On 25 May 1785, a M. Lousteau arrived at the police station in Port Louis, Isle de France (now Mauritius) to complain that his slave Jouan had been abducted. He described Jouan as an ‘Indien’, ‘Lascar’ and ‘Malabar’, and said that he had learned that he had been smuggled on to the royal ship Le Brillant, bound for Pondicherry in southern India, by one Bernard (whom Lousteau describes as a ‘creol libre’ but who later is described as ‘Malabar, soi-disant libre’ and ‘Topa Libre’). The story of the escape had been told to him by a ‘Bengalie’ slave called Modeste, who belonged to the ‘Lascar’ fisherman, Bacou. A number of people had apparently assisted Jouan's escape in other ways—most importantly his trunk of belongings had been moved secretly from hut to hut before being embarked with him. Lousteau was a member of that ever-growing professional group of eighteenth-century France and its colonies: the lawyers. He was clerk to the island's supreme court, the Conseil Superieur. He supported a large family, he said, and the loss of Jouan represented a serious loss to their welfare. Jouan, it turned out, was no ordinary slave. He was a skilled carpenter who earned his master a significant sum every month; he was highly valued, and Lousteau had refused an offer of 5,000 livres for him. What is more, he could be easily recognised, for he was always exceptionally well turned-out and well-groomed. To facilitate in the search for his slave, Lousteau provided the following description of him:He declares that his fugitive slave is of the Lascar caste, a Malabar, dark black in colour, short in height, with a handsome, slightly thin face, a gentle appearance, with long hair … that he is very well dressed, abundantly endowed with clothes, such as jackets and shorts … wearing small gold earrings, a pin with a gold heart on his shirt, and on the arm a mark on the skin which he thinks reads DM.
The Constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Acts
