mauritius) became part of the British Empire in 1810, but Réunion Island ultimately remained under French control and has been the most populous of France’s so-called vieilles colonies (vestiges of its pre-Revolution colonial empire) almost continuously from the 1850s to the present.4

Map of the main French shipping routes in the Indian Ocean, drawn from memory by Mahé de la Bourdonnais while imprisoned in the Bastille.
Map of French shipping routes in the Indian Ocean, drawn from memory by Mahé de la Bourdonnais while imprisoned in the Bastille (c. 1750). Made with soot and coffee grounds on a handkerchief. Image source: Bibliothèque nationale de France.



Located at the nexus of both the Atlantic and Indian-Ocean spheres of France’s empire, the societies of Bourbon Island and Isle de France shared many of the defining characteristics of Saint-Domingue (colonial Haiti), Martinique, or even Louisiana (technically under Spanish rule since 1763). For example, the Indian Ocean colonies, like their counterparts in the greater Caribbean, featured majority-slave populations and an elite of free persons divided nominally into white and nonwhite categories. As in the Antilles, these islands’ populations were officially divided into three categories: white, black (i.e. enslaved) and libres (free nonwhites). But such labels can be deceptive. Race generally followed different logics in the Indian Ocean than in the Atlantic world. Generally, these categories masked a much greater ethnic diversity than an “Atlantic” reading of terms would suggest. For example, many South Asians were included within the category “black,” which functioned as a synonym to “slave,” and a large portion of those understood to be “white” had non-European ancestry and might be considered to be “of color” in other areas of France’s empire (more on that below).

The imbalanced ratio between free people and the enslaved was a source of constant anxiety for elites in the Mascarenes, just as it was for those in the West Indies. Individuals based in or associated with the Indian Ocean colonies played prominent roles in debates over the fate of slavery around the Revolutionary era. Some of the loudest voices criticizing colonial slavery and the slave trade had first-hand experience in the Mascarenes, including, notably, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Evariste de Parny. It was the impassioned speech of Monneron, who represented Isle de France before the National Assembly in Paris, that prompted that body to declare freeborn men of color eligible for political rights in the colonies in May 1791.

On the other hand, it was conservative voices from the Indian Ocean colonies in Paris (including the self-styled jacobin Benoît Gouly, deputy from Isle de France, denounced on the floor of the legislature by Jean-Baptiste Belley for being a slaveholder) who ultimately delayed the application of the abolition decree east of the Cape of Good Hope. Colonists in the Mascarenes also blocked the application of the “Decree of 16 Pluviôse” outright, keeping nearly 100,000 men, women, and children in illegal bondage for the entirety of the French Revolutionary era.5 Indeed, the islands went into lockdown after news arrived of the February 1794 decree, quarantining all news and personnel arriving from the Atlantic world. However, as in the Antilles, such surveillance measures proved ineffective at preventing news of emancipation and equality from reaching subaltern ears in the Indian Ocean colonies.

In the Mascarenes, reaction to the abolition decree of 1794 was swift. Both islands’ colonial assemblies, dominated by white men, declared the decree “inadmissible” in the colony in 1795. Six years later its planter elites issued another statement to the metropole: “The Assembly declares, on behalf of the Colony, that it will never consent to the application of the Decree of 16 Pluviose Year II, whatever forms it takes or whatever modifications to it may be proposed…It declares, moreover, that it will never break the ties, which have remained inviolable, that attach the Colonie to France.” 6 In virtually the same breath, the ruling elite on Réunion pledged disobedience to the metropole as well as political loyalty. It was clearly meant to reassure Paris that it would not seek aid from Britain, as had the planters of the Caribbean, nor independence, as had done the United States. Nevertheless, the Mascarenes would not budge on the question of slavery. The islands’ leaders developed an increasingly alarmist rhetoric, drawing on gory imagery from Saint-Domingue, to advance that stance. They were ultimately successful in securing the maintainance of slavery and, somewhat surprisingly, won the approbation of more conservative authorities in France and beyond for their stubborn noncompliance.

In the Mascarenes, reaction to the abolition decree of 1794 was swift. Both islands’ colonial assemblies, composed exclusively of property-owning white men, declared the decree “inadmissible” in the colony in 1795 but continued to affirm that they would “never break the ties, which have remained inviolable, that attach the Colony to France.” 7 The ruling elite on Réunion pledged disobedience to the metropole as well as political loyalty. In other words, while they would not budge on the question of slavery, they would not seek aid from Britain, as had the planters of the Caribbean, nor independence, as had the United States. To justify their disobedience, the islands’ leaders developed an increasingly alarmist rhetoric, drawing on gory imagery from Saint-Domingue, to advance that stance. They were ultimately successful in securing the maintenance of slavery and, somewhat surprisingly, won the approbation of more conservative authorities for their stubborn noncompliance.

After lengthy debate, the executive branch of the French Directory government (the Council of Five Hundred), did eventually send an expedition to apply the abolition of slavery in the Mascarenes. The law it passed on 24-25 January 1796 empowered two agents, appointed for a term of two years and given wide powers, to implement the Constitution of Year III (which upheld abolition) in the Mascarenes. Commissioners Baco and Burnel would be supported by a squadron carrying 700 soldiers and 1,000 sailors under the command of Rear Admiral Sercey who had personally overseen the evacuation of thousands of refugees from Saint-Domingue during the sack of Cap Français in 1793.

However, within days of the commissioners’ arrival in the Mascarenes’ administrative capital, Port-Louis, a riot broke out that culminated in the ouster of the commissioners from the island. Members of the Colonial Assembly of Isle de France bought time with sham negotiations while secretly calling in men from outlying plantations. The troops were ordered locked in their barracks while a crowd stormed the Governor’s mansion and dragged the startled Baco and Burnel out of their beds, through the city streets, and onto a ship bound for the Philippines. A sympathetic witness recalled the events thus: “Everyone became firmly and courageously resolved to die, arms in hand, to ward off the peril [they faced] rather than expose themselves to the same torments as the victims of Saint-Domingue.”8 It would later emerge that their commanders (including Sercey) had been complicit with the Colonial Assembly in encouraging the rioters.9 Réunionnais historian Claude Wanquet makes the provocative but compelling argument that anxieties over inadvertently effecting a repeat of the events of Cap François in 1793 may have even prevented Baco and Burnel from acting more forcefully against the conspiracy.10 Their own report suggests wariness (perhaps shared by members of the Directory as well) over pushing the issue of abolition too forcefully: “[Your commissioners] had before their eyes the lessons [of the recent past] to guide them. The ruins of Saint-Domingue…made it imperative to exercise moderation.”11 So pervasive was the specter of Saint-Domingue in all parties’ political rhetoric during the Revolutionary era and beyond, that Wanquet coined a term, “the Dominguan Syndrome,” to explain its dominance.12 In France, reactions to Mascarene leaders’ overt defiance of metropolitan authority were mixed. Some pro-slavery figures, while bemoaning the “loss” of Saint-Domingue, would later credit the sound “policing measures” of the Mascarene Islands’ leaders for “saving” the Indian Ocean colonies for France.13 A March 1802 proclamation to the colonists of Mauritius and Réunion, sent by Napoleon’s minister for the colonies, announced the maintenance of slavery on the islands and praised the “genius” of their leaders for not enforcing French laws abolishing slavery.14

Apologists of the colonies’ leadership pointed to the islands’ relative stability and increasing economic importance (see map, below). For a time, it seemed that the Mascarenes’ trade connections with the outside world (especially with U.S. merchants) would continue to expand; since 1787, French policy had become increasingly favorable to free enterprise in the region. However, the British Navy’s capture of the Mascarenes during the Napoleonic Wars all but ended France’s burgeoning commercial role in the Indian Ocean world and paved the way for Great Britain to become the dominant European power “east of the Cape of Good Hope.” Réunion was returned to France in 1814, but Mauritius would remain a British colony until its independence in 1968.

Slavery and Ethnicity in the French Indian Ocean World

Les magasins de la Compagnie à Pondichéry [The warehouses of the East India Company, Pondicherry], 18th c. Image Source: Musée de la Compagnie des Indes, Lorient, France.
Warehouses of the East India Company, Pondicherry, 18th century. Musée de la Compagnie des Indes, Lorient, France.



Although scholarship on European slave trading has privileged its Atlantic over its Indian Ocean theater, between 1600 and 1860, European slave ships transported half a million captives from the Indian Ocean into the Atlantic and another half-million to points within the Indian Ocean itself. France’s Indian Ocean commerce in particular was fully entangled with its Atlantic slave trade. Textiles from South Asia and cowries from the Maldives, deposited by French ships at the port of Lorient were exchanged for slaves in Africa’s Atlantic ports. Moreover, as much as one-fifth of all French slaving operations occurred within the Indian Ocean itself, largely to satisfy the expanding demand for labor in the Mascarenes. Some of the first slaves sent to the French Indian Ocean islands (the Mascarenes) were South Asian in origin, and throughout most of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Indians represented some 10% of the enslaved populations of the islands. Many were domestic servants, and most were women or children. Often, they had been kidnapped or sold into debt peonage by destitute family members, especially during the frequent famines that struck the countryside around France’s comptoirs (coastal trading posts) in India. Chief among these was Pondicherry, in the Tamil-speaking southeastern coastal region of India. Access to the enclave had been granted to France by a vassal of the Mughal Empire in 1670 and by the eighteenth century had become a booming textiles manufacturing center, where, by 1740, up to 120,000 Tamil artisans labored for the French, weaving and dying valuable cloth for resale back in Europe, throughout the Indian Ocean world, and along the coasts of Africa, where it was purchased by local elites. Pondichéry and the other comptoirs remained part of France until 1962, when they were officially absorbed by India as the state of Puducherry.15

France’s Highest Court Rules on the Status of an Indian Slave16

In 1759, the Parlement of Paris, the most important and influential of the provincial appellate courts of Old Regime France, ruled on the status of a slave named Francisque, who had come from Pondichéry, the capital of France’s holdings in India. It was the first and last time the Parlement would rule on the status of slaves in France. The Parlement heard the case on appeal, after the lower Admiralty Court had ruled in favor of Francisque, ordering his master, Mr. Brignon, to pay him 800 livres for eight years’ back wages, plus 200 livres in interest and damages for his incarceration during the trial. The following document is Francisque’s lawyers’ argument from that appeal and is typical of the kinds of pamphlets lawyers often distributed to the population of Paris with the intention of swaying popular opinion in their favor. Unlike all other publications in France, such pamphlets were not subject to royal censorship.

Lawyers’ Argument for Francisque, of the Nation of India, Novice in the Roman Catholic Church, Defendant, against Sir Allain François Ignace Brignon, Calling Himself “Esquire,” Appellant, Paris, France, 1759

Can an Indian, a native of Pondichéry under French rule, who has been subjected to the rigors of slavery from the age of eight years and since then enlightened to the Christian truths and devoted to their practice, can he, after ten years of residence in France, justifiably claim to have acquired the freedom that this monarchy offers? Can he legitimately believe himself to be freed from the yoke of servitude against a nomadic Frenchman who, without any intention of returning to the Indies, has for the same eight years lived in Paris? This is the interesting question that has pitted misery against opulence: a question that has already been decided in favor of the slaves of America, for whom our sovereigns have pronounced laws. But it is a relatively new question with regard to Indians because, born free, nowhere in the archives of justice can be found any individual guidance regarding their emancipation in this kingdom.

France, this land where the privileges of humanity have for their fundamental principle the laws of nature, where the purest sentiment is the soul of the legislation, France is the homeland of Sir Brignon. He was born in the city of Saint Malo in northwestern France. Little favored by fortune, he felt a commendable desire: to cross the seas. He was drawn to distant countries to find treasures that he had not discovered at his own hearth. By his own industry he made up for what he lacked in inheritance. If only his useful talents—which can only be honored—had remained untouched by the pride and arrogance of upstarts! Then he would not have to fight the natural and wise laws of his country today.

Around the year 1747 or 1748, Sir Brignon was in Pondichéry in the East Indies and already preparing to return to France when he came up with an extravagant plan to introduce slavery to this free nation. Drunk with the pleasure of astonishing his compatriots’ eyes with the riches he had acquired in his travels, he bought two young black Indians for the sum of five rupees each. Their first assignment was as decoration of a procession during his voyage to the too-celebrated capital of Portugal. Then, as he could extract no more useful service from them because they were so young, he sent them to his mother in Saint Malo. She carefully had them instructed in the Catholic faith and they were baptized.

After two or three years, Sir Brignon returned to his homeland loaded with rather considerable goods to establish himself and live honorably. His ambition apparently satisfied (or at least not permitting him to undertake any further long-distance journeys), he came to establish himself in the capital, in the center of luxurious opulence. . . . He bought an elevated and dominating plot [in Paris]. There he built a kind of castle, laid out formal gardens, and planted groves. In a word, nothing was spared to make a sumptuous residence.

From 1750, when Sir Brignon established himself in this city, until 1757, he had in his service the two Indians. . . . He claims that he always planned to send them back to the French colonies and, since their arrival in Saint Malo, he annually registered them with the Admiralty Clerk as the Code Noir requires of American merchants who bring slaves to France with the intention of returning them to the colonies. . . . As will be shown, these registrations are insufficient, irregular, and of no effect by themselves.

. . . At last, reason began to kindle within [the Indians]; the spark of natural liberty, the love of which is born in all men, soon made itself felt. Soon they sought to achieve the condition of their neighboring domestic servants. The condition of our valets appeared to them fortunate, compared to their own. They looked for other masters, masters that they could leave if they were not treated well.

It is well known that Indian Blacks, quite unlike the Negroes of Africa, are usually good domestics. Consequently, these two young men found new positions immediately. Two months passed since Francisque entered the service of Sir Mersent—who was completely satisfied with him—when he was suddenly abducted and sent to the Bicêtre prison by means of a King’s Order, which Sir Brignon obtained under false pretenses.

On 4 February 1758, Mr. Collet, the king’s attorney general (who donated his efforts without cost to this unfortunate as well as to his comrade André) presented a petition on behalf of these two Indians to the Admiralty Court. . . .

While waiting for the Admiralty Court to rule on the case, André disappeared, never to be heard from again. On June 16, 1758, the Admiralty Court ruled in Francisque’s favor.

Two reflections are enough to destroy the arguments of Sir Brignon. (1) The laws comprising the Code Noir have nothing to do with Indians, a free people. They were only published for America and not the other countries where the trade of Negro slaves is tolerated. (2) Even supposing Francisque were American or African, his slavery ceased the moment that he entered France because Sir Brignon failed to fulfill the formalities of the laws of 1716 and 1738.

FIRST ARGUMENT

The Indians are a free people. The yoke of slavery was never imposed upon them. Sir Brignon alludes to this fact in declaring that he bought Francisque from the child’s mother. If this mother had not been free, she could not have sold her own son.

Indians, educated in various—admittedly—idolatrous sects, regulated by laws, submitted to monarchs, rich by the fertility of their lands, perpetuated through an ancient system of kinship, have only needed the European nations for the purpose of cultivating their lands and regulating their cities, as they have done in America.

If, by the color of their skin, the individuals born beside the Indus and the rivers that feed it bear some resemblance to the Negroes of Africa, they at least differ from them in that their noses are not so flat, their lips are not thick and protruding and, instead of the wooly frizzy down that covers the heads of Africans, they have long and beautiful hair, similar to that which decorates European heads.

Such is Francisque: It suffices to see him to be convinced that he was not born on the burning sands or Guinea or Senegal. . . . Disregarding his color, he looks more European than many Europeans, who need only black skin to appear African.

. . . Are there laws that authorize slavery for blacks? Yes, without a doubt there are. Can these laws be applied to Indians serving in countries other than America? Assuredly not.

[The lawyers set forth a history of the introduction of slavery to the Americas, blaming the Spanish for the “cruel extermination” of the Native Americans.]

But the East Indies must be distinguished from these newly populated lands, which are improperly referred to as the “West Indies.” The climates of the East Indies have been well known for many years, always populated and inhabited. Even the city of Pondichéry, Francisque’s homeland, counts more than 120,000 citizens, of whom more than 100,000 are natives. The Indians of these countries know how to value the land, conduct commerce, build and maintain factories. And it has never occurred to any people to establish colonies there. All the nations of Europe nevertheless participate in trade there.

And while it is true that the slave trade was permitted in India, and particularly in Pondichéry, where the establishment of our trading company is situated, as the laws of 1716 and 1738 were only promulgated for the good of commerce with America, it is certain that, in entering in the kingdom, Francisque has acquired freedom that the constitutions of the state assure to all slaves who have the good fortune to be brought here.

SECOND ARGUMENT

Supposing that the laws concerning the slaves of America may be speciously applied to the Indians . . . , it is indisputable that Sir Brignon lost the right that he might have had over Francisque because of his failure to fulfill the requirements of the Code Noir. […]

What do these formalities consist of? [The lawyers quoted “literal terms as they are prescribed by the Edict of October 1716 and by the Declaration of 15 December 1738” specifying what types of permissions slaveowners need to get, and from whom, to bring slaves into France.]. . .it is obvious that, if Sir Brignon has not fulfilled these formalities, it is because, having no intention of returning, possessing no permanent residence in the colonies, inclined to remain in Paris, he has regarded as useless and superfluous all the precautions that would make it possible to bring or send this slave back to his homeland, and in so doing, would at the same time give him his freedom, since India, from which he came, is a free country.

The magistrates of the Parlement of Paris ruled in favor of Francisque’s freedom, but what were the implications of the case were the vast majority of slaves in the French colonies of the Americas and beyond who did not match the specific background and circumstances of Francisque? Was he declared freed on the basis of race, as a native of India rather than Africa? As French judges never publicly stated the rationales for their decisions (unlike U.S. Supreme Court justices), we cannot know on what grounds Francisque was ruled free. However, his victory seems to have had an impact on future jurisprudence. Afterward, the number of slaves suing for their freedom in the Paris Admiralty Court increased dramatically, and all of them won their cases. However, in 1777, the French navy minister (who had purview over the colonies) circumvented the Parlement’s objections by instituting new legislation that omitted the word slave: his new “Police des Noirs” controls prohibited the entry of “blacks, mulattoes, and other people of color” into France, regardless of their slave status, substituting race for class. Those already present in the metropole were forced to register with the state, and eleven percent of those who did so hailed from the Indian Ocean colonies: many were slaves and free persons of Indian descent.17

↑ Back to Contents

Ban on Enslavement of South Asians in French India18

As suggested by the 1759 ruling of the Parlement of Paris regarding the status of the young Indian man Francisque, French authorities were not in agreement about whether or not “Indians” (both from the Western and Eastern hemispheres) could legitimately be enslaved. For masters in the French enclaves of India and the southwest Indian Ocean, their status was almost never questioned. Yet here again, we see that old question resurface. Similar to Polverel and Sonthonax in Saint-Domingue, Civil Commissioner Lescallier was dispatched along with several colleagues from the French government to ensure that France’s distant colonies were adhering to the letter and spirit of the laws made in Paris. What is Lescallier’s justification for suppressing the trade in Indian slaves?

[Letter of the Deputy of the 5th Division of the Navy to Citizen Lescallier, Paris, 13 March 1793]19

Paris, 13 March 1793

The Minister [of the Navy, responsible for the colonies] having read the letter you wrote him on the 28th of October last, containing a copy of the printed decree [arrêté] of the Colonial Assembly of Pondicherry putting an end to the illegal trade in Indians sold as slaves, charged me with informing you…[that he has] approved this disposition and that it has been made known to the National Convention [in Paris].

Pondichéry, 15 March 1793

Registration of the proclamation containing the following:

In the name of the Nation, the Law, and of the King.

Seen by Us, Governor of Pondicherry and dependencies,

The decree [arrêté] of the Colonial Assembly from its sessions of October 11, 13, 14 and 15 1792. The Colonial Assembly of the French Establishments in India, after reading the king’s report, given to Messrs. the Civil Commissioners, delegates to the French establishments beyond [east of] the Cape of Good Hope, from February 22, 1792, which was presented by Mr. Lescallier, one of the civil commissioners present, which contains the words of His Majesty[:] “Humanity and Justice demand of the commissioners the most vigilant precautions, to prevent the illegal trade of low caste Indian children, whom are sometimes kidnapped, sometimes purchased from unnatural or greedy parents, and reduced to slavery. The English strictly uphold and enforce [this prohibition] on their side. The French Nation must do so with equal rigor.[”] … Starting this day, it is forbidden for anyone to bring trafficked slaves into Pondicherry until further notice, and those who have recently arrived and are yet still unsold will be re-embarked in three days or led outside of the boundaries of the territory of this city by their owners.

Considering that despite the provisions of this decree, which should prevent citizens from conducting a trade as demeaning as it is contrary to the principles of humanity, it is still continued by some; considering how unfair and cruel it is that greed determines some to turn a free people into a nation of slaves, taking advantage of the calamities that [they] experience to generate a profit which is shameful and unlawful in every respect, [and that] some [conduct the trade] by criminal means[;] considering that nothing does more to destroy one of the most useful branches of commerce in India than the depopulation of the coast of Orixa,20 which causes forced immigration of its inhabitants, and that trade would end up without resources if we did not stop [the slave trade] at the same time in other parts of India; Whereas the transport of these Indians to the Isles of France and Bourbon [the Mascarenes] can be a terrible scourge on these islands given the introduction of smallpox and other epidemic diseases if some of [the slaves transported there] are afflicted[;]…Considering that, from time immemorial, Indians have never been used as slaves in our Western colonies [i.e. those of the Americas] and therefore this trade was never authorized by French Law. Considering, finally, that for the honor and dignity of the nation [of France], [we must] forever outlaw the trade in indigenous people from the French Establishments of India and, wishing to prove to the National Assembly and to the King [its commitment to those principles], The Assembly has issued [a decree with the] following provisions:

Article 1: Beginning the first day of November, it is forbidden for all Frenchman, foreigners, or indigenous people, to buy, bring to be sold, sell, remove, or export any person, of either sex, of any Asian nation or Indian caste, within the French Establishments of India[.]…The provisions of the present article do not apply to slaves acquired before the aforementioned date of November 1st, who will remain at the free disposal of their owners. […]

Article 5. This order shall be submitted for the approval of the Governor, with a request that it be transcribed and, wherever necessary, printed, published and enforced according to its full form and content[.] Furthermore, it is decreed that at the behest of the President of the Assembly, this [law] will be translated into the various languages ​​of the country, and that a sufficient number of copies will be distributed to the Natives. …

Pondicherry, 16 October 1792

Also reviewed by myself, the Governor of Pondicherry and its dependencies, an extract from the Register of Proceedings of the Colonial Assembly of Pondicherry, which reads as follows:

March 15, 1793. The legislative colonial Assembly, deliberating on the communication that was made to it by the Municipality about an infraction against the Law of October 16, 1792… decrees that the Governor of the colony will be asked to renew, by proclamation, the implementation of the said Act which forbids the introduction of Indigenous people as slaves into the French establishment of India, as well as their exportation ….

Pondicherry, March 16, 1793. Signed, the Governor of Pondicherry. P. Chermont.

↑ Back to Contents

Two Origin Myths from Madagascar

Madagascar looms large in the history of French imperialism in the Indian Ocean. Three-and-a-half centuries before Queen Ranavalona III’s forces were defeated by the French in 1895, ushering in a new era of direct colonial control, King Louis XIV’s minister, Colbert, had envisioned a permanent French enclave on the island to serve as a port-of-call along the perilous trade route between Europe and Asia. French officials, priests, and settlers (most indentured servants) were dispatched from France beginning in the 1640s, but the colony they built at Fort-Dauphin, on the island’s southeast coast, proved short-lived. Chronic food shortages and rising tensions with local leaders, called Rohandrian, led to the massacre of a large portion of the French colonists and the collapse of the settlement entirely in 1674. During the thirty-year interim, government agents and Catholic missionaries sought to glean information from locals in order to facilitate trade with locals and evangelization. One of these officials, Etienne de Flacourt, published a detailed account of the people, flaura, and fauna of the “Big Island” in the mid-seventeenth century, hoping his book would drum up royal support and popular interest in Madagascar back in France. While his efforts yielded limited success in his lifetime, Flacourt’s writings are still studied today for what they reveal about the cultures of southeastern Madagascar in the seventeenth century. The following legend was relayed to Flacourt by a member of the local Rohandrian elite, which claimed caste superiority over others in the region, based in part on their putative origins. The story was likely adapted from chronicles passed down by those of their ancestors who hailed from “Islamicized” regions of Java and Sumatra (in today’s Indonesia) and began arriving on the east coast of Madagascar by the 12th century.21

God, having created Adam from the earth, sent him into a sleep during which he pulled a woman from his brain, from whom are descended the Rohandrian; another woman from his neck, from whom are descended the Anancandrian; another from the left shoulder, from whom came the Ondzatsi; another from the right side, whence are descended the Great Voadziri, who are black; another from the thigh, from whom came the Ontsoa; and another from the sole of the foot, from whom come the slaves. 22 For the French, tales like these helped crystallize the idea that local Antanosy society was divided into two distinct caste systems, the first, superior, called “Fotsy” (the chromatic term for white) and a second, inferior, called “Mainty” (black). These divisions were much more complicated than the French understood them to be; nevertheless, they reproduced this white/black binary in their writings about Madagascar. Elements of the social structure of Madagascar may even have been carried eastward to the Mascarene Islands, which were settled in part by individuals from the Fort-Dauphin colony in the seventeenth century.

“Borobudur ship” bas-relief sculpture, Java, Indonesia, depicting the kinds of wooden outrigger sailing ships that likely carried early migrants from Southeast Asia to Madagascar. Source: Haddon, A.C. (1920). The Outriggers of Indonesian Canoes. Image Source: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, London.

Missionary sources, too, reveal that French colonists grouped the people they met in the Anosy region broadly as “whites” and “blacks,” not merely because of their own perception of differences in skin color, but because that was how the racial system of the region was explained to them. In a 1650 report to the superior of his Paris-based congregation, one missionary shared a revealing conversation between the priests and one of the local ombiasy, itinerant holy men who acted as both healers and diviners:

The most learned of the ombiasy of this country, fifty years old, was here with the others. We asked him by interpreter how he served God. He told us that Ramofamade, that is to say Muhammad, was their prophet, and Moses ours; that we did well to follow the law of Moses and they, that of Muhammad. He told us the story of our first father Adam, much as it is in Genesis, except for one impertinent circumstance, namely that there was a river of milk, another of honey, a third of wine, and that the subject that angered God was the stench produced after Adam and Eve had purged their stomachs in the garden (avaient purgé leur ventre). He said moreover that among the children of Adam, some were white and great lords, from whom the French and the Whites of this country are descended, the others blacks, and slaves, from whom the Nègres23 drew their origin. We told him about Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God. He replied that their books made mention of a prophet named Raïssa, who had come to Earth directly from God, without being born among men, and that he was greater than Muhammad, who succeeded him. Having told him that it was Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, whom we worship, he replied that God had no son and that he was only one, that as for the rest, they hoped, like us, to go to heaven by keeping their rituals.24

Illustration from Etienne de Flacourt’s Histoire de Madagascar (1656), republished in 1666.
Plate from a 1666 edition of Etienne de Flacourt’s Histoire de Madagascar. Captions label figures with specific ethnic markers and the terms “black” and “white.” Wikimedia Commons.

Etienne de Flacourt’s popular book, Histoire de Madagascar, published in 1656, upon returning from his tenure as governor of the French post on that island, disseminated Europeans’ understanding of southeastern Malagasy society as broadly divided between “white” and “black” populations. Detailed engravings feature married couples from the two populations: “Rohandria or Madagascar chiefs, who are white” and “Lohavohits or Village Master who are black and have frizzy hair.” According to historian Claude Allibert, it is plausible that the copperplate etchings featured in the book were based on drawings Flacourt made himself in Madagascar.25

↑ Back to Contents

Observations of a French Missionary on the Population of Bourbon Island26

Unlike in the Antilles, migration to Bourbon was not significant, and most European immigrants had few qualms marrying into established “white” families with non-European antecedents. Local traditions were accepted and defended by royal administrators: on Bourbon, since the earliest days of settlement in the 1660s, a local convention held that legitimate mixed-race children followed the status of their white fathers, resulting in a “white” population, the majority of which had either Malagasy or South Asian foremothers. The uniqueness of Bourbon’s racial binary is perhaps best encapsulated in an explanation one missionary offered to his superior back in France, in 1764.

[Here] free people (libres) are generally called whites, even though some are black or very dark-skinned (fort bazannés) [and] blacks [refers to all] slaves, even mistiches or métisses, meaning [those] born of a White man and a Negress.

↑ Back to Contents

An Imperial Pronouncement on Race and Status

In 1780, Charles Eugène Gabriel de La Croix de Castries was named minister of the Navy and colonies. His strategy at sea helped France make numerous naval victories during the American War of Independence. Where colonial policy was concerned, he gained a reputation for seeking less restrictive ordinances for free people of color in the colonies of the Caribbean, in part out of gratitude for their service during the war. We see echoes of that posture in the 1786 “Instructions” he drew up on behalf of the Crown for his new administrators in the Mascarenes. With regard to how administrators should understand racial categories among free people in the Mascarenes, Castries emphasized pragmatism and expediency over ideological intractability.27 Castries adapted his section on “population” for the Mascarenes from a passage in a similar set of instructions for administrators in Martinique from 1777. However, where the Martinique version had counseled that “whatever distance they may be from their origin, [freemen of color] [must] always retain the stain of slavery, and are declared incapable of all public charges and functions,” Castries’s 1787 Instructions recommended a less aggressive posture. In keeping with his plans for Saint-Domingue, Castries declared a new “objective” for administrators in the Indian Ocean islands: to “work ceaselessly to weaken prejudice against blacks and people of color.”28 Even though the “Instructions,” which would be published on the islands, lumped that acknowledgement into its section on “people of color,” Castries was explicit in his intentions to recognize as legitimate the traditional claims to whiteness of all Bourbon Island Creoles. Precisely what this clarification was responding to is unclear. What were the racial logics that undergirded these pronouncements? How should we interpret the word “but” in “Malagasy but of freeborn race”? In disparaging free people of sub-Saharan African descent in the Caribbean while elevating those of Malagasy descent in the Mascarenes, did the “Instructions” further entrench the association between African origins and servile status? What do the instructions signal about the priorities of the colonial ministry, generally?

Statement of the King to Serve as Instructions for Sieur Bruny d’Entrecasteaux, Chef de Division [in the Navy], Governor of the Isles of France and Bourbon, & for Sieur Dupuy, Conseiller au Châtelet, Intendant of the said Islands.29

[…] Population […] Regarding the People of Color, there are freemen (libres) and slaves; the freemen are former slaves (affranchis) or their descendants. Prejudice against those who are descended from ex-slaves and who are a great distance from their [slave] origin is not as strong and as rigid in the Isles of France and Bourbon as it is in the occidental islands [of the Caribbean]. Given these circumstances, we leave it to the discretion of Messrs. d’Entrecasteaux and Dupuy to allow (apprécier) any conventions (convenances) that seem purely local. The first inhabitants of Bourbon being European refugees from Madagascar after the massacre that took place [in 1674], and the wives they conducted thither being Malagasy but of freeborn race (de race ingénue30), it does not seem correct to consider their descendants as descendants of freed slaves in the sugar colonies [of the Caribbean]; and it’s a new reason for the Messrs. d’Entrecasteaux and Dupuy to ceaselessly occupy themselves with weakening prejudices against the blacks & the People of Color, all while endeavoring to inspire in the slaves a great respect for those to whom they are subjugated, to maintaining them in discipline, to preventing plots [among them], & avoiding both gatherings (attroupements) and escapes (marronages).

↑ Back to Contents

Crisis on Bourbon Island31

In 1787 and 1788, the Governor-General of the Mascarenes received letters from his agent on Bourbon, Cossigny de Charpentier, that he was having difficulty implementing royal policy regarding the reorganization of the militia on that island. It turned out, Cossigny reported, that “three fourths” of those families locally understood to be “white” on the island had non-European (mostly Malagasy or Indian) ancestors, meaning they would be considered “colored” in the Antilles or even on neighboring Isle de France. Yet the militia regulations were clear that “whites” should be separate from “men of color” in the militias and that the latter would have white men as officers. Several men from white families that claimed exclusively European pedigrees wrote Cossigny to say they would refuse to serve under men they considered to be “of mixed blood (de sang mêlé).” Concerned, the governor-general appealed to his superior, Navy Minister Luzerne, whose brother had helped the United States secure independence from Great Britain and who himself had served as governor of Saint-Domingue, where mounting “color prejudice” against free non-white men had also presented constant policy challenges. The governor-general seems not to have received a response, but the ad hoc decision he took to maintain the local status quo rather than reclassifying some white families as “colored” seems to have quelled the mounting crisis that was rocking Bourbon on the eve of the French Revolution.

My Lord,

I must bring to your attention an object of great importance, and which, it seems to me, must be remedied as soon as possible[.] If not, it is impossible that no disorder would ensue sooner or later that will be difficult to stop. No one, Monseigneur, is better-positioned than you who have just served as governor of the foremost of the Colonies [i.e. Saint-Domingue], to recognize the sensitivity of this matter, and how delicately it must be dealt with. The Isle of Bourbon is almost entirely populated with Crossed Breeds (de Races Croisées). Few families are exempt from the mixture of black blood; there are, however, some people who claim not to have been so sullied, and these people claim, and have [once again] just recently claimed, the privileges associated with the purity of their origins. But as the majority of the habitants32 of the island of Bourbon would be included in the proscription that a literal application of the ordinances [of the King] on the subject would entail [i.e. as people of color], and given that the most distinguished families in the orders of the nobility and the magistracy would also be affected [by such an application], it is beyond doubt that the slightest suspicion in this colony of a plan to revive those ordinances would ignite a civil war[.] This initial spark that Mr. de Cossigny has tried to extinguish may be reignited again and cause a violent fire. I think, Monseigneur, that it is essential to look for ways to prevent the seemingly inevitable explosion. On the one hand, [we must consider] the rights of the Creoles, who have kept themselves free from the nearly universal stain and who, in order to maintain the purity of an unmixed blood[line], have been forced to make sacrifices of fortune which mésalliance [improper or interracial marriage] would have offered them[.] On the other hand, [we must consider] the universality of this mixture, which renders such a distinction infinitely dangerous and fortunately, impossible[.] We cannot delay much longer in remedying this double inconvenience.

Mr. de Cossigny has already told me [that] during the course of his tour [of the militias of the island by parish][,] the same difficulties prevent[ed] the general gathering of the Militias. I attach here the letter in which he reports on this subject as well as my response[.] I also have the honor of sending you an extract of the letter in which [Cossigny] addresses me the petition (mémoire) that was presented to him[.] The measures he has taken will halt the progress of this source of discord for the moment; but I have the honor of reiterating to you my assurance that it is very important to end it altogether through new regulations (de nouvelles ordonnances) particular to this island, and that it is inevitable that [we must] pass erase the past (passer l’éponge sur les tems antérieur).

I am, with Respect, Monseigneur, your most humble and very obedient servant

Entrecasteaux

This map depicts the birthplaces (with modern country borders shown) of the grandparents of adults registered as white on the 1711 census. 72% of Creole (island-born) whites had at least one non-European grandparent (South Asian or Malagasy).

Author’s Map. Cossigny’s estimate that as many as three-quarters of Bourbon Island’s approximately 8,000 whites had non-European ancestors was not an exaggeration. It was an open secret in the Mascarenes that most white creole families from Bourbon could trace their lineage back to a foremother who had migrated from Madagascar or India shortly after the island first began to be settled in the seventeenth century. This map depicts the birthplaces (with modern country borders shown) of the grandparents of adults registered as white on the 1711 census. 72% of Creole (island-born) whites had at least one non-European grandparent (South Asian or Malagasy). (Sources: “Recensement de 1711,” Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, FM DPPC G1/477; Ricquebourg, Lucien Jacques Camille. Dictionnaire généalogique des familles de l’île Bourbon (La Réunion) 1665-1810. 3 vols. Mayenne: Imprimerie de la Manutention, 1983.

↑ Back to Contents

The French Revolution and the Politics of Race

Portrait of Henri Paulin Panon-Desbassayns. 18th century. Musée historique de Villèle. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Portrait of Henri Paulin Panon-Desbassayns. 18th century. Musée historique de Villèle. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Diary of a Bourbon Island Planter in France (1780s and ‘90s)

In the 1780s and early 1790s, Henri Paulin Panon-Debassayns, one of the wealthiest planters on Isle Bourbon (today’s Réunion Island), made two separate trips to France to tend to his business and to visit his sons in school. His regular diary entries present the perspective of an Indian Ocean planter on slave society in the Caribbean and the beginnings of the Haitian Revolution. Note: Desbassayns, like many of his compatriots in the Indian Ocean colonies, uses the term “America” to denote the French Antilles (specifically, Saint-Domingue).

Bordeaux, France, July 8, 178533

Today, the girl [who works in the hotel] asked me if I would change rooms [in order to accommodate] the Americans who were arriving. I consented. I went to see them and get the latest news from Mr. Bellecombe.34 I found a gentleman of about sixty who is the brother-in-law of a lady who has two young daughters, the older very pretty, the younger still a child, and a son who seems educated. The mother is not pretty. All of them welcomed me very warmly, as if we were from the same country. […]

When I got back in [this evening], my American came to chat in my room. Chatting a lot, he invited me to dine with them. I agreed, on the condition that I bring my own dinner. […] We talked a lot about Mr. Bellecombe and Saint-Domingue. I asked them all kinds of questions about these colonies, and he answered all of them. On the subject of plantations, they are harsh with the slaves. This type of person is worse in Saint-Domingue than in Bourbon. He told me that, in very little time, he had lost 150 slaves, whom two of his commandeurs [enslaved overseers] had poisoned.

Desbassayns makes a second trip to France. Paris, 9 July 179035

It is surprising to see the large number of people in the national uniform arriving for the Confederation [celebration] of the 14th of this month. There is the highest degree of enthusiasm in Paris. […] One sees in every district a crowd of people, men and women, coming together and going to the Champs-de-Mars, with their shovels and picks, for the construction they’re doing there. Well-dressed ladies and damsels are going. Indeed everyone, all kinds of people, are going, and working there, more or less. I am delighted to witness all that. The nègres who are in Paris are going there today. Perpetue asked me if she could go. I permitted her to. There was [also] Mr. Varnier’s négresse, and Madame Chulaire’s, who went with her.

Paris, 3 August 1790

[…] I was at the Opera, on the second-floor balcony. Madames Chulaire, Javotte, Marianne La Gironde and my son, Philippe were with me. [The show] was a ballet that represented black slaves, there was a knight of the order of Saint Louis [chevalier de Saint-Louis] there who said: “This must be embarrassing for the slaveowning colonists…” There are not usually so many ballets here; the play did not really amuse me.

That night, the ‘ballet’ witnessed by Panon-Desbassayns was, in fact, an opera: ‘Tarare’ by Antonio Salieri. In 1790, the librettist was none other than the renowned author of the anti-aristocratic satire ‘The Marriage of Figaro,’ Pierre Beaumarchais. He added a couplet to be sung by a character called the ‘Black of Zanguebar’ (i.e., Zanzibar, on the Swahili Coast), which indulged in grotesque caricaturizing of non-European people as well as “orientalist” tropes about despotism used by Enlightenment-era European authors to make thinly veiled social commentary. But it may also have conveyed a political message about the institution of slavery, hotly debated at the time, which French Revolutionaries had allowed to be maintained by their March 1790 decrees permitting special constitutional rules for the colonies:

Hola ! doux esclavage

Pour Congo, noir visage,

Bon blanc, pour nègre il est humain.

Nous, bon nègre, a cœur sur la main.

Nous pour blanc

Sacrifie,

Donner sang,

Donner vie,

Priant grand fétiche Ourbala

Pour bon grand peuple qu’il est là.

Ourbala ! l’y voilà…

(Montrant les spectateurs.)

L’y voilà ! la, la, la, la, la.

Oh! Sweet slavery,

For Congo, black face,

Good white, for Nègre, he is humane.

We good Nègre give the shirt off our back.

We for white man

Sacrifice,

Give blood,

Give life,

Praying to the great idol Ourbala

For the good great people that are here.

Ourbala! There they are…”

(Pointing to the spectators)

There they are! There they are!

Paris, 10 November 1791

If certain papers are to be believed which say they have extracts of letters from Saint-Domingue, the slaves are in a great insurrection. Horrors, Burnings of plantations, houses, and shacks are being committed. The venom of discord has been spread from France by rabid people who would have all property-owners in the colonies eliminated by the slaves.

Paris, 11 November 1791

I visited Mr. P…, a planter from St. Domingue, who has lost everything in the slave revolt of this rich colony. He fears his son might be among those who were murdered. The revolt began in the district where he has his property. How many victims the Friends of the Blacks [Amis des Noirs] have sacrificed; I believe they must be applauding; they have succeeded. I am in a quandary: should I go back to my country sometime between now and March, or should I wait until the end of next year?36 All of the seaports are very distressed by the upsetting events in St. Domingue. There have been irreparable commercial losses. The interior of the kingdom does not yet feel the [effects of those] losses.

Paris, 17 November 1791

Given the circumstances, I would like to send my two sons to join their mother on Isle Bourbon. They will be of great help to her; they cannot depart until next January or March. To what horrible fate was this unfortunate colony [St. Domingue], the most beautiful of all, not delivered? All the colonial merchandise has become more expensive. Sugar is at 40 louis per pound.

Paris, 1 December 1791

It pains me to observe that, in general, everyone who is a property-holding colonist is not liked. In France, they do not sympathize with their fate. However, the narrative that they have presented at the National Assembly, should affect sensitive souls.

Paris, 9 December 1791

In France, [public] opinion is against the colonies; people would like that there are no slaves, which means that all propertied colonists are, in general, not liked by a large portion of the metropole [continental France].

Desbassayns travels to Lorient, in Brittany, the principal French port for commerce with the East Indies, to see off his sons.

Lorient, 3 February 1792

I observe that the inhabitants of Lorient37 are happy about the large sales at high prices of merchandise coming from the Indies, the Isles of Bourbon and France. This attracts numerous merchants.

Lorient, 2 March 1792

The Apollo, a small merchant vessel, which departed Isle de France on 8 October last, has arrived in this port. It brings news that the Isles of France and Bourbon are peaceful.

Desbassayns returns to Paris

Paris, 21 March 1792

I wrote to Isle Bourbon all afternoon. I went to dine with Mr. Dromane. The colony of St. Domingue is in the most distressing position. The colony is seen as lost. What a distressing disaster! I will now be silent on this subject; I am too heartbroken.

↑ Back to Contents

Petitions of the Colony of Bourbon to the National Assembly38

Cossigny and Entrecasteaux’s temporary decision to maintain the status quo—i.e. to continue considering those families recognized locally as “white” as such—held and that no “civil war” erupted. Before the situation could be resolved by the new “particular” regulations d’Entrecasteaux requested from his superiors in the metropole, the French Revolution broke out. On Bourbon Island, as on Isle de France, there were many white planters and merchants who saw an opportunity to take greater control of their economic and financial situations, and so formed colonial assemblies that dispatched petitions to the National Assembly in Paris. As in Saint-Domingue, in this initial chapter of the Revolutionary era, neither assembly included men from the populations of “free people of color.” The elections that led to the formation of this assembly on Bourbon, however, seems to have ushered in enough members who identified the importance of resolving the still-unresolved issue of who qualified as white and those as a full French citizen. Their petition includes a curious article dealing with race.

The Colonial Assembly of Bourbon Island dares to offer to the august representatives of the French nation our homage and gratitude and respectful devotion that fills all the Frenchmen established in this Colony. […] We ask the National Assembly to look favorably on these petitions that we are about to put before it […]

Article 5. The colonial assembly did not think it necessary to allow the free or freed blacks to attend as active citizens in the primary assemblies. It has only [granted them the same status as] widowed women or those separated from their husbands…who, though possessing (sometimes considerable) property and paying the commune tax, cannot, according to the Decrees of the National Assembly adopted in this colony, attend the assemblies, nor be represented there. But the assembly hastened to put an end to the vexations [the free or freed blacks] experienced under the despotism of the former government, and assured them of all the rights that civil liberty gives them, thus making no difference between whites and free blacks, except in what follows. [The Assembly] decided that all the free blacks would be summoned to each parish by the Mayor and would take an oath swearing obedience to the law and respect towards whites; that [in terms of militia service]…they would [be allowed] to appoint from among them only subaltern officers and would be obliged to chose only whites as their officers. As far as their political status is concerned, the Colonial Assembly awaits the decision of the National Assembly, and will undoubtedly conform to whatever this august senate pronounces for the other Colonies and particularly for Isle of France, on which the Isle of Bourbon depends for so many needs. The [Colonial] Assembly [of Bourbon] will only observe that a few whites in this colony who married manumitted négresses have always enjoyed, along with their posterity, all the rights enjoyed by other citizens. We ask the National Assembly to confirm this provision, which, in accordance with the principles of equality which it professes, must be adopted, as there is no strong reason against it[.] And if the National Assembly decides otherwise for the other colonies, according to their [i.e. the other colonies’] wishes, we expressly request for the Isle of Bourbon a special exception.

↑ Back to Contents

Speech of Pierre Antoine Monneron to the National Assembly, Paris, May 13, 179139

Engraving: “The Three Brothers Monneron, députés to the National Assembly.” From left to right: Charles-Claude-Ange, 1735-1799, representing the sénéchaussée of Annonay, in southeastern France; Jean Louis, 1742-1805, representing the East Indies; Pierre-Antoine, 1747-1801, representing the colony of Isle de France (Mauritius). Published in Paris by Dejabin between 1789 and 1791. Image Source: Notice bibliographique de la Bnf.

Engraving of the Three Brothers Monneron, députés to the National Assembly. From left to right: Charles-Claude-Ange, Jean Louis, and Pierre-Antoine. Published in Paris between 1789 and 1791.
Engraving of the Three Brothers Monneron, députés to the National Assembly. Published in Paris between 1789 and 1791. Image Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF).

Mr. MONNERON: Article One of the drafted law of the committee decrees, as a constitutional article, that the legislature can make no law for the colonies on the status of persons unless upon the specific and formal request of the colonial assemblies. I would adopt this article if it were not so vaguely worded.

My constituents, who are colonists, were never foolish enough to reserve for themselves the [roles of both] judge and jury in ruling on that which has been decided in fact by nature, and which the honor of the National Assembly is invested in maintaining. You must know my constituents and their wishes. […] Allow me to trace briefly the feelings of the colonists whom I represent. They told me: solemnly proclaim the colony’s full acceptance of the new Constitution; say that it has sworn to die rather than abandon the principles of the regeneration of the Empire. Repeat this oath on our behalf. Express our gratitude, as Frenchmen and colonists. Tell the mother country that the immense distance that separates us only adds to our deep affection for it; we will never have any interests other than those that bind us to a mother so tender. My constituents are Frenchmen whom the hope of a better life brought 4,000 leagues away from their fatherland; they are placed at the same distance from the equator as the island of Saint Domingue; they own 50,000 slaves; their neighbors, the inhabitants of the island of Bourbon, who do not yet have their representative here, possess over 70,000. Isle de France is populated by freedmen, mulattos and especially a large number of people of color, some of whom never bore chains and others who count free ancestors back more a century. This group cultivates indigo, produces sugar, harvests cotton and coffee; simply put, this colony presents many similarities with those of French America [i.e. the Antilles and French Guiana]. It seems that my constituents had anticipated the discussion that occupies you at the moment, when they recommended that I support the interests of the freeborn blacks. They have done justice to their zeal and good conduct ever since the Revolution. The Colonial Assembly [of Isle de France] has delivered them from the tyranny that burdened them; but it did not believe itself fully authorized to legislate definitively on the civil status of this class of citizens [which] subjected itself resignedly to awaiting the decision of the Metropole and has even abstained from voting in the municipal elections. I am charged specifically with exhibiting to you the proofs of their moderation, to make known all the motives that might interest them and to implore you on their behalf to legislate on their fate in the most favorable manner.

After such a solemn declaration, could I really be permitted to keep silent about the drafted decree presented to you by the four committees, and whose result is a solemn contradiction of your most beneficial principles and, consequently, a subversion of your Constitution? […]

By what fatality do we wish that France alone makes an exception for people of color, while the English, Spanish, and Portuguese, who have far more extensive and more populated colonies than ours, have never had the idea of depriving this class’s rights as active citizens. (Murmurs). In 1775, a mulatto was made mayor in Senegal, when [that colony] belonged to the English. Among the Portuguese, black (nègre) bishops and priests celebrate Mass alongside European priests; whites and blacks fill the posts of municipal officers without any distinction but their virtues (Applause; Murmurs). Has anyone ever heard of any negative results [of such policy], such as those the deputies from our colonies wish to depict? We will no longer have colonies, they cry incessantly, if you promulgate the rights of man there. Well! Is the example of our neighbors not enough to destroy that vain terror? What! Are people of color not conscious of the obligations which society imposes on them? Don’t they have everything to gain from being good citizens and supporting your rights, which will be theirs? If they showed you one-and-a-half centuries of patience and submission, imagine what they will become, once this equality has been achieved; nature imperiously commands [this equality], and it will accord it despite all the clamors of the enemies of liberty.

But allow me to offer to the National Assembly a great example of justice, worthy of the creator, as Mr. de Tracy has said. Remember that those conquerors of the New World who eliminated millions of individuals, the real owners of the land, whose image in the people of color who inhabit the same climate [certain parties] would like to deface; make no doubt about it, there are still among them some of the true descendants of the first inhabitants of the Antilles, and your […] committees just proposed that you continue the crimes that caused an entire generation to disappear in these islands!

Mr. DE LA GALISSONNIÈRE: Not a single one exists in Saint-Domingue.

Mr. MONNERON: I have been reproached that what I just said is inaccurate. I have said that all the blood of that generation had disappeared from these islands; but I added that the blood of that generation still flows in the veins of the free people of color. (Murmurs from the right).

No, this senseless and barbaric project will find no place in your Code [of laws]: on the contrary, you shall pour onto these colonies the precious fruits of liberty which the French people have just conquered, you will imitate these kings of Spain who, in order to contain the destructive spirit of the governors of the West Indies, made a law which ensures for the natives of America the rights of citizens and which says that their freedom can never be threatened; and to assure them these unalienable rights, by a passion so different from avarice and greed, these kings established the best task in humanity, that of protectors of Indians.

Pride blinds men so much that they ignore their own interest and safety. Indeed, it would be easy to fix the time when people of color will be numerous enough to tell Europeans, and this is the most favorable situation: “Go back to your country, if you persist in blocking the rights of man, you passers-through are on our soil […] while we multiply in this climate according to the commandments of the creator, in a climate which Providence created for us, and with such progress that eventually you will necessarily be in our dependence; if you wish to sustain a privilege which contrasts with the soundest rules of morality and eternal justice.”

There is still time to prevent these misfortunes and the National Assembly would rather not scandalize the world by admitting a project which, if it were possible to enforce, would forever put in chains 100,000 citizens who were born free and should enjoy all the benefits of society. Thus the public interest, especially that of the colonists, obliges me to conclude by imploring the National Assembly to decide the matter of the proposed decree presented by the five united committees [and] to adopt that of M. Barrère, with this amendment: “without changing anything on the status of freedmen [ex-slaves].”

(The Assembly decrees the printing of Mr. Monneron’s speech)

↑ Back to Contents

Opposing Abolition: Conservative Reactions

In the Mascarenes, reaction to the abolition decree of 1794 was swift. Both islands’ colonial assemblies, composed exclusively of property-owning white men, declared the decree “inadmissible” in the colony in 1795 but continued to affirm that they would “never break the ties, which have remained inviolable, that attach the Colony to France.”40 In other words, while they would not budge on the question of slavery, they would also not seek aid from Britain, as had some planters in the Caribbean, nor independence, as had the United States.

This did not sit well in Paris, even with its more conservative legislative majority. After lengthy debate, the executive branch of the French Directory government (the Council of Five Hundred), did eventually send an expedition to apply the abolition of slavery in the Mascarenes. The law it passed on 24-25 January 1796 empowered two agents, appointed for a term of two years and given wide powers, to implement the Constitution of Year III (which upheld abolition) in the Indian Ocean colonies. The commissioners, Baco and Burnel, were accompanied by a squadron carrying 700 soldiers and 1,000 sailors under the command of Rear Admiral Sercey who had personally overseen the evacuation of thousands of refugees from Saint-Domingue during the burning of Cap Français in 1793.41 All parties involved, it seems, wanted to avoid a repeat of those events.

However, within days of the commissioners’ arrival in Port Louis, Mauritius, a riot broke out (fomented, it was later revealed, by members of the Colonial Assembly) that culminated in the ouster of the commissioners from the island. Members of the Colonial Assembly of Isle de France bought time with sham negotiations while secretly calling in men from outlying plantations. The troops were ordered locked in their barracks while a crowd stormed the Governor’s mansion and dragged the startled commissioners out of their beds, through the city streets, and onto a ship bound for the Philippines. It would later emerge that their commanders (including Sercey) had been complicit with the Colonial Assembly in encouraging the rioters.42 Réunionnais historian Claude Wanquet makes the provocative but compelling argument that anxieties about avoiding a repeat of the 1793 events in Cap François may have even prevented Baco and Burnel from acting more forcefully against the conspiracy. 43

The authorities on Réunion reacted immediately, tasking the Committee of Public Safety with coordinating with their counterpart on Mauritius about how best to rebuff another expedition from Paris. They began to grow concerned that a second attempt by Paris might start on their island rather than Mauritius. Réunion’s Colonial Assembly granted their Committee exceptional policing powers and decision-making autonomy; they also took the drastic step of closing all points-of-entry outside the heavily patrolled harbor of the capital, Saint-Denis–even to traffic from Isle de France44 But Paris would not relaunch the 1796 mission, thus ensuring the continued enslavement of 94,000 men, women, and children across the Indian Ocean colonies whom the Decree of 1794 and Constitution of 1795 had declared free.45

Legislative Decision about the 1796 Baco and Burnel Expedition, 24 January 179646

COUNCIL OF FIVE-HUNDRED.

Camus presiding

SESSION OF 4 PLUVIOSE [year 4]

[i.e. 24 January 1796][…]

A secretary reads a message from the executive directory, conceived in these terms:

Citizen legislators, the executive directory would like to draw your attention to our eastern and western colonies. The prosperity of the republic is too much bound up with that of the French colonies, and with their fidelity to the social pact, for these precious countries not to have become the object of the most urgent solicitations of the executive directory, from the beginnings of its establishment. The treacherous maneuvers of the enemies of the revolution had almost entirely driven our Western colonies into the hands of the English government, our cruelest enemy. The general liberty of the blacks has changed the face of things and already, in the West Indies, those men whose natural rights you have restored, have won back their homes, and brought terror to those of our most implacable enemies.

Considerable forces have increased the number of these enemies; but their united efforts will still be thwarted by the genius of liberty, and by the magnanimous enthusiasm of its new children. In the eastern colonies [i.e. the French colonies in the Indian Ocean], the Republicans’ impressive attitude has so far persuaded the English that any attempt against them would be unsuccessful; and yet these colonists had only a brave, but small, militia with which to oppose them. If, proud of a few easy victories and some fresh reinforcements, the English now propose to invade everywhere in India, freedom and gratitude will once more add to our forces those of those blacks to whom your beneficence have given a [new] fatherland [i.e. France], new brothers and new rights to defend.

Our laws become theirs and will find in them avengers and supporters against anyone who prefers personal interests over those of the republic! Let anyone try, in these distant climates, to rise up against it. Among the duties imposed on the directory for the regeneration of the western colonies and the security of the eastern colonies, the first, no doubt, is to allow the inhabitants of these countries to enjoy the inestimable advantages of the constitution. It is a benefit in which they share, and which, in sharing it, will double their courage and will connect them more and more with our glory.

No less important a duty for the directory is to bring the blacks who had abandoned agriculture to escape oppression back to it. It is necessary that after having driven out the external enemy and reduced the interior enemy, they find in the middle of their bucolic labors a happiness which they never knew. It is then that they will revive commerce and enrich their new country with their virtues and productions.

But, would you believe it, citizen lawmakers? These new colonists, raised by you to the dignity of free men, these Frenchmen, deceived by traitors, still doubt that France sincerely wishes to maintain the enjoyment of their rights.

How pressing it is to reassure these simple men, who can be so easily misled. But the leaders who inspire trust in them must also remind them of what they owe to the republican faith and remind them of their duties.

They need a real education: you will give it to them, and you will thus bring about the greatest benefits of liberty.

It is necessary that, in the two Indies [i.e. the Caribbean and Indian Ocean colonies], these men, so long victims of prejudice and cupidity, learn all that they owe to France, and that they transmit their devotion and their gratitude to their children.

It is necessary that these new republicans, engaged in agriculture, and interested in its products, will, at the first incursion of the enemy, rally of their own accord along with the white settlers, their brothers, under the banner of freedom, to defend their common interests, identified henceforth with those of the republic.

You will feel, citizen legislators, the pressing and urgent necessity of sending these men a superior authority, strong in patriotism, courage, and reason; an authority entrusted to agents who, while inspiring safety, may at the same time command obedience, and who are among the blacks, the guarantors of the good intentions of the French, and of the eternal extent of your beneficent laws[.] […]

But…time is pressing. The English are blockading our colonies and trying to seduce them. The inner enemy as well, is perhaps only waiting for the presence [of the English] to commit the greatest of crimes.

Liberty saved France; it alone can still save our colonies by the enthusiasm and the miracles it produces.

Let us hasten to stifle the last hope of those fierce enemies of liberty and equality, who, banished from French territory, and covering themselves with all sorts of disguises to avoid the rigor of our laws, have not given up their plan to ruin our colonies, or to plunge them back into servitude…Our colonies, soon to be recreated, will double their productivity under the regime of liberty, and their precious harvests will no longer arrive in France stained with the blood of a million slaves.

The constitution recommends to the directory the publicization of these indispensable measures, by imposing the obligation to submit them to your deliberations; but your prudence and your wise politicians can save the risks of this publicity, by preventing through an emergency decree the schemes of our enemies.

Consider, citizen legislators, that they are watching all our movements, and that the loss of a single day can annihilate all the bold plans of the government.

The Directory, above all, implores you to take a look at the superiority of the English forces, over which we can only triumph by combining boldness and celerity with prudence.

On these grounds, and in accordance with Article 156 of Title G of the Constitution, the Executive Directory asks the Legislative Body to authorize it to send to our colonies of the two Indies eleven agents, five to Saint-Domingue, three to the islands of Guadeloupe and Saint Lucia, one to Cayenne [French Guiana], and two for to the islands of Isle de France and Réunion.

[The Directory] asks, in accordance with the same article of the constitution, that the functions of these agents be exercised for one and a half years in the eastern colonies.

The directory also thinks that you must ask for permission to provide a uniform (une costume) for these agents.

You will no doubt find that an external character for the representatives of the French government is especially indispensable in these countries.

Signed Rewbell, President.

By the Executive Directory:

Signed Lagakde, Secretary General.

Dufay: In support of the Executive Directory’s message, there is no need to remind the council of a subject generally recognized to be of public importance.

It will suffice for me to observe that France draws annually from abroad, as products of first necessity, hemp, linen, sailcloths, wool, pitch, tars, masts, timber for our ships, iron, copper, even wheat, and it was our colonial productions which ordinarily paid for these imports.

I will add that our colonies consume the excess of the commodities of the metropole and its factories, our silks, our commodities, &c., all our industrial products, and that the metropole receives in exchange all the commodities of the colonies, and by this means facilitates in its ports an abundant market where all Europe, and even all the other countries of the world, come to trade constantly; which produces immense benefits for the mother-country, and promises her in the balance of Europe a preponderance which up to this day no nation has been able to surpass or even equal.

It is very important to restore to our colonies their former prosperity; their recovery, which it appears the Executive Directory wishes to effect, will have the greatest influence on public credit and the restoration of our finances; and it will be a means of bringing back, in a very short time, the other tributary nations of the commerce of France.

There is no large-scale commerce without the colonies; they are the soul of commerce; they are the nursery of our sailors. If the constitution had not wisely united them to the republic in an indissoluble way, by Article 4 of Title 5; if even they neglected today to attach them strongly to it, the commerce of France would be annihilated, money would flee from all sides and have no channel to enter; the needs alone would remain, the navy would be annihilated, our neighbors would be enriched by our losses and our money, and become even stronger by our weakness.

There’s no time to lose. I ask that the council declare the urgency, and approve the authorization requested by the executive directory.

Lecomte: It would be insulting to the council to insist for a longer time on the inestimable advantages which the prosperity of a colony affords the metropole; but what is necessary to find out is the urgency of the adoption of the measure proposed by the executive directory. I ask that it be authorized to send to the colonies such a number of agents as it deems necessary.

Some members call for… the establishment of a commission. This proposition is very strongly rejected. Let’s put it to a vote! to an immediate vote! A crowd of members exclaims. Urgency is declared, and the principle of the proposition is adopted.

Lecomte: In order that our enemies may not be instructed in time for this measure, I ask that the resolution be forthwith sent to the Council of Ancients. The proposal is adopted. Lecomte: There is still a part of the message on which it remains to pronounce. The directory demands that its agents in the colonies be clothed in a costume which makes them recognizable. Article 369 of the Constitution states formally that no one may exercise public office if he is clothed without the dress prescribed by law.

This article does not allow the Directory to determine the costume of its agents; the legislative body alone can rule on this object. I ask that a commission of three members be appointed at once, and that its members present us forthwith a draft resolution containing the authorization requested by the directory, and which determines the costume which its agents must wear in the colonies.

The proposal was adopted, and a nominated commission withdrew immediately to deal with this object.

↑ Back to Contents

A Panicked Dispatch From Réunion Island47

Despite his aristocratic background, the Marquis Pierre de Sercey continued to serve in the French Navy during the Revolution. He had commanded a division in Saint-Domingue during the upheavals of June 1793 when the war that broke out between the Civil Commissioners and the governor culminated in the sack of Cap Français and a refugee exodus. Sercey had personally overseen part of that evacuation, which led thousands of Saint-Domingue colonists to flee to the United States. Historian Claude Wanquet suggests that knowledge of that experience—on all sides—may have influenced Sercey’s and others’ course of action (or inaction) during his next mission, to carry munitions, reinforcements, and the Director’s civil commissioners, to Isle de France. Apparently, as the following dispatch makes clear, some knew about Sercey’s prior experience, but were unclear about which side he had found himself on in Saint-Domingue.

[Letter Addressed to] Citizen Brunac [or Bruna], member of the Colonial Assembly of Réunion Island, Canton of Saint André, Isle of Réunion

[stamped and marked] very urgent letter

Northeast Canton [i.e. Port Louis, Isle de France], 15 Messidor Year IV [3 July 1796]

Citizen,

Citizens Laroche and Dumesgnil came to dine at my home today [and] Citizen Laroche told me that his father had told him that the Commander of the Station [?] of the Navy, Citizen Sercé [sic. Sercey], and a count whose name he does not remember, were at the outbreak of the troubles in St Domaingue [sic], commander of a division of four frigates, that if it was not him, then it was someone else with his nae, that he had facilitated that which we all fear.

You are on site [in Isle de France], which is why I am alerting you…you could make Citizen Laroche senior speak and perhaps, through that, you can save the two colonies of the misfortunes that threaten it; it is the duty of all honest men to say anything they hear, who could by their silence cause the total ruin [of the colonies], in your wisdom, you will know what to do[.] It is my happiness to ensure, as much as I am able, the tranquility of our wives and children. That is the objective that leads me to give you this information.

Your devoted concitizen,

Felipaud

P.S. Citizen Laroche, Sr. was at the outbreak of the Troubles of St Domaingue (sic)[.] He is staying with Cit. Marcelain Dejan, with prudence, you will be able to learn the truth [from him].

↑ Back to Contents

The Baco and Burnel Expedition: The Commissioners’ Report48 9 Vendémiaire Year V [30 September 1796]

Report to the Executive Directory,

Citizen Directors,

… Two men known for their wisdom and energy were charged with representing you, and with going in your name to bring to the inhabitants of the Isles of France and Réunion the constitution accepted by 25 Million Frenchmen49; they were to break the chains of the Slave and restore his human dignity, but they had to take all precautions in order to undertake this grand, sublime movement without commotion. They had before their eyes the lessons [of the recent past] to guide them. The ruins of Saint-Domingue, the disasters of the Windward Islands50 made it imperative to exercise moderation. These ruins, these disasters should have spoken to the interests of the planters and made them realize the danger of resisting the will of the French people.

In addition to the moral forces with which your agents were invested, I had thought it necessary to add a military force considerable enough to impose on some malicious people; and the direction of this force was entrusted to General Magallon, an advantageous choice because of his services as well as those rendered by his father. […]

[Your agents] arrived in that colony [Isle de France] on 20th Prairial [8 June 1796], and they were not sent any pilots [to guide them ashore] despite the signals they had made to ask for them. Soon three individuals claiming to be members of the Colonial Assembly boarded the frigate that was carrying your agents and told them that if the reasons for their arrival were not made known, they would not be allowed to go ashore. [The Agents] dressed in their Costumes, showed [the documents laying out] their powers and urged one of the three individuals to return to the Colonial Assembly to advise its members on the means of preventing a clash between [the Assembly] and your Representatives.

However, after more than two hours passed since the departure of this man and with nightfall approaching, your agents gave orders to put in the rowboats and disembark all the armed forces. [The agents] also went ashore.

Their orders to disembark the troops forced the authorities of Isle de France to choose between obeying or becoming criminals by resisting the [troops] with force. [Such an action] did not occur, which may be attributed to the events that took place thereafter. Your agents held their own, convinced that any misstep would only embolden malicious minds. Lacking physical forces they felt the necessity of demonstrating force through a great deal of courage and presence of mind.

Soon they were joined by different persons. One of these gave them an unsigned document, which informed them that the Governor could not receive them, due to a lack of beds in the Government House. Another person ordered them to halt and threatened them with the armed forces [who were] under orders to rebuff them. In these difficult circumstances, your agents deployed the character of men imbued with a sense of their duties. They showed themselves worthy of the choice you had made of them and did not respond to the vociferations except with expressions suitable to civil servants when they find themselves in the presence of factious people. They soon [quelled] the boldness of the most mutinous among them; they commanded the respect of the crowd that the news of their arrival had attracted to the ports and docks and in the middle of which they had set foot on land and headed toward the place of the sessions of the Colonial Assembly.

There they took their seats near the President. Your agents had their titles read aloud as well as the laws by which they held these powers. They informed the Citizens of the victories, which the Republic continued to win, and they spoke to them of the new Government and offered, on behalf of the French of Europe, fraternity and friendship with the French of the East Indies. Finally, they gave to the President a copy of the Constitution of Year III; they have a second copy to General Malartic51 whose mistake [the agents] chose to forget. It had been he who had signed the order to the armed forces to prevent the disembarkation of your agents even though he knew their character, given the return [to shore of] one of the three aforementioned delegates from the Colonial Assembly.

With calm more or less restored, your agents announced that under the terms of the constitution, the Colonial Assemblies must cease their existence, but consistent with their principles not to rush anything, they proposed to allow [the Assembly] of Isle de France the ability to name some of its members in order to confer about the internal and external situation of the Colony. They then invited [the Assembly] to form a Secret Committee, which was done.

As soon as the foreigners [sic] had left the building, your agents were interrogated on the object of their mission. They wanted to force them to say if they had come to enforce the decree on the liberty of the blacks; men calling themselves French, men exercising [their] authority in the name of the Republic, had the impropriety to say they would never recognized article 15 of the declaration of rights [of the Constitution].52Others, after uttering a thousand political blasphemies, dared to add that they would rather be buried under the ruins of the Colony than suffer the property of their constituents to be taken away.53

Your agents, pressed by this assembly, found a way of avoiding answering questions related to the liberty of the blacks . . . it was especially important for the success of their mission to gain enough time to make arrangements to avoid compromising their dignity, or seeing citizens armed against citizens[.] They spoke reassuring words and repeated their proposal to appoint election commissioners. They then went to the Government House.

Over the next few days, Baco and Burnel discussed trade and the British threat with members of the assembly. They reviewed the troops and watched as the generals and the governor swore oaths of loyalty to the Republic and “hatred of Monarchy.” They believed tensions on the island had more or less subsided.

However, the agitations that had manifested themselves on our first day in the Colony were anything but stifled. Everywhere there was treason, hatred. … They would not forgive your agents for having been charged with enforcing Laws that impeded the greed of some and them and the pride of all of them; but the factions in the city no doubt needed to fortify themselves in their opinions and to find associates for their crimes in the planters of the countryside. Soon the white colonists came down [into the city] from their mountains and knives were sharpened.

They tried at first to excite against your agents a few young men attached to the Corps de Canonniers Volontaires. The eight cannons that defended the entrance to the municipality served as pretext. Your agents, shocked to see such a large apparatus, had observed to General Malartic that the Magistrates should have been able to rely on the respect and confidence of the people alone, and should not have needed so great a force. This observation had been commented upon…and soon an attempt was made to mislead the men who operated [the canon], by telling them that the agents wanted them removed. They were hoping that [our?] lack of experience would allow them to get away with the first of the crimes they were contemplating, but this first attempt was thwarted by the sangfroid of the agents.

The same evening they were invited to a concert, and soon they were warned that the goal had been to assassinate them there.54 This information was transmitted to them by two men whom the [agents] trusted because of their integrity; although they sought to make common cause with the others to keep their slaves, they did not want to be reproached for having participated in the enormous crime afoot.

The cannon and concert conspiracies, as well as “a thousand other remarks,” convinced the agents that their safety was in jeopardy. They gave General Malartic orders to hold the troops that had already been garrisoned in the colony before their arrival in their barracks. They also gave orders to have the battalion that had arrived with them assembled the next morning on the main square outside the Government House, where they were staying. Moreover, they instructed the Commander of the militia forces, the Gardes Nationales, to obey only the signed orders of the agents; the municipal government was told to use all of its authority to break up any crowds that might form.

On the third day after their arrival, General Malartic entered [the agents’] bedroom at 6 o’clock in the morning; he announced to them that all the orders had been given, and he added, I will go myself. [The troops] are coming now. Even as he spoke, he was betraying your agents; he had consigned all the sailors to their barracks; he had consigned the soldiers of the town and given their posts to the garde [nationale] sédentaire, which he had assembled by company.

Soon the 9 members of the Colonial Assembly who had been named two days prior to confer with the agents, entered [into their chambers] and after having told them that the Colony knew that the emancipation of the blacks was one of the essential points of their mission, they demanded a written assurance that it was not.

Your agents, after forcefully representing how much such a procedure was criminal, after reminding these men of the military provisions on which they relied, even after saying how much they desired to preserve the peace [of the colony], read to them their instructions, spoke to them of the sacrifices that France had made and would continue to make for the colonies, spoke to them of the enormous benefits that the Navy had procured for the commerce of Isle de France, and tried every means of thwarting their resistance to the law and to the will of the French people as expressed in the constitution.

“It is impossible for us,” responded these men,” to recognize a Constitution that destroys our properties. At that price, we will no longer be French.”

The indignation that such words should have incited, instead gave way to feelings of [illegible] and goodness, and while one of your agents sought to change their minds, calm the ferment, the other drafted a regulation that he displayed while announcing it as an idea that was still being developed. I told them that the inevitable effect of a criminal resistance would be to arm the blacks and the troops, and to incite a civil war, the results of which would be incalculable.

The constancy of the agents, their energy, their composure, their paternal speeches, and especially their calmness, seemed to bring some of the men back [to reason]. One of the commissioners of the assembly spoke of the need to reassure the people, and he informed your delegates that the signal of conciliation was the placement of a hand on one’s hat. This gesture was made, but it was [in fact, the signal of] carnage[.] Cries, vociferations, and curses rang out; there was fury and delirium on every face, taking hold of every soul; the Generals remained calm witnesses to all the excesses, of all the convulsions of a people who were completely unrestrained. In vain your agents tried to give them orders; the military leaders were insolently, and ironically, unaware of their character. General Magallon refused to give orders, and he based his refusal on a supposed decree of the Committee of Public Safety from over two years prior, that put him under the orders of General Malartic[.] General Sercey regarded as fanatical55, the Secretary-General of the Commission who ordered him to take action on behalf of the agents, and to disembark all the crews of the ships under arms. He accused the Secretary of seeing everything through a Microscope, he claimed that the agents would be respected, and that the measures proposed were exaggerated. However, he announced that he was waiting for orders from the agents. One of them went out and dispatched orders directly; but repeated cries of Long Live Sercey convinced them that they could no longer count on their being carried out. A moment later, one of General Magallon’s aides-de-camp was hoisted up triumphantly before the agents’ eyes, and this [act of] inconstancy was indication enough that they had also been betrayed by this leader.

Lastly, the old Malartic, that seventy-year-old general who, on every occasion, had complained bitterly of the tyranny of the Colonial Assembly, Malartic abandoned the Government House; he was carried out in triumph.

Then the signal of disorder was given; we scaled the walls of the Government House, we entered through the windows, and a furious troop threw themselves upon your agents, who were alone with their secretaries. 4 pistol shots were fired at them; several saber strikes were directed against them. In the midst of these Frenchmen, they owed their lives to an Irishman who, armed with a saber, was able to make a wall with his body. They were torn from their room and dragged like criminals aboard the corvette Le Moineau, amidst cries of sedition and revolt; Slit their throats, slit their throats,56 the furious Négrivores57 kept repeating.

I will not go into detail, Citizen Director, about what happened to your agents on their way to the corvette. I will not upset you by mentioning the conduct of certain Navy officers who had the criminal cowardice to threaten [the agents] once they were in a state of captivity. I will not tell you that some of these men dared to cry, Long live the King.58 Happily, they escaped the senseless fury of the monsters they were surrounded by. The calculated crime was never executed; they are alive, and they are ever worthy of your confidence. They did not degrade the august character with which you have invested them. They cannot be reproached for having betrayed their duty. They have no moment of weakness to be ashamed of.

Aboard the Moineau, they expected to be brought to France, but [the agents’ enemies] had coldly calculated the means of preventing you from ever hearing the truth about the events which had just taken place. Know, Citizen Directors, of what atrocities the members of the Colonial Assembly, Governor Malartic, and Rear Admiral Sercey59 are guilty. The order signed by all of them held that the agents should be brought to the Philippines and thrown onto the coast…

After an initial struggle, the agents convinced the captain to turn the ship around and head toward France.

However, food was needed for such a long voyage. It was immediately decided that we should stop at Foul-Pointe [i.e. Foulpointe, or Mahavelona], a French establishment in eastern Madagascar to stock up. We arrived on the 9th of Messidor. […]

On the 10th a ship from Réunion Island came to purchase blacks. Your agents, who had not forgotten the philanthropic spirit of their mission despite their setbacks, spoke in the name of the Republic, and they forbade this infamous commerce. They took advantage of this ship to send an arrêté to Isle de France that ordered General Malartic to go to France to give an account of his conduct…their decree [also] charged Admiral Sercey with rounding up by all means necessary the members of the Colonial Assembly and sending them to France. I charged General Magallon with the command of the troops after General Malartic’s departure, and in a special letter written to both of them, reminded them of their misdeeds and offered them some ways to make up for or lessen them. […] [They recognize] the need to continue serving their fatherland.

[The agents] took advantage of their stopover in Madagascar to make known the will of the French people, the abolition of the slave trade, and the decree of 16 Pluviose, and to cut off this most infamous and immoral commerce at its source. Their proclamation, which they sent to the Government’s chief of slave trading, can no longer leave him any doubt about the nation’s will. Your agents have ordered him to stop selling blacks and to restrict his future speculation to cattle, rice, other supplies.

After the Moineau loaded its provisions, she set sail and arrived at La Rochelle [France] on the 5th jour complémentaire of Year IV [21 September 1796], whence your agents went to Paris to await your orders.

Citizen Directors, the most thorough examination of the conduct of the agents of the Directory in the East Indies presents them as only courageous and wise officials. […] We still refuse to believe it was treason when we heard Malartic, forced the day of [our] arrival to sign the order to have the armed force oppose [our] landing, say to [us] the next day that finally the Tyranny of the Colonial Assembly would cease […] Was he seduced or deceived? I dare not decide these questions; and without seeking to go deeper into the motives which directed him, it is undisputed that he can no longer remain at the Isles of France and Reunion, and that he must be recalled to account for his conduct.

As for the generals Sercey and Magallon, if they are not partisans of the crime of the Colonial Assembly, they at least deserve reproach for their own excessive weakness. […]

[The Republic] was particularly betrayed [and] degraded by the members of the Colonial Assembly and especially by the so-named Barbé Marbois, Journel, Rivalz, Boudot de la Mothe, Louvet, De Crozille, Rouillard, Fropier, J.B. Couve, Marville, and Chauvet its Commissioners. It was these men who, as faithful agents of the slaveowners, insulted your agents, had the audacity to force them to declare in writing that they would not speak of the freedom of the blacks, dared to tell them that they renounced being French if it meant giving up owning Slaves . . . It is these men who, after having always committed crimes of the most frightful despotism, after having charged the former Civil Commissioners with fire when they believed the law of 16 Pluviose would reach them, spoke openly of independence for the colonies, exposed your agents to the knives of a crowd that they had misled and then, to prolong the horrors of their agony, sent them off to certain death on the coasts of the Manilla islands after barely escaping with their lives on 3 Messidor [21 June 1796]. It is they who…ordered that this atrocious act should be sanctioned by Governor Malartic and seen by Rear Admiral Sercey.

Citoyens Directeurs, just crimes shed light on the plans of the Colonists. All have set their sights on independence in the two hemispheres; in the East Indies as in the West Indies, they have looked to free themselves from the yolk of France, from the moment when the law began repressing pride or greed. The means to employ…were to be the same everywhere, and while the plan circulated in Paris to make Saint-Domingue a separate and isolated power, a colonist from Isle de France,60 in a publication that proclaimed to have been printed by order of the Convention and disavowed by it at the moment of its very distribution, publicly attached the Decree of 16 Pluviôse Year II. The liberty of the blacks had armed the factious people of Saint-Domingue and the Windward Islands; it was the first spark in the fire that consumed the beautiful city of Le Cap [François]. It delivered a part of our Antilles to the Enemy. The fear of the Decree that proclaimed it, caused the Civil Commissioners who preceded your agents on Isle de France to be arrested and dragged into prison (dans les cachots). If one needed more proof of the similarities between the plans of the Colonists, I would cite a letter, deposited at the Bureau of the Colonies, in which one reads of a project made for Saint-Domingue, that which was just carried out in the East Indies. Then, it was a question of the law that rendered men of color their political rights [the law of 4 April 1792], and the proud colonist who commented on this law expressed himself thus: “If France sends us Commissioners imbued with these principles, they will not be received among us, and we will have the strength to disobey their decrees.” The colonists of Saint-Domingue were not able to execute their deportation project against the civil authorities. [But] this project has just been realized by the colonists of Isle de France. […]

↑ Back to Contents

American Merchants React61

Fresh from their break with the UK, merchants in the nascent US looked to the Mascarenes as a way to bypass British sources of tea and other goods. The US became the most important country of origin of foreign ships calling at Port Louis after Madagascar. In 1794, the US established a consulate in Port-Louis. America’s emissary was received by the Colonial Assembly of Mauritius in a ceremony hall bedecked in the flags of the and in the ensuing years, fully half of the total value of French imports carried to the United States came from the Mascarenes. Most of it consisted of captured merchandise from British Indiamen. Planters and traders from the two regions formed business connections: Mascarene immigrants settled in the US and Americans in Port-Louis. Merchants and planters from the Mascarenes participated in the economic and social life of America’s cities, attending Mass in Catholic parishes; building and consolidating business networks; finding work as French tutors; even enrolling their children at local schools. Charles Desbassayns, a royalist planter from Bourbon and brother-in-law of a prominent French minister, lived in Boston between 1797 and 1802. Nicolas LeMarchand, of similar background, lived for a time in Baltimore. Records from Port-Louis indicate the presence of American merchant captains in the city, as well as sailors of African descent. U.S. shipping also opened up an important back-channel of communications between the Indian and Atlantic oceans. It was an American ship that informed officials on the Mascarenes of France’s 1794 decree abolishing slavery empire-wide, thus facilitating the prevention of its application by local colonial officials. Americans were involved in slave trading between Madagascar and the Mascarenes at the very moment that the governments of both France and the nascent United States were abolishing the practice. American merchants and their French planter allies thus defied their respective governments in order to serve each other’s interests, and the ramifications were devastating for the nearly 100,000 people held in illegal bondage. In 1796, members of the Colonial Assembly, with the tacit approval of local military officers and the help of a mob of young planters from the countryside, expelled Baco and Burnel, the civil commissioners sent from Paris to abolish slavery in the Mascarenes. The day after this coup, William McCarty (the first US consul in the islands, appointed by President George Washington two years prior) joined several American merchants in Port Louis to praise the Colonial Assembly for its role in that “event,” thus preserving their “shared interests.”

Interactive map: Volume of U.S. Ships Calling at Port-Louis by Place of Origin, 1786–1810 (UA Little Rock GIS Lab). Data source: Auguste Toussaint, Early American Trade with Mauritius (Port Louis: Esclapon, 1954).
Open the interactive map

On the 6th of Messidor, Year 4 [24th June 1796],

The Americans congratulate you on the fortunate event that brings peace to all minds and puts the reins of government back into the hands of those under whom this island has flourished, presenting an enviable contrast to the desolation and horrors that have spread throughout the European colonies in the American Isles.

It is for the cause of humanity that we rejoice in seeing a system overturned that was leading us all down the path of general ruin. Our feelings towards you are fraternal; we are united not only by our shared interests, but also by an affection that has been cultivated through the friendly relations that have happily existed between us. It was with sorrow that we feared the interruption of this mutual harmony due to the unprovoked insult to the American nation by one of the Commissioners, which can only be the result of a corrupt and treacherous heart.62

The event brought about by your firmness and courage dispels all our fears, and we see with confidence the rebirth of this unalterable friendship that we ardently desire.

The Americans, who find anything concerning the French nation [of interest], admire these islands and the analogy between their internal situation and their local position, on these two bold mountains rising amidst an immense ocean.

The peaceful planter cultivates his fields while the thunder roars in vain above their heads and the waves break at their feet. It is equally gratifying for us to give you this just praise knowing that, among you, the hand of compassionate gentleness is lightening the burdens of servitude.

Detail from “Etat des Batimens entrés dans la dite Rade [St Denis] 1 to 30 June 1806, ANOM C3-25, item 111, showing American involvement in trade between Madagascar and the Mascarenes, including in enslaved captives.

Detail from “Etat des Batimens entrés dans la dite Rade [St Denis] 1 to 30 June 1806, ANOM C3-25, item 111, showing American involvement in trade between Madagascar and the Mascarenes, including in enslaved captives.

↑ Back to Contents

The Colonial Assembly of Réunion Island to Paris, 179763

The Decree of 4 February 1794 had simultaneously emancipated and enfranchised all slaves in the French empire, but the mechanism of its application and enforcement were unclear. The text of the law included only that: “The National Convention declares that slavery of nègres is abolished in all the colonies; consequently, it decrees that all men living in the colonies, without distinction of color, are French citizens, and enjoy all the rights guaranteed by the constitution.” This was followed by a request for the Committee of Public Safety to report on measures to be taken to facilitate the execution of the decree.64 Members of the Colonial Assembly of Réunion knew that Baco and Burnel had arrived with plans to abolish slavery (and rumor had it that a second mission was planned for Réunion–which may have spurred their declaration). Their own representatives in Paris had sent a tailor-made proposal for the Mascarenes. The proposal, dated 31 August 1795, of deputies Besnard (representing Réunion) and Serrel and Gouly (representing Isle de France), was similar to the regime of “free labor” instituted by Toussaint Louverture and others on Saint-Domingue; it would have converted the former plantation economy into a factory economy, incorporating mandatory work, surveillance tactics, and the use of prison labor for the formerly enslaved (furthermore, they made no mention of banning use of the whip). The one alternative for freedpersons would be to “return to their country” or aid in the colonization of Madagascar on behalf of the French empire as a new labor force. Summarily rejecting this proposal, members of the Colonial Assembly of Réunion dispatched this melodramatic appeal to their representatives in the national legislature. The anxiety produced among the white elite by the arrival of Baco and Burnel not only galvanized support for slavery on Réunion , but for white minority rule as well. By 1798, Réunion’s Colonial Assembly released a report it had commissioned from several of its longest-serving members that seemed to reflect mounting intolerance for the liberal racial legislation of the Revolution. Although printed on the colony’s new press, it may have been intended for internal circulation within the island only. The Colonial Assembly unanimously endorsed the findings of the Report and ordered 400 copies printed and distributed throughout the colony. Among other conclusions, its authors drew on an exhaustive review of confiscated newsprint and private letters to conclude that abolition itself had caused the rebellions and civil wars in the Caribbean and that, therefore, Réunion’s leaders must renew their dedication to preventing it from being implemented locally. Like most propaganda from the Mascarenes, the Report did not explicitly recommend reversing legalized racial equality for free persons. It seems that it did, however, make an appeal to white unity. Everywhere but in the Mascarenes, the Report argued, the French colonial world had seen its “whites humiliated, persecuted, destroyed”—especially in Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana. If Réunion’s servile population was freed and enfranchised, the resultant numerical superiority of nonwhite voters would tip the scales of political power away from whites. Réunion would become, like Saint-Domingue, the “patrimony of blacks,” and freedmen would monopolize local politics. Former slaves “would naturally vote for men of their colors[.] Soon all authority would be in their hands, and do we really think that no Toussaint Louverture, Rigaud, or J[ean] Francois can exist here among them?” Having spent several pages contending that all the three Saint-Domingue revolutionaries were despots intent on humiliating and annihilating white colonists, evoking their names in the context of Réunion was a clear fear-mongering tactic. Indeed, the Report seemed to exploit the sensitivities of the island’s poor white population: poverty, it claimed, had deepened on Réunion as a consequence of the metropole’s “proscription of color [distinctions].”65

Citizens and Friends,

[…] We have not received any letters at all from you in a long time. We find written in that of 9 Messidor Year III: “the Convention is taking the keenest interest in the conservation of the Isles of France and Réunion.” What has become of that interest? […] If the destructive scourge which we have kept away from us until now was close to [metropolitan] France and threatened to affect her, the legislators would rise up in an instant to stop it: they would only see the supreme law which is the safety of the people. [Yet] because the events are happening 4,500 leagues away, and those who [make the laws] are not in danger, they would slit our throats in the name of the law! …If an Asian despot [who] sees [his] people as vile cattle pronounced the death of thirty thousand of his subjects in ordering a destructive law to be carried out, that would be conceivable. But for republicans to pronounce in such a way the death of their fellow citizens, of their brothers, that is unfathomable. What! We would see ourselves sacrificed, not only to foreigners, but to savage peoples, to Malagasy, to Kaffirs, to Abyssinians…………… We ask all of France, how the Councils [of the Corps Législatif] can welcome the orator who would come to them to propose to free 100,000 foreign slaves while sacrificing 30,000 Frenchmen? …And yet! It is us whom the misfortune of the circumstances have placed in the middle of these foreigners: it is we who are Frenchmen, republicans, who are your brothers: would you devote yourself to our deaths? If it were not for the enthusiasm of the first moment, if the first attempts had not led to such deadly results, the hope of success might seduce and deceive us. But the habitants [planters] of Cayenne, who applied the decree, are destroyed[;] Saint-Domingue is devastated[;] in Guadeloupe, where the whites retained power, the blacks whom were given their freedom, undergo another kind of slavery, see themselves forced to work at gunpoint[;] a crowd of Frenchmen who escaped from the carnage, without asylum, wandering, stripped [of their belongings], fleeing a desolated land, still steaming with the blood of their kin and friends, offers to the universe the distressing tableau of misfortune and despair.

Two islands [Réunion and Ile de France], separated by the immensity of oceans from this theater of horrors, still exist; the courage, prudence, [and] loyalty of their habitants have kept them intact; not a drop of blood has been spilled; must they also perish! In the name of liberty, equality, and humanity, [must they be] delivered to devastation? Truthfully that exceeds all imagination.

Citizens, we are on-site; our feet rest on a Volcano, and we are better judges of the danger than you who are far away. […] The bloody funeral shroud draped over the Antilles, is the sinister omen that shocks all imaginations […] Who wouldn’t prefer to employ free workers! The property-owner would eagerly pay the price of a day’s work wages without worrying about the needs of the night before or those of the coming day. You know how much our colonies have always distinguished themselves by the mildness of their [slave] regime, and how much the practical humaneness of our planters tends ceaselessly to [enslaved] children, the elderly, and the sick. It is, therefore, only the certainty of [experiencing] the misfortunes already proven that keeps us from enforcing this fatal decree. […] We are notifying you that we [will] disavow any method [of applying the 16 Pluviôse decree] presented by these men who weigh the death of their brothers against an unenlightened humanity, who, far from the site of the explosion, make proposals whose only consequences will be our annihilation. […]

Citizens, we see you both as our defenders. We trust that you will have the courage to do what is right and, above all, what is true.

Long live the Republic!

Signed, FACIOLLE, president [of the Colonial Assembly]

By the Colonial Assembly

Signed, Ozoux, Lefébure Marcy, secretaries

↑ Back to Contents

A Mauritian Colonist’s Perspective: Frédéric Descroizilles, 1796 & 180266

This account of the “Baco and Burnel Affair ‘’ by an Isle de France colonist was published in France by Frédéric Descroizilles. As the essay in which it appears was published in 1803, after Napoleon’s reversal of abolition, the author is forthcoming about his direct involvement in those events as a member of the Colonial Assembly of Isle de France. He expresses no regrets for his role in perpetrating what he admits was nothing less than a coup against the French government. In the report, he reveals that he and his colleagues had conspired to oust the commissioners (in other words, it had not been a spontaneous riot that authorities struggled to control). The letter from 1796 included here, also by Descroizilles, outlines in detail the main arguments advanced by the slaveholders of Isle de France and their allies in the metropole—arguments that would eventually earn the approbation of Napoleon and other proslavery figures in Paris.

“The author of this mémoire was a longstanding member and President of the Colonial Assembly of Isle de France. He contributed greatly to the ouster of the Commissioners Baco and Burnel. This measure was commanded by the most imperious necessity[.] Nevertheless, it could be attributed to ambitious motivations, and Frédéric Descroizilles is taking this opportunity to resign from all public positions and to devote himself entirely to commerce and to [his] plantations. The mémoire that you will read is the fruit of some of his leisure time; it has served as the basis of the Address to the Inhabitants, Planters and Merchants of Isle de France, to the Consuls of the Republic, dated 8 Messidor Year X [27 June 1802], the drafting of which was confided to [him]. Around the same time, he addressed a copy of the mémoire to Citizen Journu Aubert, member of the [French] Senate, and another to Citizen Lemesle, merchant in Bordeaux. He sent a third copy to his brothers, Chemist-Manufacturers in Lescure-lès-Rouen. They had it printed, convinced that, despite the changes in the Government’s policy toward the colonies, this mémoire contains facts that are important to publish […]

France is now [in 1802] ruled by a Government that, in the space of two years, has returned it to a state of peace both internal and external, and which has shown itself to be the friend of the Colonies, and to which the Isles of France and Réunion owe the assurance of their survival. Today we can meditate on the prosperity to which these islands can reasonably claim, which, according to the Minister of the Marine, are the pride and hope of the Nation, which have braved all dangers only to remain faithful to [France], even though a misguided (abusé) government wished to destroy them. […]

The news of the existence of the fatal decree [the 16 Pluviôse Decree abolishing slavery] spread the greatest anxiety in the colony, both because of its attachment to France, and because of the certainty of the misfortunes that such a measure would provoke if applied. The events of Saint-Domingue presented to all a frightful picture of the consequences that would result. The planters…targeted by the decree, felt that their existence was becoming precarious, if it [the decree] was not rescinded; and perhaps they began to think that they would be happier under a government that wished to protect their property. But those whose fortune depended on commerce; those who, with time, hoped to establish a [new] well-being with the help of external resources, maintained a passive attachment to France. In the probable event that an official order and forces considerable enough to compel the colony to submit to the decree were sent [those merchants] wished to delay the moment of its execution as long as possible without compromising themselves.

1796. Such was the state of opinion when, on July 1st, a squadron of four frigates, under the command of Vice Admiral Sercey, carrying on board two Directory Agents, named Baco and Burnel, was sent to take command of the colony. It was décade [the last day of the week in the Revolution-era calendar], the day when, according to their custom, most of the merchants of the city and several members of the colonial assembly were at their country houses. The [system of beacons atop the] mountains, however, signaled the arrival of the French squadron. Already, the Agents, dressed in their directorial costume and escorted by a company of grenadiers from the transport troops under the orders of General Magallon, had disembarked from the frigate on which they had arrived […] The next day, July 19, they [the Agents] reviewed the 107th and 108th regiments, which formed the old garrison. They ordered the disembarkation of a battalion of about 800 men and two companies of artillery who had arrived from Europe with them. At the magazine, they flattered the soldiers and blamed the [authorities in the] colony for paying them with paper money. Their speech …confirmed the fears of those already alarmed at their arrival; it was understood that the great powers with which they were vested made them masters of the destiny of the colony; it was striking that they had refused to communicate their instructions. The public was not long in confirming these sentiments, for the Agents, who desired to strengthen their position, sought an occasion for a quarrel with Governor Malartic; they ventured to threaten that respectable old man with hanging. […] In the morning of July 31, almost all the habitants (planters) of the colony assembled in the public square in front of the doors of the Government House, where the Agents were still staying despite being informed of the risks they ran by doing so. Governor-General Malartic, removed [by the crowd?] from the Government House, was carried in triumph to the Colonial Assembly. The Agents ordered General Magallon, who had come from Europe with the division commanded by Rear-Admiral Sercey, to have the troops take up arms against the habitants; but [Magallon] declined, telling them that he answered to Governor-General Malartic and could only obey orders signed by him. In vain the Agents informed [Magallon] that they were deposing General Malartic, and that they had named him his successor. However, the young creoles [from the crowd] having entered the Government House through the windows, announced to the Agents that since they carried orders that were destructive for the colony, they deserved to die. One of the Agents dodged the discharge of a pistol, and the other was saved by the commissioners of the assembly who were with him. The habitants, informed of these events, and seeing the soldiers calm in their quarters, resigned themselves to insisting on the immediate dismissal of the Agents. This requisition being granted by the members of the Commission [of the Colonial Assembly], they convinced the Agents to submit; they accompanied them in person, lest they become victims of the general indignation, and in this manner they conducted them on board a corvette which had orders to carry them to the Philippines.” […]

Frédéric Descroizilles, author of [this] Essay…traveled from Bordeaux to Isle de France, not long after the all-too-memorable 31 May [1793]67 when the party nicknamed “of the Gironde,” that of the true friends of a reasonable Government and the enemy of demagogic anarchy as well as hereditary despotism, was proscribed by the faction of Marat and Robespierre. France was threatened with all the evils that followed that fatal day. Every man who could not hide his hatred of tyrants had either to resign himself to death or flee. […]

In [a] letter, Frédéric Descroizilles wrote to relatives in Europe [i.e. France]: ‘No doubt, you will already have heard of the departure for this Colonie [Isle de France] of two Agents of the Executive Directory, charged with carrying out the Decree that abolishes slavery in all the French colonies. You are aware of the dreadful misfortunes that desolated the Colonies of America because of the changes that they imprudently wished to make to [those colonies’] domestic affairs (leur régime intérieur). There is no doubt that the arrival of these Agents exposed this island to the same disasters, and you would at present be receiving the distressing news of them; you would be learning that, like Saint-Domingue, Martinique, and Guadeloupe, etc. the white race was exterminated by fanatical hordes, who, once riled up, can hardly be any more restrained than the most unbridled populaces of the great cities of Europe.

We are still alive, dear parents, and the Colony is saved, thanks to the unity and energy of its habitants. Just a few days more and this island, so peaceful and flourishing, would have fallen prey to massacres, pillaging, [and] conflagrations[.] And famine, the sad result of those scourges, would have carried away any survivors. This danger, which threatened all individuals, unified all opinions. The people rose up and the Proconsuls fled. They departed, and to ensure that their calumnies would not arrive in France before our just reclamations, they were sent to the Philippines, whence they could not have returned to Europe for 15 to 18 months. But we learned afterward that they had managed to seduce the crew of the corvette on which they had embarked, and that they were making their way directly to France.

We fully expected that the Government [in Paris] will treat this popular movement that saved us all as an attack against the national representatives. We are relying on the justness of our cause and on the support of all of those whose interests are linked to ours, all the merchants, all the manufacturers, all those, in short, who feel that a great Nation such as the French Nation cannot survive without commerce, and that commerce cannot prosper without Colonies, and that the Colonies cannot exist under the regime that has been chosen for them.

God forbid that I should become an apologist for slavery and the horrors that all too often accompany it! Indeed my heart has often bemoaned the severity of some of our Colonists, and the unfortunate fate of the individuals that they keep under their yoke. But I can truly say that here, such excesses have always been severely reprimanded by the Laws. Long before the French Revolution arrived and propagated ideas of equality, this Colony has presented the very image of it, by the manner in which the hommes libres [i.e. free men of color] were treated whatever the intensity of their color. Several occupy civil and military positions here.

The [number of] individual manumissions (des affranchissements partiels), which increased greatly, markedly reduced the [numerical] imbalance that exists between the free population and the slaves and makes it possible to imagine as not so far-off, the moment when one could effect, without danger, a total but gradual emancipation, accompanied by the moderations necessary for the survival of both the freedmen and the masters.

What, instead, were the reckless innovators preparing? The terrible lesson of the misfortunes of the other Colonies was lost on them. These black [sic] philanthropists who, without any knowledge of the country they were going to wreak havoc upon, without taking any precaution to remove 12,000 Frenchmen from the blind fury of foreigners whom they prefer to us from a distance of 4,500 leagues, ordered a change that…could only have been attempted if they had sent enough vessels to our port to transport all of the white inhabitants out of the Colony[.] What were they preparing for us? Death, awful death, distant as we are from most of our families and deprived of their consolations. Perhaps they will still destine us for [death], as punishment for having resisted their orders. Between running the risk of dying in this way or certain death at the hands of fanatical cannibals, the choice could not be clearer. Whatever may happen, we will always remain attached to the Fatherland, and we will prove it, not through vain speeches, but through our fervor in fighting its enemies and ruining their immense commerce in these seas.’

↑ Back to Contents

A Mauritian Colonist’s Memoir: François Le Forestier, 181268

In the winter of 1902-3, a librarian at the Boston Athenaeum was investigating a leak in the attic when he discovered a long-lost manuscript. It was a memoir, written by François Le Forestier (1749-1819). Born in France, he had traveled to Isle de France (Mauritius) in 1780, where he served as a barrister and then as a notary. He was elected a “substitute deputy” for his parish during the era he referred to as “that cursed Revolution” and in 1803, he became a tax collector under the military governorship Napoleon imposed on the colonies. Accused of mismanaging funds (he was discovered to owe 109,435 francs!). Le Forestier fled to New England where he presented himself as a French tutor. Like many on Isle de France, Le Forestier had strong ties to the region: he had sent one of his sons to school at Phillips Andover Academy, in Massachusetts, in 1797, and a Salem merchant weathered an illness on his sugar plantation during a business trip in the 1780s. From 1808-1812 Le Forestier lived and taught in Massachusetts (including what is today the state of Maine). When Mauritius passed into British hands, Le Forestier thought himself safe from arrest, so in 1812, he returned aboard the Talbot out of Salem. During the voyage he wrote an autobiography addressed to “Mademoiselle Cobb,” the fifteen-year-old Mary Cobb of Portland, Maine, one of his favorite pupils. Written in French, it contains an account of his early life in France and his time on Mauritius, as well as his own harrowing escape from the island, in which he was helped by his own slaves and some free black residents. He also describes the events surrounding the arrival and ouster of Baco and Burnel in 1796, presented in this extract. Note that Le Forestier’s suggestion that the majority of the troops who had arrived with the agents were also deported is false: most of them, as well as the naval squadron and its commanders, remained on the island. His account makes it quite clear that, despite their later claims, the ouster of the two French civil commissioners was deliberate and planned and carried out by members of the Colonial Assembly and local troops .The idea that several dozen rioters could have “forced” 1,500 troops to embark suggests some level of complicity on the part of their commanders–and that those involved in the riot may have been far more numerous than this account suggests.

Page 19 from the Journal of François Le Forestier, describing the coup that expelled Baco and Burnel.

Page 19 from the Journal of François Le Forestier, describing the coup that expelled Baco and Burnel. Author’s photograph.

“[In 1796] the Directory of France had sent fifteen hundred troops, and two representatives of the People, named Bâco and Burnel[.] The latter was known to have lived on Isle de France before, where he exercised the professions of lawyer and journalist; he had made himself known as a very bad subject. So they distrusted these gentlemen, and with great reason, because they wanted to put the decree granting liberty to the blacks into execution[.] Had that happened, the whites would have all perished[,] as in Saint-Domingue. The colonial assembly sent word out to the countryside at once, and everyone [i.e. white planters from the country] arrived [in Port Louis] during the night, armed with all kinds of weapons[.] They [the members of the Colonial Assembly] had also made the arrangements for three ships to send these gentlemen back. Indeed, at half-past eleven in the morning, the people and the troops assembled, the fifteen hundred men were forced to embark, as well as the two scoundrels (coquins). An enemy of the revolution fired on Burnel as he began to harangue the people, but his pistol failed to discharge. And so they departed, and calm was restored immediately. It must be noted that Isle de France demonstrated in these circumstances an energy and a character that the other colonies would have been good to replicate should such scoundrels be sent to them as well.”

↑ Back to Contents

A Bourbon Colonist’s Perspective: Joseph de Villèle, ca. 1820s69

This extract derives from a published autobiography, the beginnings of which were penned in the midst of the reactionary Bourbon Restoration, a regime in which the author was a key figure. Joseph de Villèle hailed from France but resided for a long period in the Mascarenes and had married into one of the islands’ wealthiest families, the Panon Desbassayns clan, in 1799. He would later serve as prime minister to the restored Bourbon king, Charles X, a position in which he oversaw the report compiling indemnity payments supposedly owed to former Saint-Domingue colonists by the Haitian state. In his youth he lived in Port-Louis, then the administrative capital of all of France’s East Indian holdings and a bustling navy station and port city close in size to Cap François, Saint-Domingue. Villèle’s memoire includes a long passage about the Directory’s 1796 expedition, led by Civil Commissioners René-Gaston Baco de la Chapelle and Étienne-Laurent-Pierre Burnel, to implement abolition in the Mascarenes. They landed first at Port-Louis. Villèle describes the concerted efforts of local white citizens to undermine their mission at any cost.

“After having thus passed over the stormiest period of the Revolution with as little damage that one could have hoped for, our two colonies had resumed their peaceful attitude, resigning themselves to the painful privations imposed on them by the annihilation of their trade and the constant presence of English cruisers on their coasts. This situation, however, gave them an invaluable advantage, that of being more sheltered from the attempts of the French government to compel them to carry out the decree of 16 Pluviose II [4 February 1794], which proclaimed the immediate emancipation of all slaves; a fatal decree, which had already consummated the loss of Saint-Domingue, seriously compromised the safety of the colonists in Cayenne [French Guiana], and reduced Martinique and the Antilles du Vente [i.e. Guadeloupe and surrounding islands] to deliver themselves up to the English. Even before the promulgation of the decree, the Isles of France and Bourbon had successively ensured the return to Europe of French frigates and troops, the presence of which was a burden and a danger for them. They [the islands] governed themselves, with free [i.e. elected] institutions, which had been granted to them by the decrees of the Constituent Assembly, retaining only an apparent dependence on the metropole.

The two governors, Mr. de Malartic, and Colonel Jacob, successor to Mr. Duplessis, entirely devoted to the colonies which esteemed and cherished them, had in reality only an honorary post as the heads of the authorities of the country; their role was limited to that of sanctioning machines; the administration of the two islands was in fact in the hands of the colonial assemblies.

Such was the state of affairs when, on the 18th of June, 1796, a squadron, under the command of Rear Admiral Sercey, one of the most distinguished officers of our former [i.e., Old Regime] navy, appeared in sight of Port Louis; it carried eighteen hundred troops, drawn from the Vendee, where they had committed a thousand atrocities, and commanded by General Magallon de la Morlière. The supreme direction of the expedition was entrusted to two commissioners of the Directory, Bacot and Burnel; they were provided with full powers and charged with the special mission of applying the decree of 16 Pluviose on our islands. The squadron was signaled by the look-outs, but did not inspire fear; it was first taken for an accidental meeting between two English cruisers.

It was a Sunday, so most members of the Assembly and the principal inhabitants of Port-Louis had gone as usual to spend the day with their families in the countryside. Meanwhile the ships of the squadron anchored at [a point in the harbor called the] Pavilions, and…the commissioners and generals entered the city without opposition, but also without solemn reception, and went, free from all anxiety, to spend the evening in the Government Palace; the troops [who accompanied them] went off to the barracks which, fortunately for us, was at the other end of the city. The news of this unexpected event was soon carried to all parts of the island; the authorities hastened to return to Port Louis; the colonial assembly, caught off guard, met; unwilling to compromise on anything, [its members] decided to dissimulate.

Its members presented their respects to the envoys of the Directory, on the one hand to keep them in the greatest security, and on the other, to probe their intentions and the secret reason for their mission. Burnel, one of the commissioners, had lived for a long time in the colony, where he had left behind a reputation as an absent-minded and disorderly lawyer; the other, named Bacot, was unknown, and seemed more to be feared; his cold exterior announced firmness and resolution. It was agreed that the next day, at noon, that the two commissioners should go to the assembly to communicate their powers and request the formation of a special committee, to which they would inform the purpose of their mission. In the evening, Burnel’s old acquaintances tried to extract some information from him: they learned nothing concrete, but were convinced that the colony was in imminent danger. From that moment everyone became firmly and courageously resolved to die, arms in hand, to ward off the peril [they faced] rather than expose themselves to the same torments as the victims of Saint-Domingue. Under cover of nightfall, messengers were dispatched in all directions to bring the youth of the island into Port-[Louis]. But in order to avoid getting the attention of those who had just disembarked [from France], care was taken to keep the inhabitants of the countryside on the outskirts of the city until the decisive hour, and the next morning they arrived in great numbers.

An immense crowd surrounded the meeting place of the [Colonial] Assembly when the generals and commissioners went in. All transpired in the utmost calm, the opinion pages kept mim, no cries came forth from the crowd, which, as if out of curiosity, accompanied the commissioners as they returned to the Government Palace. The troops, under arms for the parade, returned to their barracks. The commission of the Assembly was appointed and went immediately to meet with the two commissioners[.] A signal had been agreed upon beforehand for [the commission], when leaving the Government Palace, to announce whether, as most believed, the mission of the envoys of the Directory was in fact to execute the decree of 16 Pluviose. When a great interest motivates an entire population, when this interest, especially, is that of the preservation of each of its members, it moves as a single man without having previously conferred, and each individual provides, with admirable intelligence and care, for the salvation of all. When the generals, who had brought the troops back to the barracks, returned to Government Square, they found themselves surrounded by an immense crowd, and, half willing, half by force, they accepted [their] offer to go to a café for some refreshments. Shortly afterwards appeared on the balcony of the Government Palace the signal announcing the intention of the commissioners to execute the fatal decree.

Baco and Burnel wore the official costume of the Directory’s colonial agents (pictured). “Agent du Directoire exécutif dans les colonies : ce fonctionnaire est nommé par le Directoire, il est chargé de faire exécuter toutes les loix emanées de la Republique, et d’organiser tous les tribunaux et ne doit rendre compt qu’au Directoire exécutif [estampe].” Philippe Joseph Maillart (1764-1856), Brussels, 1796-1799. Image Source: Images of the French Revolution, Stanford University.

Baco and Burnel would have been quite conspicuous on the streets of Port Louis, wearing the official costume of the Directory’s colonial agents. Engraving by Philippe Joseph Maillart, Brussels, 1796-1799. Images of the French Revolution, Stanford University.

View the original engraving in Stanford University’s collection

At once the crowd broke through the gates of the Government Palace, amidst a thunder of cries: “Embark, embark!” At the sound of these repeated cries, echoing off the mountains surrounding the port, bands of Gardes Nationales [militiamen] surrounded the barracks on all sides, not letting a single soldier emerge[.] The frightened soldiers shut the gates and went on the defensive, but they were told that it was pointless and that they would not be hurt. The generals were declared prisoners in the café, and every means of persuasion was employed to make them understand that, in the position in which they were, their interest and their very duty were to save France from losing these two loyal and important colonies forever. The crowd, which had entered the courtyard of the Government Palace, opened its ranks only to let out the commission of the Colonial Assembly; then it rushed to the room where the commissioners of the Directory were staying, and summoned them to embark immediately. Bacot refused and moved to seize a saber [that was part of] a nakara suit which he had just taken off; a young man fell on him and pressed his pistol against [Bacot’s] chest; the crowd pushed away this impetuous (étourdi) youth, and Bacot followed Burnel, who had decided to obey at first sight. [The crowd] demanded the two commissaries to [carry] their costumes, which they called national rags, under their arms, and it was in this sad formation that they were led right to the edge of the harbor, amid a thousand crues of “Embark, embark!” Some young men seized the rowboats (canots) tied up along the wharf, made the commissioners get in, and took them aboard one of the corvettes [a small warship] of the squadron, which they readied themselves and moored just beyond the harbor. Others ran off to man the batteries along the coast, and threatened to sink the corvette if they noticed the slightest movement.

During this time, the generals, having been won over by the population, were carried triumphantly to the Government Palace, and M. de Malartic, once again governor-general through this sudden revolution, signed along with Rear Admiral Sercey an order to the captain of the corvette to set sail at once and bring the commissioners to the Philippines; the crowd had by instinctively chosen that destination to delay the moment when the Directory would be informed of the expulsion of its envoys as long as possible. General Magallon also signed an order for the troops not to commit any act of hostility against the population, and in exchange, promised them abundant provisions. The corvette set sail at once, and at the beginning of the night she was already so far under wind that it would not even have been possible for her to turn back to the island before daybreak. A boat was sent to Bourbon to announce the great events that had just occurred and to warn the authorities there to be on their guard. Everything soon returned to order; some of the Garde Nationales [militia], who had come from the interior of the island, set out again to reassure their families, and to contain the black [i.e. slave] population by their presence; it was impossible to hide the cause of this great movement from them for long. The most able-bodied young men remained in Port Louis, and organized themselves to maintain the blockade of the barracks with order and vigilance.

This coup de main (i.e. improvised operation), to which I bore witness and in which I took part, like so many others, was executed with such coordination and swiftness that not a shot was fired, and not a single slave on the island dared commit the slightest act of insubordination. The Colonial Assembly spent the night in permanent session, and cooperated with Monsieur de Malartic, to enact all the necessary measures for the security of the colony. On the following day, they hastened to supply the squadron with supplies necessary for a month-long voyage, and the troops were ordered to ready themselves to set sail for Batavia, to defend [that] allied [Dutch] colony, which the English were believed to covet. Two days later…the squadron set sail amidst universal jubilation. Only the generals and the Rear Admiral de Sercey remained in Port Louis along with a single frigate[.] The loyal assistance they had lent to the interests of the colony had compromised them too much[.] Prudence demanded they not be exposed to the vengeance of the French government. Bacot and Burnel, on the night following their departure, had harangued the crew of their corvette and convinced them without much difficulty to turn toward France, where they arrived safely six or seven months after leaving it as the heads of their expedition.

The two colonies were thus miraculously saved from the greatest danger which could befall them. At first no one thought of anything but rejoicing, congratulating themselves and boasting of their success; but soon they began to reflect and realize the precariousness of their newly-conquered security, and how dangerous and unequal was the struggle on our part to maintain it against a power that had manifested the will to see our downfall (de nous perdre). The eighteen hundred troops, who had only been transported to Batavia, might return in less than a month; besides, the French government, independent of its own forces, had formidable auxiliaries, even within the colonies, in the slaves, which were seven times more numerous than the whites. Let the reader also reflect on the difficulties resulting from the complete annihilation of trade, the absolute absence of an outlet for colonial products, and the deprivation of staples from Europe, India or Madagascar and he will understand just how necessary it was for this Creole population to maintain their resignation, unity, wisdom, and courage in order to triumph over so many potential dangers. […] Essentially, it was about saving the colonies for France, in spite of her and against her, [as her] government had made a judgment based on mistaken theories and principles that were inapplicable […] the authorities and the populations of both islands were in accord and united in this same reasoning. . . .

. . . Towards the end of January 1802, we received by an aviso the unexpected news of the signing of the Peace of Amiens, and a few months later the frigate Themis brought us the confirmation of this peace and the assurance given by the the French government that it had renounced [forcing us to] execute the fatal decree . . . At the time we had learned of the Villaret-Joyeuse expedition, noting the persistence of the government of 18th Brumaire to in following in the footsteps of its predecessors, we had sent an address to Bonaparte himself, which I signed as president of the Colonial Assembly [of Réunion]. After explaining all the reasons we believed sudden and general emancipation [would pose a threat to] our own lives, we ended the address by declaring that, if the First Consul [Bonaparte] persisted in the fatal disposition of which his minister informed us, we would sooner bury ourselves under the ruins of the colony to repel his soldiers, rather than die like cowards under the blows of our slaves as had the colonists of Saint-Domingue. We were told that when the letter was presented to Bonaparte, he tore it to pieces in rage. The news that the Themis brought us proved that we had moved the heart of this lucky soldier, and that in a smart policy move, after the initial emotion had passed, he chose justice and reason over resentment.

↑ Back to Contents

Napoleon’s Proclamation on Saint-Domingue (Colonial Haiti) and Toussaint Louverture’s Reponse70

Less than two months after seizing power in the Coup of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799), which brought down the French Directory and is often taken to mark the end of the French Revolution, First Consul Bonaparte (who would become Emperor of the French in 1804) dispatched a proclamation to the citizens of Saint-Domingue. Under the previous constitution, the French colonies had been declared “integral parts of the Republic,” subject to the same constitutional law as metropolitan France, and Saint-Domingue was divided into departments. Bonaparte now announced that the colonies would instead be governed by “special laws,” invoking differences in climate, customs, interests, soil, and production between overseas territories and metropolitan France. These were much the same arguments proslavery advocates had made in the early years of the Revolution, when they successfully argued that the colonies should be exempted from metropolitan constitutional principles, effectively preserving slavery and racial hierarchy in 1790.

Paris, 4 Nivose, Year VIII (December 25, 1799)

Citizens, a constitution that wasn’t able to sustain itself against multiple violations has been replaced by a new pact destined to solidify freedom.

Article 91 states that French colonies will be ruled by special laws.

This disposition derives from the nature of things and the differences in climate.

The inhabitants of French colonies located in America, Asia, and Africa cannot be governed by the same laws.

The differences in habits, in mores, in interests; the diversity of soil, crops, and goods produced demands diverse modifications.

Far from being a subject of alarm for you, you will recognize here the wisdom and profundity of vision that animate the legislators of France.

The Consuls of the Republic, in announcing to you the new social pact, declare to you that the SACRED principles of the freedom and equality of blacks will NEVER SUFFER among you the least attack or modification.

If there are ill-intentioned men in the colony, if there are those who still have relations with enemy powers, remember BRAVE BLACKS, that the French people alone recognize your freedom and the equality of your rights.

Toussaint Louverture, decorated general and general-in-chief of the Army of Saint-Domingue, was clearly skeptical of Bonaparte’s assurances that the decrees promising racial equality (1792) and freedom from slavery (1794) would not be reversed. He refused an accompanying order that Bonaparte’s promise of freedom be inscribed on the flags of the colony’s National Guard, recognizing that slavery remained in force in Martinique, where the 1794 abolition decree had never taken effect under British occupation, and in the Mascarenes, where colonists had successfully resisted its implementation. According to the recollection of General Vincent, Toussaint replied:

It is not a circumstantial freedom conceded to ourselves alone that we want. It is the adoption of the principle that any man born red, black, or white cannot be the property of his fellow man. We are free today because we are the stronger party. The Consul maintains slavery in Martinique and Bourbon; we too will be slaves when he is the stronger.71

↑ Back to Contents

Napoleon Confirms the Maintenance of Slavery in the Mascarenes, 180272

Toussaint’s response makes clear that the survival of slavery in the Mascarenes had already become evidence in political arguments unfolding far beyond the Indian Ocean. As early as 17 October 1801, Napoleon’s colonial minister asked the governor-general of the Mascarenes to alert the habitants of the islands that slavery would be preserved there. Thus, Napoleon recognized slavery in the Indian Ocean colonies before officially restoring it empire-wide on 20 May 1802. The following document is a March 1802 printed proclamation to the colonists of the Mascarenes containing a letter from Napoleon’s Navy Minister, Denis Decrès. Dispatched in the midst of the Haitian War of Independence, it announced the maintenance of slavery on Mauritius and Réunion and praised the “genius” of the islands’ leaders for refusing to enforce French laws abolishing slavery.

PROCLAMATION to the Habitants [planters] of Isle de France [Mauritius] and Réunion Island. François-Louis Magallon Lamorlière, Divisional General, Governor-General of the Isles of France and Réunion, & Commander of all the French Establishments east of the Cape of Good Hope. Finding no further expressions to render the sentiment that I feel upon receiving the doubly happy news that was just brought to these Colonies by the corvette Le Diligent, moored this evening at Port Northwest [Port-Louis] of Isle de France…I attach here an extract of the letter that I have received from the Minister of the Navy[.] Port Northwest [Port Louis], Isle de France, 8 Messidor Year 10 of the French Republic [27 June 1802].

I have the good fortune to announce to you the Treaty of definitive Peace that was just signed at Amiens. The French Republic now has only Friends. Only a horde of Rebels in the island of St. Domingue, agitated by the delirium of an absurd ambition, wish to oppose the Republic. The Republic has given them the choice of its pardon or its vengeance. As I write you, the war that they brought onto themselves has probably ended with their defeat. Thanks be to the genius that, preserving intact the first colonies of the Isles of France and Réunion, has distanced from them the misfortunes which all the others have all too importantly experienced.

That is the General sentiment of all France; it is that intimated and proclaimed by the First Consul.

He received the diverse addresses that were sent to him by the Representative Authorities of the Habitants of the two Colonies. He perceived with sensitivity their anxieties about their present and future & he believed that these anxieties should already be extinguished by the knowledge they have received of the dispositions of the Government laid out at the beginning of this year […]

Be happy & peaceful, loyal Colonies, deserving of the fatherland. Whatever had been the rash Decrees that caused you so much alarm, their rashness alone was enough to determine their nullity in those [colonies] who had the good fortune [not] to enforce them.

The essentially conservative regime [i.e. slavery], which allowed you to prosper since your founding, will be maintained, absolutely and without modification.

Such is the firm and immutable will of the Government, & I do not have to add that it is pleasant to have to convey it.

Signed [Denis] DECRÈS

↑ Back to Contents

Opinions of a Refugee from Saint-Domingue in Louisiana

Baudry des Lozières, Louis Narcisse. Voyage à la Louisiane et sur le continent de L’Amérique septentrionale, fait dans les années 1794 à 1798. Paris: Dentu, 1802 (pp. 108-109).

Wise colonists of the East Indies, it is to your remoteness that you owe your happiness! The lack of communication prevented the plague of the West Indies from infecting you. Continue to be wise, and may your bravery always know how to combine humanity with the interests of the fatherland. Hate slavery’s abuses, but hate that bloody liberty [i.e., the abolition decree of 1794] even more; it only produced executioners and victims, violate[d] property, stole labor owed to the fatherland, and favored laziness and ignorance. Freedom is a dish not suited for all stomachs; it demands, at all times, and especially in the colonies, the wisest of preparations. So always resist the efforts of foreigners who would lead you astray (vous perdre) by the same means that were all too successful in the West Indies. Our government is wise. It desires the wellbeing of all. It will applaud your generous efforts, and your resistance to oppression will not be regarded as a rebellion against liberty, as an inhuman love for hard slavery (le dur esclavage), but as the product of a wise local strategy (combinaison des localités).

↑ Back to Contents

Observations of a Conservative Former Colonial Minister, 1802

Malouet, Pierre-Victor. Collection de mémoires sur les colonies, et particulièrement sur Saint-Domingue, par V. P. Malouet, Ancien administrateur des Colonies et de la Marine. Vol. IV. Paris: Baudouin, 1802 (pp. 46-48).

As I write this, peace has been proclaimed [between France and Britain, by the Treaty of Amiens, 25 March 1802], and [yet] French blood still flows in the torrid zone [the tropics]. A black man, a mule-driver, who had grown old in slavery [i.e. Toussaint Louverture], disputes the sovereignty of Saint-Domingue with the peacemaking hero of Europe [i.e. Napoleon Bonaparte]; his bloody banner unfurls against the victorious colors of the Republic. He allowed the whites to live under his orders in degradation; he slaughtered them as soon as the French Government tried to take back its place in the colony. So here it is, now known, the horrific secret: freedom for the blacks means domination by them (la liberté des noirs, c’est leur domination)! It means the massacre or slavery of whites, it means the burning of our fields, of our cities . . . These blacks have obviously forfeited their freedom: they must return under the yoke! Their officious defenders can no longer demand anything other than that which reason, humanity, and experience demands of property-owners: to modify servitude only in ways that do not compromise their safety. After the conquest [of Saint-Domingue], which will very likely take place, the restoration will no doubt be effected. Before I summarize the ways to go about doing so, let us examine all of our colonies and see how they have fared since the Revolution. The Isles of France and Bourbon73 are the only ones that have been protected from it, thanks to the wisdom of its planters (habitants) and administrators.

Reunion Island’s [agricultural] products will continue to be an important object of commerce for the metropole; but we must not be foolish enough to assume that the costs of guarding and policing these two islands will be less onerous in the future than they were during the war. For the last ten years, they [the islands] have been self-sufficient [in covering] garrison and administration [expenses], which, before the revolution, amounted to several million [francs].74 [In terms of] colonial government…I would like the administration of the islands of France and Reunion to serve as a model for the other colonies, for two important reasons. The colonists (habitants) were able to pay most of their public expenditures from their own [i.e. the colonies’ own] revenues; they have also adopted policing measures of such good sense and vigor, that their domestic peace (tranquillité intérieure) has not been disturbed, and subordination has been maintained in their planting gangs (ateliers) [i.e. among their slaves].

We could not do better than to leave things in this state.

↑ Back to Contents

Napoleon Interviewed in Exile on St. Helena, ca. 181675

The Memorial of Saint Helena (in French, Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène), was written by French count Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Las Cases. It was based on interviews with Napoleon Bonaparte, conducted during his exile on the British island of Saint Helena, in the South Atlantic along a trade route to the Indian Ocean. Napoleon had been forcibly imprisoned there after his final defeat by British and Coalition forces at the Battle of Waterloo (1815). The work was immensely popular when first published—in French and in English. This extract comes from an English translation and includes Napoleon’s reflections on his army’s defeat in Haiti and on the Isle de France.

Napoleon dictates to Count Las Cases on Saint Helena, c. 1855, by Hippolyte Paul Delaroche.
Napoleon dictates to Count Las Cases. “Napoleon at St Helena,” oil painting, c. 1855, by Hippolyte Paul Delaroche. Royal Collection Trust.

[From Volume 1] [Discussing the abbé Gregoire…] If [Gregoire] be driven from France, he must take refuge in St. Domingo. The friend, the advocate, the eulogist of the negroes will be a god, or a saint, among them. St. Domingo naturally became the next subject of our conversation. I had, in my younger days, seen that colony in its most flourishing state. The Emperor put many questions to me, and made himself acquainted with all the circumstances relating to that remote period. When his enquiries were over, he said, ‘I shall, no doubt, astonish you: but I am convinced, even from your own statements, that the island has not, at this moment, lost a third, certainly not one half of its value, and that, in a short time, it will recover all its former prosperity.’ I should not, in reality, be surprised at it; for all the absurd stories, circulated in Europe respecting France, ought to put us on our guard against those which might be safely told with regard to St. Domingo. The Emperor said that, after the restoration, the French government had sent out emissaries and proposals which were laughed at by the negroes. ‘As to myself,’ he added, ‘on my return from Elba,76 I would have settled all differences with them; I would have recognized their independence, contented myself with some factories, like those on the coast of Africa, endeavoured to draw them the to the mother country, and to establish a kind of family intercourse with them, which might, in my opinion, have been easily accomplished.’

‘I have to reproach myself with the attempt made upon the colony during the consulship. The design of reducing it by force was a great error. I ought to have been satisfied with governing it through the medium of Toussaint. Peace with England was not sufficiently consolidated, and the territorial wealth I should have acquired by its reduction would have served but to enrich our enemies.’ He had, he observed, the greater reason to reproach himself with this fault, because he had foreseen its failure, and it was executed against his inclination. He had solely yielded to the opinion of the council of state and his ministers, hurried along, as they were by the clamours of the colonists, who formed a considerable party at Paris, and were, besides, he said, either nearly all royalists or in the pay of the English faction. The Emperor assured us that the army which had been sent out consisted but of sixteen thousand men, and was quite sufficient. The failure of the expedition was solely to be attributed to accidental circumstances, such as the yellow fever, the death of the Commander-in-chief, but above all to his blunders, a new war, &c.

‘The arrival of the Captain General Leclere [sic],’ said the Emperor, ‘was followed by complete success, but he had not the skill to ensure its continuance. Had he followed the secret instructions which I drew up for him myself, he would have saved many lives and spared himself great mortifications. I ordered him, among other things, to associate with himself men of colour, that he might the better keep the Blacks in subjection; and, as soon as he had reduced the Colony, to send to France all the black Generals and superior officers, to be placed at the disposal of the minister at war, who would have employed them in their respective ranks. This measure, which would have deprived the Negro population of its chiefs and its leaders, would have been a decisive stroke, without wounding in their persons the military laws and regulations. But Leclere did just the contrary: he kept down the people of colour, and bestowed his confidence on the black Generals. In consequence, as it might naturally be expected, he was duped by the latter, found himself beset with difficulties, and the Colony was lost. At first, he would not send to France Toussaint, who had filled a distinguished post there; but after some time he found himself obliged to order his apprehension and to send him prisoner to us. Malevolence did not fail to paint this act under the odious colours of tyranny and perfidy, representing Toussaint as an innocent victim deserving of the deepest interest; and yet he was eminently criminal.

‘Toussaint was not a man destitute of merit; though certainly he was not what people attempted to describe him at the time. His character, besides, was ill calculated to inspire real confidence; he had given us serious causes of complaint. We must always have distrusted him. He was chiefly guided by an officer of engineers or artillery, director of the fortifications of St. Domingo. (Colonel Vincent). That officer had come to France before Leclere’s expedition, and conferences were, for a long time, held with him. He exerted himself very much to prevent the attempt, and described with great precision, all its difficulties, without pretending, however, that it was impossible.’ The Emperor thought that the Bourbons [the Restoration Monarchy of France that succeeded Napoleon] might succeed in reducing St. Domingo if they employed force; but on that subject the result of arms was not to be calculated upon; it was rather the result of commerce and of grand political views. Three or four hundred millions of capital transferred from France to a remote country; an indefinite period for reaping the fruits of such a sacrifice; the very great certainty of seeing them engrossed by the English, or swallowed up by revolutions, &c.: those were the points for consideration. The Emperor concluded with saying, ‘The colonial system, which we have witnessed, is closed for us, as well as for the whole continent of Europe; we must give it up, and henceforth confine ourselves to the free navigation of the seas, and the complete liberty of universal exchange.’

[From Volume 2] An English Colonel, arrived from the Cape on his return from the Isle of France, came in the morning and addressed himself to me, to try to get an introduction to the Emperor. The Admiral had only allowed his vessel to remain two or three hours in the road. Having prevailed on the Emperor to receive him at four o’clock, he assured me that he would rather miss his vessel than lose such an opportunity. The Emperor was not very well, he had passed several hours in his bath; at four he received the Colonel.

The Emperor put many questions to him concerning the Isle of France, lately ceded to the English; it seems that its prosperity and its commerce suffer from its change of sovereignty. After the departure of the Colonel, being alone with the Emperor in the garden, I told him that his person seemed to have remained very dear to the inhabitants of the Isle of France; that the Colonel had informed me that the name of Napoleon was never pronounced there but with commiseration. It was precisely on the day of a great festival in the colony, that they learned his departure from France and his arrival at Plymouth; the theatre was to be particularly attractive: the news having arrived during the day, in the evening there was not a single colonist, either white or of colour, in the house: there were only some English, who were exceedingly confused and irritated at the circumstance. The Emperor listened to me. ‘It is quite plain,’ said he, after some moments’ silence; ‘this proves that the inhabitants of the Isle of France have continued French. I am the country; they love it: it has been wounded in my person, they are grieved at it.’ I added that the change of dominion restraining their expressions, they durst not propose his health publicly; but that the Colonel said they never neglected it notwithstanding; they drank to him, this word had become consecrated to Napoleon. These details touched him. ‘Poor Frenchmen!’ he said with emphasis, ‘Poor People! Poor Nation! I deserved all that, I loved thee! But thou, thou surely didst not deserve all the ills that press upon thee! Ah! thou didst merit well that one should devote himself to thee! But what infamy, what baseness, what degradation, it must be confessed, I had about me!’ And, addressing himself to me, he added: ‘I do not speak here of your friends of the Fauxbourg-Saint-Germain; for with respect to them it is another matter.’

[From Volume 3] After dinner, the Emperor had [books by the authors] Buffon and Valmont de Bomare brought to him. He looked at what these authors say respecting the diversities in the human species, the difference between a negro and a white; but he was not much satisfied with what he found in them on the subject. He retired early to his apartment: he was unwell.

↑ Back to Contents

Perspectives of People of Color

On 30 July 1799, a man named L’Espérance, described as a “free black,” wound up on Réunion Island after a long journey that had taken him from his native island of Mauritius—about 150 miles northeast of Réunion and also a French slave colony, to Europe, and back. He introduced himself to Claude Poncet, a white colonist on Réunion, and told him that he had met his son, while both served on the crew of a privateering vessel that fitted out of Mauritius. They were captured by an English cruiser and taken to Ndswani Island, in the Comoros, where they were held in bondage as mercenaries by the sultan of the island. During a conversation with L’Espérance and a free black cobbler from Réunion, Poncet learned that L’Espérance’s adventures had also taken him to Paris, where he had lived for 12 years and even claimed to have attended sessions of the National Convention. Perhaps he witnessed the 4 February 1794 speeches of the black and mixed-race delegates from Saint-Domingue that prompted the body’s vote to abolish slavery (in particular, those of Jean-Baptiste Belley, a black army officer, and Jean-Baptiste Mills, of mixed race), because L’Espérance claimed to see the “créoles of St Domingue…represent to the Convention that they ought not to be governed by whites, that they were [numerous] enough to govern themselves,” and added that “the Creoles of [Réunion] and Ile de France were damned fools (de fichues bêtes) not to do the same.” He also revealed that upon his return to Port-Louis, the capital of Mauritius and administrative capital of the Mascarenes, the authorities believed him “too knowledgeable about all that happened in Paris and ordered him to remain on the vessel on which he had arrived.” This was probably how he ended up on Réunion.

Poncet, having heard all of this, rushed to report L’Espérance to the local Committee of Public Safety, which had been set up several years earlier to snoop out rumors of emancipation or of the unfolding events of the Haitian Revolution, which officials in the Mascarenes called the “troubles in America.” The local legislature, the Colonial Assembly, had given the Committee of Public Safety free reign to implement the tightest surveillance and security measures it saw fit; under the police state of the Committee, all ports on Réunion but the capital, Saint-Denis, were closed. All ships were to be boarded and inspected stem to stern for scraps of newspaper—anything that might bring news of goings-on in the Atlantic. Its crews were interviewed, and often if they included black sailors from the Americas, they were not allowed to come ashore.

Despite such surveillance, cases like L’Espérance’s are not exceptional in the archives of the Mascarenes. Numerous well-informed, well-traveled individuals managed to infiltrate the subaltern networks of the islands, expanding what Julius Scott called the “common wind”—the spread by word-of-mouth of news of racial revolution and emancipation—well beyond the Atlantic world.77 The records of the secretive Committee of Public Safety are full of rumors, songs, and overheard conversations. A free black man arrested on Réunion on charges of “troubling the peace,” had been heard telling his friend that he ought to “slit the throats” of the white men who ratted him out, “as they did in America”–local shorthand for the West Indies. As for L’Espérance, his fate cannot be traced beyond his brief mentions in the surveillance archives, but he was likely rounded up and deported like the dozens of other individuals deemed too dangerous for their knowledge of goings-on in the revolutionary Atlantic.

Only a few months later, in November, the colonial government would arrest several slaves, found guilty of a plot to poison their masters in a remote parish. The execution of the leaders was perhaps the most brutal in the history of the island, where public executions were rare: they were tied to the ends of cannon and shot before a crowd of their alleged accomplices. There is no indication, however, in their interrogations that they had been inspired by the example of Saint-Domingue, as local white officials so often insisted they would be. In fact, unlike in the Americas, there is no evidence that the Haitian Revolution directly inspired sedition among slaves in the Mascarenes. But to count only those events that we can say were directly definitively inspired by the uprisings in the West Indies is to miss the multiple and multifarious echoes of the intertwined French and Haitian Revolutions in the Indian Ocean colonies. The spirit of resistance inspired by events in the Revolutionary Atlantic was indeed pervasive among subaltern groups, but it was far from uniform.

An Enslaved Woman Testifies on Bourbon Island, 179378

In March 1793, an enslaved domestic servant named Jeanne was called into the municipal offices of Saint-Pierre for questioning. A white creole man, Olivier Payet, had reported an encounter with Jeanne in the street as she was walking to market to purchase fouquets, a kind of seabird. According to Payet, Jeanne said to him: “So, Monsieur Olivier, we’re having a war on Easter to get our freedom?” She explained her confusion upon hearing the bells ringing after leaving church on Sunday. The “primary assembly,” composed of prominent white men in the parish (elected by their peers) was convening. Someone told Jeanne that they were to discuss an emancipation decree that had lately arrived from France. In the remainder of her testimony, Jeanne reveals not only the surprising extent to which such rumors were circulating, but also her own despair that their long-hoped-for freedom might never come. Jeanne gave her deposition in the creole dialect of the island. Here she recalls what she said to the slaves in the street that day:

I said, ah, people have been talking about giving freedom to the blacks for a long time now. Stop talking about it, why don’t you. I would be happy, of course, but it’s no use, right? We are worth too much money to them. Would they just give us freedom like that[?] No, they would sooner wage a war than give us our freedom. … We always hear talk of freedom, freedom. We would be happy to have it, if they give it[.] That’s not to say we would wish ill on anyone.

↑ Back to Contents

Memoirs of a Sailor from Isle de France (Early 19th Century)79

A remarkable illustrated manuscript survives in the Carnegie Library on the island of Mauritius. It was written by a free man of color named Jean-Baptiste Tabardin, who spent much of his youth (like many in his milieu) aboard the privateering vessels that shipped out of Port-Louis (Mauritius) and preyed on British and other enemy vessels. These extracts of Tabardin’s memoir recall his imprisonment aboard a prison hulk in Portsmouth, England, following his capture by the British Navy. Tabardin eventually secured his release from prison by answering a call for recruits: he entered into British naval service as a captain’s butler. In the extract below, he describes a moment in which he hesitated before defecting to the British, concerned that he would be seen as unpatriotic or, worse, as a traitor to the French nation. He recalls a letter transmitted to him by a relative.

[p. 116] Second Letter of Stanislas Moutou [Tabardin’s cousin and fellow prisoner-of-war]:

“You say you were surprised by my letter and shocked by my first. You seem to truly love your country (patrie) [i.e., France] and wish to suffer for her. I was like you, my dear cousin, but that has passed. Yes, one must love one’s country when one is recognized as her child and as a citizen. But tell me this—since when, in your country, have you been considered a French citizen?

I would agree that you are: you were born under the French flag, received a French education, profess her [France’s] religion, and have served as a soldier, sailor, etc. I think you must truly love your motherland (mère-patrie). But are you not repulsed by the injustice that reigns, the vexations and inequities of your country’s laws? Would you deny that they are wholly arbitrary? In truth, there are two sets of laws: one for the benefit of whites, the other to your detriment.

Must I explain everything to you, dear cousin? A whole stack of paper would not suffice. Do you not recall the ban, published in the newspapers and posted in all public places, signed by Bonaparte—who, in reality, may have known nothing about it? … It prohibited Black men, mulatto men, and men of color from setting foot on French soil.”80

“Furthermore, what gratitude has this Nation shown you for enduring so many years of misery? I believe I have said enough, my dear cousin. As for me, I have seen enough of the world to know that if a foreign nation treats me better than my own—or at least, no worse—then, in the absence of a legitimate king, I will work and fight for whoever pays me. Farewell.”

This last letter, though I was uncertain whether I could fully approve of it, nevertheless opened my eyes somewhat. And indeed, weary from imprisonment, I began to consider enlisting [in the British navy], though always with a certain reluctance.

A few days later, I watched as a boat departed carrying my cousin, his friend, and some whites as well. Many of the prisoners began hooting and jeering (crier charivari), hurling insults at them, while others applauded, saying they had done the right thing. […]

One fine day, they came asking whether there was a young man willing to embark as the domestic servant of a captain about to take command of the Centurion, a vessel armed with fifty [cannon] and fitted out as a transport bound for Halifax [Nova Scotia], where it would remain for several months before returning to England. I stepped forward.

[p. 171] [Much later, while in the employ of the British captain, the author recalls being received as the guest of a white British family in England]

A messenger came on behalf of Monsieur and Madame to ask whether I would come down for breakfast or if he should bring it to my room. For a moment, I truly believed they were about to proclaim me King of England, in my furnished bedroom, where I had already been granted the title of gentleman.81 [Back home on Isle de France,] the cart drivers and wagoners whom I paid to transport my goods were also addressed as “Sirs,” whereas I, an honest property owner of unquestionable integrity, was always referred to as le nommé (the so-called).82 But thank God, my turn has come at last, and that is how all things change; for in this other hemisphere, I become a Gentleman and take my place among the “Sirs.”

[The first mention of the Haitian Revolution in Tabardin’s memoir appears in a curious case of mistaken identity]

[pp. 185-193]

Singular Meeting With a Young Man Who Wanted to Adopt Me As His Brother Despite My Wishes.

A Creole from Saint-Domingue, the illegitimate son of a certain Mr. Carteré, was the younger brother of a Jean-Baptiste who was about six years old at the time of the slave revolt in that country—the period when Mr. Carteré departed for France. He took his eldest son, Jean-Baptiste, with him, leaving the younger child in the care of his mother, with the promise that he would return to the island or at least send for the boy once peace was restored.

The unrest, instead of subsiding, only grew worse, to the point that the country remained entirely in the hands of the rebels. As a result, no one had heard any news of Mr. Carteré or his son, Jean-Baptiste, for several years.

The youngest brother, about whom I write here, grew into adulthood and began traveling—first from island to island, and then, as circumstances brought him to France, he recalled his father, Carteré, and his older brother, Jean-Baptiste. He especially remembered that the latter closely resembled him, as his mother had always told him. This youngest son, named Pamphile, was around twenty-six years old when I met him. He had no recollection of his father or brother, but, having so often heard descriptions of their likeness, he imagined that he might, by chance, one day encounter at least one of them. It is worth noting that this young man, aware that Creoles from Saint-Domingue were not held in high regard in France, was passing himself off as a New Yorker.

After visiting several cities in France without the satisfaction of encountering his dear relatives, Pamphile eventually embarked on a privateering vessel (un corsaire). The ship fell into enemy hands and was taken to England, where our young man—having enlisted in the service [i.e., the British Navy] like so many others—deserted and found himself aboard a [British East India] Company ship in a convoy bound for China.

While the ships were anchored at Canton, the crews were permitted to visit one another every Sunday. One day, several sailors from [Pamphile’s] ship, who had come aboard ours for a stroll, remarked that I bore a striking resemblance to him. They said that, in terms of complexion, hair, and height, one might have thought we were brothers. This remark left no impression on me, as I was certain I had no older brother.

However, after returning to their ship, these same men told Pamphile about me and assured him that one would swear he was my brother—if he had one. This story revived in him the idea of finding his brother, a notion he had nearly forgotten. He then asked anyone visiting our ship to inquire about my name and country.

They reported back that my name was Jean-Baptiste and that I was a Creole from Isle de France. He needed no further proof—”He’s my brother!” he cried. As for my supposed country of origin, he found an easy explanation: he assumed I claimed to be from Isle de France for the same reason he told people he was from New York.

He put in a request to come aboard our ship the following Sunday. When he arrived, he was convinced he had found his long-lost brother, Jean-Baptiste. I was, more or less, the right age for the role—about two years older than Pamphile. Approaching me, he shook my hand and said, “Excuse me, dear compatriot, I came specifically to see you, and I have something to tell you.” Even as he spoke, he drew closer and embraced me warmly. Not yet understanding what this was all about, I was at first taken aback by such a display of familiarity from this young man. I began to suspect he had a somewhat whimsical or eccentric nature. Nevertheless, I invited him to join us for a meal at our post, and he accepted. However, he ate almost nothing, drinking only a few swigs of grog.

We had barely finished lunch when he asked me to join him on the upper deck, and I must admit that his enthusiasm piqued my curiosity. As soon as we were alone, he spoke to me in these words: “My dear fellow, I am going to reveal something to you as a good friend and a brother, and I hope you will do the same for me, hiding nothing. I have always claimed to be from New York, but in truth, I am a Creole from Saint-Domingue. You are the only person I am confiding this to because I believe you are from my country—and I even believe you are my brother, Jean-Baptiste.” He then recounted his story, and when he had finished, he begged me, in the name of friendship, to remove my mask as well. For a moment, I could not help but admire the fraternal tenderness that made him so eager to find his brother in me. However, I tried to disabuse him of the idea, assuring him that I was from Isle de France and had never been to Saint-Domingue. He looked thoughtful and dismayed for a moment, then, emerging from his reverie, he asked me the following questions: “What was your mother’s name?” — Annette Mignone. “You have no brothers?” — Pardon me, I have one brother named Paris and a sister named Marion.

Note, reader, that in the conversations his mother had with him about his brother, she had told him that by the age of six, this brother had already begun to read well, as their father, Mr. Carteré, had given him lessons for fun. And note also that, by a singular coincidence, I had also had a teacher or tutor—a soldier—named Carteré. In his rather disjointed narrative, Pamphile spoke frequently of his father but never named him. Then, after hearing me mention my mother, my brother, and so on, he looked me in the eyes, let out a deep sigh, and asked: “You never knew someone named Carteré?” — Pardon, my first tutor had that name.

Oh! At my response, the man was in a frenzy—the grog had truly gone to his head. “You are my brother!” he cried out with great joy. “No doubt about it! And yet you refuse to acknowledge it! While I would give my entire salary from this voyage and never part from him!” He was like a man in despair; he even shed tears.

To calm him down, I said: “Listen, comrade, sometimes friends are worth more than family. From what I see of your character, I believe we will get along perfectly. We are both Creoles, far from our homeland—what is stopping us from meeting up when we find ourselves in London, loving each other like brothers, and helping one another in times of need? From this moment on, I will think of you as a brother, and you can count on my friendship.”

[Tabardin and Pamphile visited each other regularly while their respective ships were moored at Canton]

[p. 200] [Near the end of his manuscript, Tabardin reflects on the British conquest of Mauritius in 1810, which ended nearly a century of French colonization on the island…]

…I do not care whether I am under English, French, or even Portuguese rule, so long as I enjoy the rights of a free man. I do not believe I possessed them under the rule of Général Decaen [Napoleon’s Captain-General of Mauritius]. According to him and his apostles, justice was not owed to people of color; they claimed it would grant them too much license. By this, I do not mean to suggest that the current [British] government grants me the entirety of my rights—far from it. But in some respects, I do find myself more at ease. I am content wherever justice reigns and wherever I find honest people. That is my country, and they are my brothers.

Go find me one of those black men from the depths of Négritie [a historical region in Eastern Africa] to rule over me; if he is moral, just, and benevolent, I would be honored to obey his laws.

Medal commemorating the British capture of Isle de France and surrounding islands, highlighting the role of Sepoys, circa 1811. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.
Medal commemorating the British capture of Isle de France and surrounding islands, highlighting the role of Sepoys (Indian soldiers who fought for the British), circa 1811. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

↑ Back to Contents

Autobiographical Letter, Lislet-Geoffroy

Jean-Baptiste Lislet Geoffroy (also known as Geoffroy L’islet, 1755-1836) was an engineer, cartographer, and corresponding member of the prestigious Paris Academy of Sciences. He was born on Bourbon Island (Réunion) the illegitimate son of a French officer and an enslaved West African woman from a high-ranking family. At only 25 years old, Geoffroy-Lislet had become a valuable employee of the royal engineering department, based on the neighboring island of Isle de France (Mauritius). Writing on his behalf, the governor-general requested that Geoffroy-Lislet be given an official commission from the Royal Court at Versailles: “I have the honor of forwarding to you [the Minister of the Navy] an address from Mister Lislet, a Creole Mulatto…employed by the engineering [department] of this colony as a draftsman. [He requests a] letter from the king to confirm him in this position, with no raise in pay. Mr. Lislet is a very rare subject, infinitely useful where he is employed. … In any case, the letter he is requesting would flatter him and would lift him out of the class into which he was born and to which he is superior, through both his knowledge and distinguished conduct and sentiments. . . . He is the best of the men of his kind in this colony and perhaps [the world].”83 The governor-general’s letter suggests that Geoffroy-Lislet could achieve greater social parity with whites through an official document from the king confirming him as an employee on the royal payroll—a rank typically out of reach to so-called free people of color. It is unclear whether the commission was ever granted, however, and Geoffroy-Lislet was censused as part of the “coloured” population of Mauritius (under British rule beginning in 1810) until his death in 1836. The following letter was apparently written that year by Geoffroy-Lislet himself and addressed to a colleague in Paris (likely a fellow member of the French Academy of Sciences). It offers details about his life and career and includes reaction to the era of the French and Haitian Revolutions. This copy appears in a nineteenth-century volume on the biographies of famous scientists.84

Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Lislet-Geoffroy by Albert Alexander Smith, 1930s. Watercolor. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
Albert Alexander Smith, portrait of Jean-Baptiste Lislet-Geoffroy, 1930s. Watercolor. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. See also the miniature restored in 1998 by Emmanuel Richon.

I was born on the island of Bourbon, August 23, 1755, to Niama, négresse of Guinea. She was the granddaughter of Tonca Niama, king of Galam, who was captured in a war and massacred along with all the males of his family, according to a custom that is quite common in those countries. My mother, then about nine years old, was reduced to slavery and sold to the [French East India] Company’s agents, who sent her to Isle de France in around 1730. Mr. Geoffroy obtained [permission] from Mr. David, governor of that colony, to free her. She followed him to Bourbon, where she cared for him in his old age. Mr. Geoffroy wanted to take care of me in my childhood and to raise me himself; he taught me the basic principles of drawing and mathematics; he also wanted me to take Latin, a subject in which I made little progress. As I had no fortune, he entered me into the service in my fifteenth year, and soon after, I went to Isle de France, where the chevalier de Tromelin, former rear admiral, believing me well-disposed for the Navy, employed me at the construction site of the new port, which he was in charge of.

While I was there, with books and instruments at my disposal, I applied myself to the study of mathematics and astronomy. Not being able to procure teachers, Mr. de Tromelin wished to assist me with his advice and encouragement. I owe the few talents that I was able to acquire and my advancement in the service to this generous mentor. Out of gratitude and loyalty, I embarked with him at the beginning of the war of 1778 as an assistant navigator (aide-pilote). In 1780, I received a job as a draftsman in military engineering on Isle de France. On the 23rd of August 1786, I was elected to become a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. I sent to this learned society twelve years of meteorological observations and a series of experiments on the strength and weight of the various kinds of wood in this colony, first conducted by Mr. Malavois, which I was instructed to complete after his departure. In 1787, the Governor General sent me to Sainte-Luce Bay, on the south end of the island of Madagascar; I mapped this bay and the country up to fifteen leagues inland, where I visited the thermal waters of the Amboule Valley; I sent these waters to the duc de La Rochefoucauld, in Paris. My journal was printed in Modern Travels[.] In 1788, I was charged with mapping a part of Isle de France; this work was sent to the depot in Paris, and earned me a commission as engineer-geographer here.

View from the Deck of the Upton Castle Transport, of the British Army Landing at Isle de France, November 1810. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
View from the Deck of the Upton Castle Transport, of the British Army Landing at Isle de France, November 1810. Painted in 1814. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

During the difficult times of the [French] Revolution, I was fortunate enough to help save this colony from the misfortunes and disasters that befell our Occidental colonies [i.e., the Antilles]. True to my principles, I wanted to earn the trust of my leaders and of the people of color, whose assemblies I chaired, and we avoided the unfortunate events that threatened to befall us in 1794.

At that time, Mr. Geoffroy adopted me by an official act [signed by a notary], and I took his name; since then, I have gone by Lislet-Geoffroy.

That same year, the administrators-general put me in charge of a mission in the Seychelles; I made observations there on the diverse productions of the country and on the bays, harbors, atolls (ilots) and dangers of this archipelago. Upon my return, General Malartic [Governor-General] made me assistant officer (officier adjoint) in the military engineering [department]. Captain-General Decaen, who took command of the Eastern Colonies in 1803 [under Napoleon Bonaparte], promoted me to the rank of captain. After the capture of Isle de France [by the British Navy], he appointed me head of the engineering commission to oversee the transfer of fortifications and everything that was part of the engineering [department][.] Afterward, it was not possible for me to go to France according to the terms of the surrender of the island[.]Being then Fifty-five years old, having had the misfortune of losing my wife in 1804, the mother of our two young children, the objects of all my care and solicitude.85

Under the English government, Mr. Farquhar, governor of Isle de France,86 sent a corvette to visit the coasts of the northern part of Madagascar, and in particular, the bay and harbor of Louiqui. I was part of the commission that he appointed to that effect, and I was charged with everything having to do with geography. That voyage provided me the opportunity to make new very-important observations, and even allowed me to make considerable corrections to [my] map of the great island, and to finish the one of the northeast archipelago [the Seychelles?], which I had been working on for a long time.

An engraving was ordered made in England by the quartermaster general of the particular map of Isle de France that I created (dressée) with much care, and whose accuracy I can guarantee. I sent a copy in the mail to Paris in 1808, but it seems that it was taken en route.

↑ Back to Contents

Historical Writings of a Journalist from Isle de France (Late 19th Century)87

Jean Evenor Hitié was born in Port-Louis, Mauritius on June 19, 1806, four years before the French colony was conquered by the British. He received a primary education before becoming a baker, businessman, theater director, sugar plantation owner, and rum-maker (guildivier). In 1863, he founded a newspaper, Le Progrès Colonial (Colonial Progress), through which he became a spokesperson for free men of color, a population which had suffered increasing discrimination from the white oligarchy. Late in life, in 1897, he penned the first volume of his Histoire de Maurice (History of Mauritius), derived in large part from interviews with his contemporaries; no second volume was ever published (and no manuscript has ever been found). Hitié died in 1901.88

Numa Desjardins (1826–?). Champ de Mars, Port Louis, 1880. Oil on canvas, 60 x 98 cm. The diversity of the population in late-19th-century Mauritius is visible in the foreground.
Numa Desjardins. Champ de Mars, Port Louis, 1880. Oil on canvas, 60 x 98 cm. Düsseldorf Auction House.

(page 99) Let’s not forget that in 1798 and 1800, the question of the [racial] populations was so firmly established that men of color, though armed and in greater numbers, dared not ask for anything. They did everything they could for the good of the country, yet nothing was granted to them; there wasn’t even a government school where children of color could receive the first elements of the French language. Amidst all the disorders taking place, the Colonial Assembly founded the Colonial College, which today bears the name Royal College. This institution was created in January 1791, with more than four hundred students, all of them from the so-called white population. At that time, when the French were constantly speaking of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the French colonists of the colonies held the unfortunate men of color, with whom most of them shared the same paternity, under the most tyrannical yoke.

When we reflect upon the events in St. Domingue, Martinique, and even Bourbon itself, and as we witness the ongoing developments in Cuba in 1895, we are astounded by the patience of the men of color in our colony. Those of us who have lived through the administrations from General Decaen’s time to the present day will convey to our contemporaries the [historical] plight of men of color in Mauritius. Armed with irrefutable evidence that we will present to our readers, we shall not hesitate to speak plainly… From 1790 to 1810, the colored population was predominantly composed of true mulattoes—offspring of Europeans, African women, and women from Madras in Asia. They were well-versed in our [French] arts and sciences, and they absorbed our customs and traditions. It must be admitted that what [the first British governor] Farquhar did here was markedly different from the conduct of some of our French governors on Isle de France, such as Governor d’Entrecateaux [sic], who displayed an indifference toward the envoys of [Mysore emperor] Tippoo Saib that bordered on contempt.

Besides the great Labourdonnais, who showed justice toward mixed-blooded men (hommes de sang-mêlé) and Africans, all the French governors of Isle de France, without exception, allowed themselves to succumb to […] prejudices.

For instance, consider the history of Saint Domingue, the most prosperous colony in existence by 1780. Examine the events in Martinique, Guadeloupe, Bourbon, and Mauritius, during its time as the Isle de France, and you will discern the validity of our perspective. […] It was the French colonists themselves who bore sole responsibility for the downfall of all French colonies. Their insistence on upholding irrational prejudices within these colonies relegated the entire French empire to a subordinate position compared [to Britain’s].

↑ Back to Contents

  1. Jane Hooper and David Eltis, “The Indian Ocean in Transatlantic Slavery,” Slavery & Abolition 34, no. 3 (November 2012): 353–75. ↩

  2. Richard B. Allen, European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1850 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2015). ↩

  3. Robert Harms, “Early Globalization and the Slave Trade | YaleGlobal Online,” 2003, https://archive-yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/early-globalization-and-slave-trade ↩

  4. Frédéric Régent, La France et ses esclaves: de la colonisation aux abolitions, 1620-1848 (Paris: Pluriel, 2012); Yves Peron, “La population des départements français d’outre-mer, Population 21, no. 1 (1966): 99–132. ↩

  5. Île de France and its dependencies counted 49,080 slaves in 1797. Data from Robert René Kuczynski, Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire, (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), II: 758. Bourbon counted 44,800 in the same year. Louis Maillard, Notes sur l’Île de la Réunion (Paris: E. Dentu, 1862), I: 295. ↩

  6. Notice by the “Comité Exécutif” of Réunion (26 February 1801) C4/153 (Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer) Documents divers sur les colonies de l’Océan Indien ↩

  7. Notice by the “Comité Exécutif” of Réunion (26 February 1801) C4/153 (Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer) Documents divers sur les colonies de l’Océan Indien ↩

  8. Joseph de Villèle, Mémoires et correspondance du comte de Villèle, vol. I (Paris: Perrin et Cie., 1889). ↩

  9. Claude Wanquet, La France et la première abolition de l’esclavage: 1794-1802 : le cas des colonies orientales, Ile de France (Maurice) et la Réunion (Paris: Karthala, 1998), 345. ↩

  10. Claude Wanquet, “Baco and Burnel’s Attempt to Implement Abolition in the Mascarenes in 1796: Analysis of a Failure and Its Consequences,” in The Abolitions of Slavery: From Léger Félicité Sonthonax to Victor Schoelcher, 1793, 1794, 1848, ed. Marcel Dorigny, The Slave Route Series (New York : Paris: Berghahn Books ; Unesco Publishing, 2003), 197–206. ↩

  11. Official Report of Commissioners Baco and Burnel to the Executive Directory, 30 September 1796. [Marked ‘Copie par M. Raspeau, September 1859.’] Archives Nationales d’Outre-mer. C4/110, ff. 12-18. ↩

  12. Claude Wanquet, “La Perception des problèmes de couleur dans les Mascareignes pendant la Révolution et le syndrome dominguois,” in La révolution française et Haïti: Filiations, ruptures, nouvelles dimensions, ed. Michel Hector, vol. II, 2 vols. (Port-au-Prince: Deschamps, 1995), 237–81. ↩

  13. Louis Narcisse Baudry des Lozières, Voyage à la Louisiane et sur le continent de L’Amérique septentrionale, fait dans les années 1794 à 1798 (Paris: Dentu, 1802), 108–9; Pierre-Victor Malouet, Collection de mémoires sur les colonies, et particulièrement sur Saint-Domingue, par V. P. Malouet, Ancien administrateur des Colonies et de la Marine, vol. IV (Paris: Baudouin, 1802), 46–48. ↩

  14. Minister of the Navy and the Colonies (Denis Decrès) to General Magallon, Governor-General of the Isles of France and Réunion; dated Paris, 6 Germinal Year 10 [27 March 1802] (rec’d 20 June 1802). Archives départementales de La Réunion L331. ↩

  15. For more on French India and French slave trading in the Indian Ocean, see Danna Agmon, A Colonial Affair: Commerce, Conversion, and Scandal in French India (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017); Sue Peabody, Madeleine’s Children: Family, Freedom, Secrets, and Lies in France’s Indian Ocean Colonies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Allen, European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1850. ↩

  16. “Mémoire signifié pour le nommé Francisque, Indien de nation, néophyte de l’Eglise Romain, contre le Sieur Allain-François-Ignace Brignon, se disant Ecuyer, Appellant.” Edited and translated by Sue Peabody, in Sue Peabody and Keila Grinberg, eds., Slavery, Freedom, and the Law in the Atlantic World: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007), 45–51. ↩

  17. Pierre H. Boulle, “Les non-Blancs de l’océan Indien en France,” in Race et esclavage dans la France de l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Editions Perrin, 2007), 140–54. ↩

  18. Centre d’Information et de Documentation de l’Inde francophone. Lettres du C.I.D.I.F. (Lettre no. 36, pp. 131-134). 15 mars 1793 - Interdiction de la présence d’esclaves à Pondichéry. archived CIDIF page ↩

  19. L’adjoint de la 5eme Division de la Marine to Citoyen Lescallier, Paris, 13 March 1793, folio 33. Archives nationales d’Outre-mer, Série B, 224. ↩

  20. Probably a reference to Odisha, a coastal region north of Pondicherry. ↩

  21. Through a mixture of documentary, linguistic, archeological, and genetic evidence, scholars are beginning to reconstruct that story. The population of Madagascar today is the product of mixing between the first settlers, Austronesians (likely from the Banda islands of southeast Asia), and those who arrived later, including additional waves of Austronesians, Persians, Arabs, Africans, and Europeans. Islamized groups, mostly from southeast Asia, began arriving on Madagascar’s east coast in the 12th century or earlier. Among the “Islamized” groups that arrived on the east coast of Madagascar in the 12th century: the Zafibrahim (“Descendants of Abraham”), whose origins remain unclear, followed by the Zafiraminia, who left a lasting mark on the social fabric of the island. In addition to the clear Islamic influences evident in the story told to Flacourt, there are echoes of ancient Sanskrit myths describing and justifying the three varna (Hindu caste groups), as laid out in the Rigveda. At first glance, this might reinforce the claims in the Zafiraminia’s own written chronicles (continued in the “Sora-be” tradition of the Antemoro people) that they hailed directly from Mecca (on the Arabian peninsula) or Mangalore (southwest India). More likely, the Zafiraminia came directly from southeast Asia (the word “Ramini” was a former name for Sumatra); the literary synthesis of “Hindu” and “Muslim” influences evident in the story told to Flacourt also characterize those of southeast Asian chronicles. These were carried in oral or written form from what is now Indonesia to the East Coast of Madagascar between the 12th and 14th centuries. See Solofo Randrianja and Stephen Ellis, Madagascar: A Short History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009); Paul Ottino, “La hiérarchie sociale et l’alliance dans le royaume de Matacassi,” Bulletin de l’Académie malgache IV (1973): 53–89; Jean Aimé Rakotoarisoa, Mille ans d’occupation humaine dans le Sud-Est de Madagascar: Anosy, une île au milieu des terres (Paris: Harmattan, 1998). ↩

  22. Etienne de Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar , composée par le sieur de Flacourt,… avec une relation de ce qui s’est passé ès années 1655, 1656 et 1657… (Paris: G. Clouzier, 1661). Cited in Nivoelisoa Galibert, À l’angle de la Grande Maison : les lazaristes de Madagascar, correspondance avec Vincent de Paul : 1648-1661 (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2007), 33. ↩

  23. Note: in my translations, I do not use the English “Negro” when translating the French term “Nègre,” as many scholars do, as the meaning of the one does not necessarily map neatly onto the other. Very often in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the term negre was used to designate an enslaved captive of African origin (although sometimes not). For more on the problems involved with the translation of the term “negre,” see Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003). ↩

  24. Charles Nacquart, Priest of the [Congregation of the] Mission to Vincent de Paul, Letter No. VI. Fort-Dauphin, 5 February 1650. Quoted in Galibert, À l’angle de la Grande Maison, 53. ↩

  25. Etienne de Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar: Nouvelle édition annotée, augmentée et présentée par Claude Allibert, ed. Claude Allibert (Paris: Karthala Editions, 2007), 15. ↩

  26. Letter from Caulier to the Congrégation de la Mission, Bourbon, 1764, ACM Registre 1504, f. 55. ↩

  27. The first mention of this document in the record, it seems, is in the letter of Castries to Souillac, No. 245, Versailles, 8 May 1786, in ANOM C494, f. 221. The letter announces that d’Entrecasteux will command the king’s naval station at Port Louis and, by extension, all territory east of the Cape of Good Hope, and will be accompanied by a “Mémoire du Roi qui lui a été remis pour servir d’instructions auxquelles sa majesté vous charge de vous conformer en ce qui vous concernera. Je suis persuadé que vous éviterez avec soin de vous écarter de l’Esprit de ses instructions.” 7 March 1777. “Mémoire du Roi, pour servir d’Instructions au Sieur Marquis de Bouillé, Maréchal de Camp, Gouverneur de la Martinique, et au Sieur Président de Tasher, Intendant de la même Colonie” [Signed by the King, and Sartine, Min. of the Navy]. “Mémoire sur les colonies françoises de l’Amérique,” in ANOM, F2C7, Carton 7 (1765-1790: Mémoires, toutes colonies), ff. 1-13. ↩

  28. Undated draft form of the “Mémoire du Roi.” ANOM C477, f. 110 (marginalia in Castries’s handwriting). ↩

  29. “Mémoire du Roi [pour] D’Entrecasteaux [et] Dupuy.” 9 March 1789. ANOM C477, f. 19. The final version, sent out in 1789, built on several previous drafts, found in the same cote. In one draft, beginning f. 68, next to the section on gens de couleur, in the margin is written in pencil, “il a été fait au ministre un rapport dune lettre de M DEntrecasteaux a ce Sujet…” It is possible that the minister (Luzerne) had gone back to review the original language of the instructions to help deal with the controversy over militia reform being reported in 1789 by d’Entrecasteaux. The line about the Bourbonnais créoles is in every draft. The earliest drafts were commented on by Castries and feature his handwriting in the margins (f. 75v). ↩

  30. The term “ingénu” derives from the Latin ingenuus, a legal category used in ancient Rome to indicate those free men who had been born free, as distinct from ex-slaves. Less clear is whether Roman law accommodated the notion of whole freeborn “races” of humanity. ↩

  31. Letter from Antoine Bruni d’Entrecasteaux, Gouverneur-général des Isles de France et de Bourbon, to César Henri, comte de La Luzerne, Ministre de la Marine, Archives nationales d’Outre-mer, C4/80, f. 273. ↩

  32. This word is difficult to translate. It could mean “inhabitants,” but in the Mascarene and Antillean contexts, more often referred to planters (i.e. property-owners), and could be code here for all free men, or indeed, “white” people exclusively. ↩

  33. This document from Henry Paulin Panon Desbassayns, Petit journal des époques pour servir à ma mémoire: 1784-1786, ed. Jean Barbier and Jean-Claude de Villèle (Saint-Denis, Réunion: Musée historique de la Villèle, 1991), 113–15. Extract from Tarare, below: Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Oeuvres complètes de Beaumarchais (Paris: Garnier, 1874), 220. ↩

  34. A friend of the Panon-Desbassayns family, Pierre Guillaume Léonard de Bellecombe (1728-1792) had been governor-general of the Mascarenes Islands and lived on Bourbon Island until 1774. He was named governor-general of Saint-Domingue in 1781. ↩

  35. This and the following entries from: Henry Paulin Panon Desbassayns, Voyage à Paris pendant La Révolution 1790-1792: Journal Inédit d’un Habitant de l’Île Bourbon, ed. André Castelot, Jean-Claude Guillermin des Sagette, and Marie-Hélène Bourquin-Simonin (Paris: Éditions Perrin, 1985), 36–37. ↩

  36. Generally, ships only left from Lorient to the Mascarene islands in the winter months, in order to time the end of the voyage to correspond with the seasonal westerly Monsoon winds. The voyage usually took at least 8 to 9 months. ↩

  37. Breton port town from which ships left for the Indian Ocean. Formerly operated by the French East India Company. ↩

  38. Article V, in “Pétitions de la Colonie de Bourbon à l’Assemblée Nationale.” 21 April 1791. ADR, L307. ↩

  39. Source: Raymond D’Unienville, Histoire politique de l’Isle de France, 1789-1791, vol. I (Port-Louis: Mauritius Archives Publications, 1975), 156–58. ↩

  40. Notice by the “Comité Exécutif” of Réunion (26 February 1801) C4/153 (Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer) Documents divers sur les colonies de l’Océan Indien ↩

  41. For the 24 January 1796 session of the Legislative Body of the French Directory Government, see Paris. Réimpression de l’ancien Moniteur: Directoire exécutif. H. Plon, 1863. Vol? p. 310-311. ↩

  42. Wanquet, La France et la première abolition de l’esclavage, 345. ↩

  43. Claude Wanquet, “Baco and Burnel’s Attempt to Implement Abolition in the Mascarenes in 1796: Analysis of a Failure and Its Consequences,” in The Abolitions of Slavery: From Léger Félicité Sonthonax to Victor Schoelcher, 1793, 1794, 1848, ed. Marcel Dorigny, The Slave Route Series (New York : Paris: Berghahn Books ; Unesco Publishing, 2003), 197–206. ↩

  44. 2 August 1796 - Members of the Comité de Sûreté Publique, the surveillance arm of the Colonial Assembly of Réunion, write to their counterparts explaining the recent law forbidden any vessels arriving in Réunion to land anywhere but St. Denis, to maximize the efficacy of the Comité’s heavy surveillance efforts. Among the reasons given was the recent influx of slaves from Île de France, assumed to be deported subversives of the slavery status quo or at least exposed to subversive ideas. [ADR L63] ↩

  45. Île de France and its dependencies counted 49,080 slaves in 1797. Data from Robert René Kuczynski, Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire, (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), II: 758. Bourbon counted 44,800 in the same year. Louis Maillard, Notes sur l’Île de la Réunion (Paris: E. Dentu, 1862), I: 295. ↩

  46. Réimpression de l’ancien Moniteur: Directoire exécutif. H. Plon, 1863. [p. 310-311] ↩

  47. Archives départementales de La Réunion, L331. ↩

  48. Official Report of Commissioners Baco and Burnel to the Executive Directory, 30 September 1796. [Marked ‘Copie par M. Raspeau, September 1859.’] Archives Nationales d’Outre-mer. C4/110, ff. 12-18. ↩

  49. This is a reference to the Constitution of Year III (1795). In mid–1795, in the wake of the fall of Robespierre and the end of the Terror, the French National Convention assigned a committee to draft a new constitution, which was presented on 22 August. The new constitution represented a compromise between the Right and the Left. It envisioned a moderate continuation of the Revolution on the basis of a stable social order. It guaranteed personal liberties (especially individual property rights) and juridical equality, but stopped short of granting the direct democracy and economic equality of the Constitution of 1793. To achieve this balance, the framers reduced the authority of the legislature, which would now have two houses on the British and American models, but could not pass legislation rapidly. The constitution concentrated power in an executive authority called the Directory (hence the name for the period 1795-1799) in which power would be shared between five individuals. The constitution banned political gatherings to prevent the resurgence of the club movement or organized political parties. Despite some of its conservative elements, the Constitution maintained the earlier advances of the French Revolution regarding racial equality and maintained the abolition of slavery. The Constitution was approved by a national referendum on September 23, hence the Commissioners’ line about “25 million Frenchmen.” ↩

  50. The French expression les îles du Vent, or Windward Islands, referred to the islands of the Lesser Antilles claimed by France, especially Guadeloupe and Martinique. ↩

  51. Anne Joseph Hippolyte de Maurès, comte de Malartic (1730-1800) served as governor-general of Isle de France and Réunion from 1792. ↩

  52. Article 15 [of the Constitution of 1795]: “Any many can hire out his time and services, but he cannot sell himself nor be sold; his person is not alienable property.” Original: “Tout homme peut engager son temps et ses services; mais il ne peut se vendre ni être vendu; sa personne n’est pas une propriété aliénable.” ↩

  53. An incomplete line follows, but it is struck through: ‘Et quelles furent ces propriétés ? Ce sont des h…’ The unfinished ‘h,’ one assumes began the word hommes (men). ‘And what are these properties? They are men.’ ↩

  54. This concert may have been planned to take place at the “Salle des Spectacles,” Port-Louis’s principal theater, built in the old East India Company gardens in the town center. The “Salle de Spectacle” of Port-Louis existed in the mid-1790s through 1818, when it was destroyed by a cyclone. See Antoine Chelin, Le Théâtre à l’Ile Maurice: son origine et son développement (Port Louis: Claude Marrier d’Unienville, 1954). ↩

  55. The original term here is “Exalté,” which translates into the pejorative “fanatic” or “nut.” ↩

  56. The original French: “Qu’on les égorge, qu’on les égorge.” ↩

  57. ‘Négrivore’ was an insult leveled against pro-slavery colonists by abolitionist revolutionaries. ↩

  58. In this report (a draft), this sentence is crossed out. ↩

  59. Having witnessed the burning of Cap Français and organized some of the refugee envoys out of the harbor, he no doubt wanted to avoid a scene similar to that of August 1793. ↩

  60. The author is referring to Benoît Gouly, who represented Isle de France under both the National Convention and Directory regimes. ↩

  61. Translated Copy: Letter of the US Consul to the Colonial Assembly of Isle de France, 24 June 1796. Archives Nationales, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, France. D/XXV/130. ↩

  62. One of the civil commissioners from Paris (either Baco or Burnel) had ordered the boarding of an American vessel en route to the islands. ↩

  63. The Colonial Assembly of the Isle of Réunion to Citizens Besnard and D’Etcheverry, deputies of the colony to the Corps Législatif [in Paris]. St. Denis, North Canton, Isle of Réunion, 3 Floréal, Year V [22 April 1797]. Archives départementales de La Réunion, L307. Under the French Directory government of the French Revolution (1795-1799), the Corps Législatif was the name given to the bicameral legislature composed of the Conseil des Cinq-Cents (Council of Five Hundred) and the Conseil des anciens (Council of Ancients). It sat in Paris. ↩

  64. Translation from Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief History with Documents, Second edition, The Bedford Series in History and Culture (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, Macmillan Learning, 2017), 125. ↩

  65. “Rapport sur les Colonies en général, et particulièrement sur celle de la Réunion, fait à l’Assemblée Coloniale de cette Isle, dans sa séance du 22 Brumaire, an 7me par sa commission, composée des citoyens Delestrac, Rougemont et Ozoux, ce dernier rapporteur [Report on the Colonies in general, and in particular on that of Réunion, produced for the Colonial Assembly of that Island, in its session of 22 Brumaire, Year VII, by its commission, composed of Citizens Delestrac, Rougemont, and Ozoux, the latter recorder],” 12 November 1798, in ADR, L311 (print version). ↩

  66. Frédéric Descroizilles, Essai sur l’agriculture et le commerce des îles de France et de la Réunion ; suivi d’une Notice historique sur l’île de France, pendant la Révolution (Rouen: L’Imprimerie des Arts, 1803). ↩

  67. During the French Revolution, the insurrection of May 31-June 2, 1793, resulted in the fall of the Girondin party under pressure from the radical Paris sans-culottes, Jacobin clubs, and the Montagnard party in the National Convention. ↩

  68. Source: Le Forestier, François “Journal, 1812.” Boston Athenaeum, Mss.S31. Background information from François Le Forestier, Le Forestier’s Relation: Autobiography and Voyages of François Le Forestier (1749-1819), a Refugee from Mauritius and a Teacher in New England; a Recently Discovered Manuscript (Boston: Boston Athenaeum, 1904). ↩

  69. Villèle, Joseph de. Mémoires et correspondance du comte de Villèle. Vol. I. Paris: Perrin et Cie., 1889 (pp. 142-150, 177). ↩

  70. Victor Schœlcher, Vie de Toussaint Louverture (Paris: Paul Ollendorff, 1889), “Proclamation on Saint-Domingue,” December 25, 1799, trans. Mitch Abidor, Marxists Internet Archive, 2004, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/toussaint-louverture/1799/proclamation.htm. ↩

  71. Quoted in Christian Schneider, “Le colonel Vincent, officier du Génie à Saint-Domingue,” Annales historiques de la Révolution française, no. 329 (2002): 101–22, esp. 115. ↩

  72. Minister of the Navy and the Colonies (Denis Decrès) to General Magallon, Governor-General of the Isles of France and Réunion; dated Paris, 6 Germinal Year 10 [27 March 1802] (rec’d 20 June 1802). Archives départementales de La Réunion L331. ↩

  73. Malouet’s “les îles de France et de Bourbon” refers to Isle de France (today, Mauritius) and Bourbon Island (today, La Réunion), the two largest islands in the Mascarene archipelago, in the southwest Indian Ocean. Malouet deliberately uses the Old Regime name for Réunion, which had been officially changed in 1793. It would change its name once again to Île Bonaparte. ↩

  74. My research has revealed that Réunion Island’s budgetary problems were only resolved after a Civil Commissioner, including one who professed antislavery views, seized hundreds of enslaved men, women, and children from the Catholic Church and sold them at public auction to private citizens. Payment installations were still flowing into the colonial treasury years after slavery had officially been abolished in the realm in 1794. ↩

  75. Las Cases, Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné de. Mémorial de Sainte Hélène: Journal of the Private Life and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon at Saint Helena. London: H. Colburn and Company, 1823. ↩

  76. Elba is an island off of Italy where Bonaparte agreed to live in exile after capitulating to the British in 1814. He escaped on 26 February 1815 and returned to France where he took back power for “The Hundred Days” before being definitely defeated again at the Battle of Waterloo and sent into permanent exile on the British island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic. ↩

  77. Julius Scott, The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution (New York: Verso, 2018). ↩

  78. Report of Mayor of St. Pierre, Ganglier, to the Assemblée Primaire of that Canton, 26 March 1793, on rumors of a potential slave revolt conveyed to Cit. Olivier Payet. 26 March 1793. ADR L341 (St. Pierre Assemblée Primaire). ↩

  79. These extracts from a translation of the manuscript. Jean-Baptiste Tabardin, La vie ou les aventures de J.B. Tabardin dans ses voyages: imaginé et commencé le premier janvier 1805 dans la Raveline de Bombay, ed. Norbert Benoît (Port Louis, Mauritius: Editions Vizavi, 1993). ↩

  80. A July 2, 1802 decree barred “blacks, mulattos, and other people of color” from entering metropolitan France without authorization, reprising a similar ban from 1777. Furthermore, an 1803 ministerial decree under Napoleon banned marriages between blacks and whites in France. See Jennifer Heuer, “The One-Drop Rule in Reverse? Interracial Marriages in Napoleonic and Restoration France,” Law and History Review 27, no. 3 (2009): 515–48. Note that the Stanislas’s letter does not complain of Napoleon’s restoration of slavery to the French empire. ↩

  81. The author writes this word in English. ↩

  82. The Minister of the Navy, whose purview included France’s colonies, Antoine de Sartine, who counted West Indian sugar planters among his relatives, decreed a number of laws aiming to discriminate against black and mixed-race people in France and its colonies. Issued in the late 1770s and early 1780s, the new rules stipulated that “people of color” could not enjoy the honorifics “Sir” or “Madam” (Sieur or Dame) on official paperwork, regardless of their status. “Gens de métier,” a group that included artisans and day laborers, were also not supposed to enjoy those titles, although the law seems to have been imposed for people of color (especially in the West Indian colonies) more than for gens de métier. The law was designed to instill a sense of subordination among free people of color in the colonies at a time when an increasing number were gaining considerable wealth. Apparently, in Mauritius, the rule was taken seriously in both law and daily practice, at least insofar as it discriminated against people of color. “Arrêt de Règlement” of the Conseil Supérieur de l’île de France, Port Louis, 18 November 1778 (Article X). In Jean-Baptiste Etienne Delaleu, ed., Code des Iles de France et de Bourbon [1777], Deuxième Édition, vol. I (Port-Louis: Tristan Mallac & Cie., 1826), 13. ↩

  83. Letter from the Governor of Mauritius to the French Royal Court, Oct. 20, 1787 ↩

  84. François Arago, “Lislet-Geoffroy: Biographie lue à l’Académie des Sciences, le 27 juillet 1836,” in Oeuvres de François Arago, vol. III (Paris: J. Claye, 1936), 544–51. ↩

  85. The French leadership of Isle de France signed terms for the capitulation of the islands to the British Empire. These included the preservation of French civil law, practice of the Catholic religion, and property; however, it required that citizens swear an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. Those who refused were permitted to evacuate to France, which Lislet suggests here was his intention. ↩

  86. The British renamed the island “Mauritius” after their takeover of it, but Geoffroy-Lislet continues to use the French name. ↩

  87. These extracts are translations from a recent edition of Hitié’s book. Evenor Hitié, Histoire de Maurice: (ancienne Île de France): Tome Premier [1897], Réédition (Pamplemousses, Mauritius: Pamplemousses Éditions, 2014), p. 99. ↩

  88. Société de l’histoire de l’île Maurice. Dictionnaire de biographie mauricienne. Port-Louis: Esclapon, 1972. ↩