scholarly journals Landscaping Hispaniola: Moreau De Saint-Méry’s Border Politics

2011 ◽  
Vol 85 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 169-190
Author(s):  
Maria Cristina Fumagalli
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
Slave Revolt ◽  
Border Politics ◽  
Colonial Frontier ◽  
The French Revolution

This article focuses on Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry's Description Topographique et Politique de la partie espagnole de l'Isle Saint-Domingue (1796) and his Description Topographique, Physique, Civile, Politique et Historique de la partie française de l'Isle Saint-Domingue (1797). The Descriptions were both written before the beginning of the French Revolution and the 1791 slave revolt in Saint Domingue but were published when the colonial frontier had been abolished (at least de jure if not de facto) by the 1795 Peace of Basle. Overall, the article argues that the two Descriptions are ultimately committed to the (re)inscription of the colonial frontier but intriguingly oscillate between its erasure and its reinforcement. It begins by focusing on Saint-Méry's territorial projections and appropriative landscaping of the Spanish colony; it highlights the important role played by the border in the racial politics of Hispaniola and then revisits Saint-Mery's border politics on the island in the light of the author's conviction that France should reannex Louisiana, given to Spain in 1762.

From revolutionary Paris to Nootka Sound to Saint-Domingue: The international politics and prejudice behind Wollstonecraft’s theory of the rights of humanity, 1789–91

2020 ◽  
pp. 175508822097843
Author(s):  
Eileen Hunt Botting
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
African Slaves ◽  
Legal Entitlement ◽  
The French Revolution

Against the background of the international political crises generated by the early phase of the French Revolution at Nootka Sound in 1790 and in Saint-Domingue in 1791, Mary Wollstonecraft developed a capacious political theory of the “rights of humanity.” She pushed beyond narrow post-revolutionary European constructions of “the rights of man” which ignored or excluded “the poor,” “Indians,” “African slaves,” and “women.” While closely following the international politics of the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft developed the core arguments of A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Her key philosophical innovation was to publicly universalize the conceptual scope of rights, such that rights were no longer—implicitly or explicitly—solely the legal entitlement of propertied white European men, but rather the moral and political entitlement of the whole of humanity across nations. Yet she rhetorically contradicted and philosophically limited the cross-cultural universalism of her theory of equal rights by punctuating her arguments with Western Protestant and Orientalist stereotypes of Eastern despotism. Consequently, international politics and international prejudice shaped Wollstonecraft’s theory of equal rights and her application of it to peoples and cultures beyond those of Western Protestant Europe.

The Revolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Peabody
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Slave Labor ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
Slave Revolt ◽  
Sugar Plantations ◽  
Free People

Slave labor in eighteenth-century Isle Bourbon was shaped by the cultivation of staple crops, unlike the proto-industrial forms of labor found in the sugar plantations of the Atlantic world, and may have been milder, though periodic cyclones brought famine to slaves and their masters alike. On the eve of the French Revolution, following the death of Charles Routier, Madeleine’s mistress filed manumission papers, freeing her. As a result of the slave revolt in Saint-Domingue (Haiti), France issued the 1794 Decree of 16 Pluviôse abolishing slavery throughout the colonies. Although Madeleine should have been considered free twice over, the widow Routier declared Madeleine her slave on her 1796 census, a moment when Madeleine—like many free people of color in France’s empire—faced potential or actual re-enslavement.

scholarly journals Orangism, Patriotism, and Slavery in Curaçao, 1795–1796

2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (S21) ◽  
pp. 35-60
Author(s):  
Karwan Fatah-Black
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Slave Revolt ◽  
The French Revolution

AbstractThe defeat of the Dutch armies by the French and the founding of the Batavian Republic in 1795 created confusion in the colonies and on overseas naval vessels about who was in power. The Stadtholder fled to England and ordered troops and colonial governments to surrender to the British, while the Batavian government demanded that they abjure the oath to the Stadtholder. The ensuing confusion gave those on board Dutch naval vessels overseas, and in its colonies, an opportunity to be actively involved in deciding which side they wished to be on. This article adds the mutinies on board theCeresandMedeato the interplay between the Curaçao slave revolt of 1795 and the rise of the Curaçaoan Patriot movement in 1796. The mariners independently partook in the battle for the political direction of the island and debated which side they wished to be on in the fight between the French Revolution and the British Empire.

An Abbé’s Atlantic Adventures

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Rey
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
New Phase ◽  
The French Revolution

Shortly after the fall of the Trou Coffy insurgency in March 1792, Abbé Ouvière was appointed a delegate of the free colored Confederacy and tasked with returning to France to present their cause before the National Assembly in Paris. The delegation’s chief aim was to secure their full civil rights as French citizens; however, unbeknownst to them, Abbé Ouvière was a royalist who rejected the French Revolution and acted clandestinely to restore the rule of the ancien régime over Saint-Domingue. Several dramatic turns thus ensued when the priest’s papers were seized, including letters from his co-ideologues and his ailing wife, whom he had secretly married two years prior. Forced to flee France because of his political deceit, Ouvière would soon find himself in Jamaica, eventually making an dramatic passage to Philadelphia to embark on a new phase of his life. Chapter 7, “An Abbé’s Atlantic Adventures,” focuses on these events.

The Abolition of Slavery in the North, West, and South of Saint Domingue

1985 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 47-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Stein
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
New World ◽  
The Real ◽  
North West ◽  
Caribbean History ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
The North ◽  
The French Revolution

In the second half of 1793, slavery was abolished in the French colony of Saint Domingue or present-day Haiti. This was one of the most radical events of the French Revolution and one of the great moments in Caribbean history. Saint Domingue became the first land in the New World to outlaw slavery and to offer full rights to non-whites, yet there has been much confusion over how and when abolition occurred. Historians of the French Revolution have generally ignored abolition altogether, apparently as irrelevant to the “real” revolution, while Caribbeanists have frequently been guilty of publishing incorrect or at least incomplete versions. Even specialists in Haitian history have failed to distinguish between the various abolition proclamations which were issued between June 21 and October 31, 1793. It is the purpose of this paper to give a correct chronology to abolition and to show that it was due primarily to the efforts of one man, Léger Félicité Sonthonax, aided somewhat reluctantly by Etienne Polverel.

scholarly journals Slaveriets profitabilitet. Økonomi og moral i fransk melodrama om den haitianske revolution, 1792-1798

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (71) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Ross Kjærgård
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Slave Rebellion ◽  
Slave Revolt ◽  
Revolutionary Violence ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The Haitian Revolution ◽  
The French Revolution

Jonas Ross Kjærgård: “The Profitability of Slavery. Economy and Morals in French Melodrama on the Haitian Revolution, 1792-1798”This article investigates how French revolutionary melodrama depicted the institution of slavery after the outbreak of the Haitian revolution in 1791. Prior to the slave rebellion in France’s most important Caribbean colony, St.-Domingue (present day Haiti), abolitionary writers and intellectuals had presented the argument that slavery was not only morally wrong but also economically unprofitable. For the more radical writers of the 1770s, such as Abbé Raynal and Louis-Sébastien Mercier, slavery was an evil that called for revolutionary violence in the colonies. However, when news of the actual slave revolt and its violent incidents reached France, the stance on violence and the interconnection of morals and economy changed. Through a reading of three plays the article aims to show that the Haitian revolution – as well as the radicalization of the French revolution – caused play writers to condemn violence among the slaves; to urge rebelling slaves to return to the plantations; and to present a colonial system in which slaves became free workers in return for their promise to work hard and accept the continuation of French colonial rule.

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