Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution by Laurent Dubois

Author:Laurent Dubois [Dubois, Laurent]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

c h a p t e r n i n e

Power

Do you believe, citizens and colleagues,” Jean-Baptiste

Belley asked the National Convention in early 1795, “that nature

is unjust, that she has, as the planters assert, made some men

to be the slaves of others?” Belley had been serving as one of Saint-

Domingue’s representatives since the year before, when he and his col-

leagues had precipitated the vote abolishing slavery throughout the French

empire. Already, however, some of the men who served alongside him

were clamoring against the liberty decree. A representative from the In-

dian Ocean colony of Ile de France, the planter Marie-Benoît-Louis

Gouly, delivered a speech to the Convention portraying the ex-slaves of

Saint-Domingue in starkly racist terms.1

It was absurd, Gouly insisted, to grant freedom and citizenship to peo-

ple whose souls were accessible “only through the organ of hearing,” ani-

mated only by the “loud sounds of a drum or a voice expressed with force,”

whose eyes had no “vivacity,” and whose very “figure” presented “the im-

age of stupidity.” “He acts and does not reflect; he seldom speaks and often

sings; never does a profound sentiment of pain or pleasure cause tears to

stream from his eyes.” “He suffers and never complains,” Gouly continued.

“He has no desires, loves repose, and absolutely hates work; his pleasure is

to do nothing, and he finds all his happiness in sleeping.” Such individuals

had, in short, none of the capacities required for citizenship. Having made

this argument, Gouly reiterated the arguments made before emancipation

by thinkers like Moreau de St. Méry, asserting that the colonies must be

governed by particular laws different from those applied in the metropole.2

Gouly’s racism was nothing unique; it was part of a proslavery tradition

that would haunt the Atlantic world for a long time to come. What was

unique was the presence, at the heart of France’s government, of a former

slave who could counter these assertions through his words and his very

presence. “I was born in Africa,” Belley announced proudly in response to

Gouly’s “bizarre portrait” of the ex-slaves. Although the blacks had been

brutalized by their masters, he explained, they had remained men. Their

insensitivity was not an essential attribute, but the result of the degradation they had experienced at the hands of “cruel masters” like Gouly, “a tiger

who for twenty-five years devoted himself to torturing Africans” while

making his living “on the sweat and blood” of slaves.3

Belley explained how, brought “as a child to a land of tyranny,” he had

gained his liberty thirty years before through “hard work and sweat.” Since

that time, he announced, “I have always loved my country.” The same was

true of the blacks recently made “free and French” in Saint-Domingue,

who “bravely” defended “the rights of the Republic.” The white slave mas-

ters—“born dominators”—had, in contrast, busily handed over as much of

the colony as they could to the British. The ex-slaves were clearly quite ca-

pable of serving France. It was the disloyal planters who were undeserving

of citizenship. Gouly wished to see only “chains, slaves, and tyrants” in the Caribbean, and his “negrocidal” ideas were a threat to France and to the

Rights of Man.4

“Let it no longer be

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