Economic Stagnation and Decay

If the first years of the Revolution were years of continued prosperity for Atlantic commerce, after 1792 the war and the insurrection in Saint-Domingue spread gloom and despair among merchants and shipping companies. As in previous wars, merchants turned to a series of expedients: opening up trade to independent merchants, allowing neutral shipping to bring goods from the Americas, or resorting to privateering. But they were only palliatives, expedients to survive, and the effect on the ports and on the industrial towns of their hinterland were calamitous. Under Napoleon, the blockade and the Continental System only made matters worse, though there were temporary respites, as in 1810–12. Merchants suffered in silence until the Restoration allowed them to express their despair.

Debating Slavery

The chapter examines the moral threat to slaving in the last years of the Ancien Régime with the rise of abolitionism, first in Britain, then more gradually, in France. Moral qualms about slavery had first been expressed by Enlightened authors like Raynal and Condorcet; but the writings of some English abolitionists, notably Thomas Clarkson, proved equally powerful. However, in merchant circles, especially the chambers of commerce, slaves continued to be seen as a commodity, and the slaving interest was violently defended as the Revolution approached. The chapter examines pamphlets produced by both sides in the debate, and discusses the role of masonic lodges, clubs, and learned societies in the port cities themselves.

France and the Slave Trade

The chapter begins with a short overview of France’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and shows how, by the second half of the eighteenth century, more and more merchants and investors became dazzled by the profits offered by a successful slave voyage. All the Atlantic ports engaged in the slave trade, though Nantes had the highest level of slaving and the greatest dependence on the triangular trade with west Africa and the Caribbean. The economics of a slave voyage are analysed, as well as the cargoes purchased for trading in Africa; the captains’ involvement in slave markets in both West Africa and the Caribbean; the risks run by the slave ships and their crews during the voyage; and the conditions that were endured below deck during the Middle Passage.

The Congress of Vienna and the Politics of Slavery

The chapter begins with an account of public opinion in the Atlantic cities following Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, the growth of royalist support in Bordeaux and the general desire of the Atlantic ports for the return of peace and the renewal of former commercial ties. But with Britain and the United States having already abolished the slave trade, there was huge international pressure on France to follow suit. Britain claimed the right to board slave ships and police the trade routes to Africa and the Caribbean, and the future legality of slaving was thrown into doubt. After Napoleon’s defeat during the Hundred Days France’s negotiating position was weakened. Vienna would prove a turning-point for the slave trade in the North Atlantic.

The Port Cities of the French Atlantic

This chapter discusses the fortunes of the principal ports of the French Atlantic in the eighteenth century, among them Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Nantes, Marseille, and Le Havre, but also smaller ports like Lorient, Saint-Malo, and Bayonne, which all at various moments enjoyed years of unprecedented prosperity. It shows how not all of them invested in the same forms of commerce or enjoyed the same peak years of prosperity. Some concentrated on direct commerce with the Caribbean islands, others on fishing off Newfoundland, but increasingly merchants were tempted by the rich profits to be made from slaving. The chapter looks at the investments made by the merchant community in the fabric of their cities, discusses their architecture and elegant town planning, and notes the impressions they made on foreign visitors who saw them in a comparative perspective.

The Saint-Domingue Diaspora

This chapter follows the inhabitants of Saint-Domingue as they were forced by murder and arson to flee their homes and seek refuge elsewhere. Some—those with family back in France or despairing of any kind of future in the Antilles—xfled home to France, where many, having lost their possessions in the chaos, were reduced to penury and public support. Others went to nearby colonies, notably Jamaica and Santo-Domingo, often in the forlorn hope they might return. But the majority hoped to rebuild their lives as planters and slave-owners. Many settled in Cuba, especially in a French enclave around Santiago-de-Cuba, until they were expelled in 1808 when Napoleon invaded Spain. For many their journey ended in Louisiana or in the cities of the eastern seaboard of the United States.

War and Revolution in the Caribbean

Whereas the previous chapter focused on the effects of events in Saint-Domingue on the French merchant community and on political sentiment in the French ports, this one examines events in the Caribbean and especially in Saint-Domingue. It discusses the complexities of the race question on the island, and especially the status of free people of colour, which dominated discussion during the early months of the Revolution. It also shows how, with the slave revolts and insurrections, opinions hardened after 1791, how the French administration became more dependent on the support of the mulattoes, and how the situation in Saint-Domingue was complicated by foreign war and invasion. The chapter ends by discussing the role of Toussaint Louverture and Leclerc’s fateful expedition

The French Atlantic World

This chapter examines the development of France’s colonial empire over the long eighteenth century, from the early settlements to the eve of the revolution. It demonstrates the geopolitical logic of an empire stretching from the St Lawrence River to Louisiana and across the Caribbean, and shows how this empire had been cut back through a series of colonial wars, especially with Great Britain, leading to the loss of Canada at the Peace of Paris in 1763. By the end of the Ancien Régime, France’s principal interest in the Americas was in the Caribbean and especially Saint-Domingue, which was the wealthiest of all European colonies in the Atlantic world. The chapter concludes with a discussion of France’s trade with its Atlantic possessions and of the system of imperial preference it imposed.

Conclusion

The conclusion looks at the long-term damage done to the economy of France’s Atlantic ports by the crisis of the Age of Revolutions, and discusses the different ways in which they sought to restore their fortunes. It returns to the central question posed at the beginning of the book: which of the threats they faced in war and revolution proved the most damaging? Over more than twenty years of war, the disruption suffered was on a scale unparalleled during the wars of the eighteenth century. But wars end, and periods of peace follow when overseas commerce can again flourish. Revolution, allied to an anti-slavery campaign, inflicted lasting damage rather than temporary disruption, and made it impossible for the Atlantic ports to return to their established ways.

The Slave Trade in Collective Memory

This chapter discusses the memory of the slave trade in France’s Atlantic ports and the ways in which their slaving past is presented today in newspapers, school textbooks and museum exhibits. For many decades the trade was passed over in silence, a footnote to a golden age of mercantile prosperity, or was—as in Britain—viewed through the lens of an abolitionist movement that was to the credit of the nation. But from the mid-1980s the taboo has been broken. The chapter shows how major exhibitions have been staged to discuss and reflect on the slave trade, how city councils have built memorials to the victims of slavery, and how scholars and activists, often of African or French Caribbean descent, have played a major part in urging greater transparency and reflection.