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Prior to its revolution, Haiti was one of the wealthiest colonies in the world. The French reaped those rewards. So what happened? Why a revolution? Why a violent revolution? Why didn’t the United States help in the Haitian Revolution? Give examples.
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Social History Vol. 32 No. 4 November 2007
Carolyn E. Fick
The Haitian revolution and the limits
of freedom: defining citizenship
in the revolutionary era1
By the end of the eighteenth century, the French colony of Saint Domingue, the foundation
of France’s colonial empire and the foremost wealth-producing colony of its time, had become
a centre of black power in the slaveholding Atlantic world. Its very existence as such
challenged and pushed to their limits the revolutionary doctrines of natural rights, popular
sovereignty, the universality of citizenship and the essential equality of human beings put forth
in 1776 and 1789 respectively by both the American and the French revolutionaries. The
American doctrine of 1776, by which the thirteen British colonies declared their
independence, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 each
sought to impart concrete legal meaning to the abstract philosophical concept of natural rights,
until then generally understood as something inherent to all human beings by virtue of being
human, to which all humans are, by their nature, entitled, and which are essentially selfevident. Such a concept also presupposed the self-consciousness of the human being as a
distinct and autonomous individual, while government, established by sovereign consent of
the governed, existed legitimately only if it could protect and guarantee under law the natural
rights of all its subjects, that is, the natural equality of human beings and the inalienability of
certain basic rights.2 For the Americans, these were ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’,
and for the French, ‘liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression’. For both, when
1
An earlier version of this article appeared in
French in a bicentennial volume of essays on the
Haitian revolution: ‘La révolution haı̈tienne dans
l’Atlantique révolutionnaire: les enjeux contradictoires de la liberté, de la citoyenneté et de
l’indépendance nationale’ in Franklin Midy (ed.),
Mémoire de révolution d’esclaves à Saint-Domingue: la
traite négrière transatlantique, l’esclavage colonial, la
Révolution de Saint-Domingue et les droits de l’homme
(Montréal, 2006), 145–77; and in Portuguese:
‘Para uma (re)definição de liberdade: a Revolução
no Haiti e os paradigmas da Liberdade e
Igualdade’, Estudos Afro-Asiáticos, XXVI, 2 (May–
August 2004), 355–80. The present article has been
revised and slightly expanded.
2
For this discussion, I have drawn largely upon
Lynn Hunt’s reflective analysis of the varied
historical relationships between the philosophical
doctrine of natural rights and the articulation,
through revolutions, of its specific content in the
form of human rights; see L. Hunt, ‘The
paradoxical origins of human rights’ in Jeffrey
Wasserstrom, Lynn Hunt & Marilyn B. Young
(eds), Human Rights and Revolutions (Lanham, MD,
2000), 3–17. On the fulfilment of Hegel’s dialectic
of freedom in the Haitian revolution, see also the
profoundly challenging article by Susan BuckMorrs, ‘Hegel and Haiti’, Critical Inquiry, XXVI
(Summer 2000), 821–64.
Social History ISSN 0307-1022 print/ISSN 1470-1200 online ª 2007 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/03071020701616696
November 2007
The Haitian revolution and citizenship
395
governments become so despotic as to deny the full enjoyment of these rights by its citizens,
they can and must be altered or abolished and replaced with a new – constitutional – form of
government that will guarantee the inviolability of these rights.
Thus, in the process of articulating the principles and self-evident truths by which they
legitimized their actions, the French and American revolutionaries turned natural rights into
human rights, and the latter into universal individual rights, or the ‘rights of all mankind’. In so
doing, they historicized the specific content they gave to abstract eighteenth-century
Enlightenment ideas about natural rights, and in their respective declarations of 1776 and 1789
justified their overthrow of the governing structures oppressing them, in the American case an
imperial mercantilist one, and in the French case the ancien régime of privilege, aristocracy and
monarchical absolutism. But only the Haitian revolution of 1791–1804 pushed the
universalism of natural rights to its ultimate fulfilment in actualizing human freedom by
overthrowing slavery, not in the western metaphorical sense of political oppression or
subservience, but as a system grounded in the individual ownership of other human beings as a
form of property. In this, the revolutionary slaves of Saint Domingue radicalized the notion of
natural rights and exposed the tensions and philosophical contradictions in Enlightenment
thought in ways that no other historical event of that period could have done. In its
particularities, as in its universal qualities, the Haitian revolution turned on its head the
principles enshrined in the Rights of Man and, contra distinctively, redefined the meaning
of freedom.
The historical contingencies of Haiti’s struggles for emancipation and for the political
autonomy necessary to safeguard the freedom of her people set the black revolution of Saint
Domingue apart, on the one hand, from both of the liberal bourgeois revolutions of that era
and, on the other, from the revolts and other forms of rebellion that had characterized slaves’
recurrent resistance to slavery throughout the New World. The uniqueness of the Haitian
revolution in this respect, as well as its universality with respect to the natural rights philosophy
of Europe’s most progressive thinkers – not in the abstract but in the actual overthrow of
slavery – brings into ever sharper focus the reflections of the historical sociologist, Paul Gilroy,
provocatively expressed in The Black Atlantic:
Any concept of modernity ought to have something to contribute to an analysis of how
the particular varieties of radicalism articulated through the revolts of enslaved people
made selective use of the ideologies of the western Age of Revolution and then flowed
into social movements of an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist type.3
When the Saint Domingue slaves and their leaders undertook a war of liberation in 1791, it
was not a priori with the idea of achieving political independence or the formation of a nation
state, although these were the manifest outcomes of the revolution by 1804. At the very least,
when they launched their insurrection on the night of 22 August, it was with the certainty that
they could, by the destructive force of their arms and the power of their will, strike a powerful
blow at the hegemonic absolutism of their French masters and significantly alter their
condition as enslaved human beings. In so doing, they embarked upon the road of
3
P. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and
Double Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 44.
396
Social History
vol. 32 : no. 4
self-emancipation. But the substantive meanings of such abstract concepts as emancipation,
liberty, equality, citizenship, or even independence, were by no means self-evident. They
were constructed throughout thirteen years of warfare, rebellion and revolution, to suit the
needs and divergent interests of contending parties. It was in an international context of
imperialism and slavery, as well as revolutionary egalitarianism, and in the shifting polarities of
the French revolution, that the Haitian masses and their leadership, all too often in opposing or
contradictory ways, strove to turn these concepts into material realities and, against the
historical odds, to chart a future of their own making.
On 29 August 1793, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, the French civil commissioner to the colony
of Saint Domingue, issued a proclamation that legally freed the slaves of its North province
and, in the same stroke, granted them equality and the universal rights of French citizenship
that were enshrined in France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. General
emancipation was fulfilled throughout the entire colony on 31 October, when Étienne
Polverel, civil commissioner for the West and South provinces, followed in Sonthonax’s steps
and decreed slavery abolished in these two provinces.4 Finally, the constitutional abolition of
slavery was sanctioned in the National Convention on 4 February 1794. Never in the history
of European colonialism had slavery been abolished; moreover, the former slaves, who were
by definition property and therefore without juridical being, now became citizens of a nation
that defined itself by universalist principles of human equality. But their rights and duties as
free citizens would be determined by the economic needs of a colony at war. These rights
were further restricted, and the obligations of the plantation workers intensified and
constitutionally circumscribed under the military regime of Toussaint Louverture and the
Constitution of 1801. Finally, Napoleon Bonaparte’s attempts to reimpose slavery in 1802 led
to Haitian independence and to a reformulation of citizenship and the nation, whose basic
foundations lay deeply embedded in the legacies and contingencies of the revolution itself.
First, however, we need to contextualize briefly the circumstances under which the
commissioners initiated and then completed the process of declaratory emancipation.
THE ROAD TO EMANCIPATION
By 1793, the general insurrection launched by the slaves of the North in August 1791,
devastating as it was at the outset, had taken on far more serious military and political
dimensions. The rebel leaders, Jean-François and Biassou, along with Toussaint Louverture,
who then occupied a subordinate position as secretary, had formalized their tacit alliance with
the Spanish authorities in the eastern portion of the island, thereby bringing under Spanish
control those parts of Saint Domingue’s North province that were held by the slave forces
under their command. By that summer the looming threat of a British invasion that would be
welcomed by secessionist colonists, fearful of the ramifications of the commissioners’
revolutionary republicanism, appeared imminent. To add to the volatility of the situation,
insurrectionary slave movements were gaining ground in the West and South provinces. By
June, the arrival of a new governor-general, Thomas Galbaud, posed additional problems.
Galbaud’s pro-slavery royalist inclinations and intransigent attitude of resistance to the
authority of the commissioners eventually led to a crisis whereby outbreaks of rioting and
4
See n. 12.
November 2007
The Haitian revolution and citizenship
397
arson destroyed nearly two-thirds of the northern capital city, le Cap. Now, with large
portions of the north-east under Spanish control, the British invasion threatening to
materialize and the capital in a state of chaos, the commissioners turned to the African warriors
and to the capital’s eight to ten thousand urban slaves for the needed military support to defend
the colony in the name of revolutionary France: ‘It is with the natives of the country, that is,
the Africans,’ they wrote back to the National Convention, ‘that we will save Saint Domingue
for France.’5
Clearly the best and strongest military forces in the colony at this point were the insurgent
slaves, but they were putatively waging a war in the name of emancipation and, at the
moment, the loyalties of their principal leaders, Jean-François and Biassou, were with Spain.
Toussaint, too, was sceptical of the powers and intentions of the French commissioners and
chose to bide his time with his Spanish protectors. Still, there were a number of other Africanled warrior bands operating in the mountains, more or less independently of Jean-François and
Biassou and under the banner of royalism, as well as those in the South and West, that the
commissioners would entreat to join the ranks of the republican army. Therefore, to give the
insurgent slaves a tangible reason to fight for the French republic, the commissioners first
issued a proclamation on 21 June that offered freedom to ‘all [rebel] Negro warriors who
would fight for the Republic against its internal or external enemies’, thereby taking their first
concrete step in preparing the colony for general emancipation, while simultaneously
combining citizenship and revolutionary republican virtue with abolition. On 2 July the
procedures for obtaining manumission were issued: rebel slaves would have one week to
present themselves to the appropriate authorities for enlistment and service in the republican
army, whereupon they would be free citizens. Although addressed directly to the ‘men of 21
June’ the proclamation also spoke of ‘those [slaves] whom we will still elevate to the dignity of
free men’, implying that further measures to extend emancipation were on the way, and
reminded them that it was the French republic which, alone among the European powers, had
proclaimed the Rights of Man and then extended these to slaves.6
Freedom accompanied by citizenship required that the newly freed, that is, the armed slaves
who had been waging warfare since the first outbreak of August 1791, should become
responsible citizens. The institution of the family, the commissioners felt, was the best means
by which to do so. As dutiful husbands, fathers and citizens, they would acquire a sense of
moral and civic responsibility and make themselves worthy of their freedom. Therefore in
their proclamation of 11 July, Sonthonax and Polverel made provision for the emancipated
warriors to free their wives and children, on the condition that, within two weeks following
the proclamation, they marry their women in formal marriage ceremonies. The wedding
festivals would then become festivals of liberty.7 Furthermore, the owners of the female slaves
marrying these men would be indemnified by the republic. Again, the commissioners spoke in
terms that presaged the coming emancipation of all slaves, as they stated: ‘We have made some
men free, [so] we will make others . . . .’8 Finally, on 25 July they extended their proclamation
5
Cited in R. Stein, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax: The
Lost Sentinel of the Republic (London and Toronto,
1985), 76.
6
ibid., 86.
7
ibid. See also A. Cabon, Histoire d’Haı̈ti, 4 vols
[1895–1919] (Port-au-Prince, 192?–40), vol. III,
163 and, for the full text of the principal articles,
176–7. The proclamation also includes provision
for ‘any’ slave to become free through marriage to
a free person.
8
Cited in Stein, op. cit., 87.
398
Social History
vol. 32 : no. 4
of 11 July to the South province, while confirming all offers of freedom that had already been
extended there since 1792, so long as these men enrol in the republican army legions, dubbed
Légions d’Égalité, to fight for France.9 As an ‘indispensable duty’, therefore, they would be
charged with making the rest of the slaves return to their respective plantations and use their
authority as legionnaires to maintain the work discipline and subordination of the agricultural
labourers, without which France’s war effort would seriously be jeopardized. In the meantime,
the commissioners promised to ameliorate the lot of the black plantation workers who still
remained in slavery.
Yet the question remained: what, now, should be the status of the unfree persons left in the
colony? If the logic behind the initiatives taken in June and July had been to link the survival of
French republicanism in the colony to winning over significant numbers of slaves by turning
them into free, responsible citizens with rights of citizenship, then the next logical step, at least
for Sonthonax, was to push ahead and complete the process by proclaiming general
emancipation. Therefore, on 29 August, with the full backing of the municipal assembly of le
Cap, he took the final step and issued the proclamation whereby ‘[a]ll blacks and persons of
colour who are presently in slavery are declared free and are to enjoy the rights attached to
French citizenship’; moreover, ‘[t]he Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen shall be
printed, published and posted wherever necessary by the municipal authorities in the towns
and villages, and by the military commanders in the camps’.10 He had hoped, by the same
stroke, to be able to win over Jean-François, Biassou and, especially, Toussaint Louverture,
along with their northern army of rebel slaves, who manifestly were fighting for the same
cause. In this, however, he was unsuccessful.11
THE MEANING OF CITIZENSHIP
By the end of August 1793, slavery was unconditionally abolished and the universality of
French citizenship extended to the slaves, but with several important limitations. The first was
that, at this point, general emancipation would apply only in the North, and only in those parts
of the North that were still under French administration, with large sections of the rebeloccupied territories of the north-east, where slavery continued to exist, remaining firmly
under Spanish control. By the end of the summer, the western peninsular extremities of both
the North and South provinces, and, before the end of the year, strategic coastal areas of the
West would all be under British occupation and planter control. Thus general emancipation in
August 1793 was geographically limited to the republican North. In the West, Polverel had
been moving on his own toward the realization of general emancipation, but here he intended
to proceed by stages and to elaborate a new form of labour organization and property rights to
accompany it. Polverel’s concepts of freedom and citizenship, and the more complex process
of general emancipation he envisioned for the slaves in the West and South provinces, will be
9
On these, see C. Fick, The Making of Haiti: The
Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville,
1990), 140, 146–7.
10
For the full text of the proclamation’s thirtyeight articles, see Cabon, op. cit., 178–81.
11
On Toussaint’s attitudes toward his Spanish
protectors and his motivations for deserting them
in 1794, see D. Geggus, ‘From His Most Catholic
Majesty to the godless République: the ‘‘‘volteface’’ of Toussaint Louverture and the ending of
slavery in Saint-Domingue’, Revue française d’histoire d’Outre-Mer, LXV (1978), 481–99.
November 2007
The Haitian revolution and citizenship
399
taken up later, but, in both cases, as in the North, it was emancipation and citizenship dictated
from above.12
Thus liberty and citizenship, even as in France, had its limitations, and in Saint Domingue,
although slavery was abolished, colonialism was not. Neither the plantation regimen nor the
colonial status of Saint Domingue were ever brought under question. Moreover, the war
economy depended upon restoring production levels and commodity exports, but these would
now have to be secured by free labour. So the real problem for both Sonthonax and Polverel
was to reconcile the revolutionary principles of equality and French citizenship with the
pressing needs of the war economy and the harsh realities of colonial plantation agriculture. In
the lengthy preamble to his 29 August proclamation, published in French and in Creole,
Sonthonax made it clear to the new citizens of the republic that freedom did not entitle them
to live in a state of indolence, or to be able to come and go as they pleased: ‘Everyone in
France is free’, he told them, ‘and everyone [there] works. . .; you must do the same. Return to
the plantations of your former owners and you will be recompensed for your labour; you will
no longer be the property of someone else; you will be masters of your own property and you
will be happy.’13 He reminded them, though, that they owed their freedom to the French
republic: ‘Never forget, citizens . . . that of all the whites in the universe, only the French in
Europe are your friends’. Having become citizens by the will of the French nation (in reality,
by its civil commissioner), they would now be expected, out of gratitude for the blessings
bestowed upon them, to defend zealously the interests of the republic against the kings and
12
Initially three civil commissioners had been
appointed by the Legislative Assembly in 1792 to
administer the colony and restore order:
Sonthonax for the North province, Polverel for
the West and Jean-Antoine Ailhaud for the South.
Ailhaud abandoned his post after three months in
the colony and left for France in January 1793. He
was replaced by Olivier Delpech, who assumed
jurisdiction over the South province. Delpech
died on 27 September 1793, thus leaving Polverel
with jurisdiction over both the West and the
South provinces.
13
Cited in H. P. Sannon, Histoire de Toussaint
Louverture, 3 vols (Port-au-Prince, 1920), vol. I,
132. The Preamble to the 29 August proclamation
and a selected number of the articles are printed in
ibid., 132–5. All thirty-eight articles are printed in
Cabon, op. cit., 178–81. This, and other proclamations of the civil commissioners that relate directly
to the working conditions of the plantation
labourers, were promulgated both in French and
in Creole. In his book Léger-Félicité Sonthonax: Lost
Sentinel of the Republic, historian Robert Stein
refers to a 5 May 1793 proclamation, just
preceding those issued between 21 June and 29
August, which aimed to ameliorate the slaves’
conditions and protect them from planters’ abuses.
It was translated and read to the slaves in Creole,
each Monday morning before work began.
Similarly, Sonthonax’s general emancipation act
of 29 August was drafted and promulgated in both
French and Creole (op. cit., 84, 89). See also B.
Ardouin, Études sur l’histoire d’Haı̈ti [1853–1860],
11 vols, ed. François Dalencourt (Port-au-Prince,
1958), vol. II, book 2, 38. Further to Sonthonax’s
proclamation of 29 August was that of his
colleague, Polverel, issued on 7 February 1794
(see 402–3), applicable in the West and the South.
Articles 22 and 23 of this proclamation, in essence
a work code for the emancipated labourers,
required that the district military commanders on
the sequestered plantations, and managers and
overseers on all other plantations, assemble the exslaves and explain to them clearly (in Creole) the
dispositions of his preamble as well as the work
expected of them in order to receive their full pay,
and to ask them how many days per week they
wished to work, being fully aware of the penalties
for striking one or two days from their work week
(see 402–3 and n. 21 below). One may reasonably
assume that the proclamations of 21 June and 2, 11
and 25 July 1793, although not aimed at the
plantation labourers as such, but rather at extending manumission to the men who would join the
French army, and to their families, were also issued
in Creole or in some manner made known in
Creole to the beneficiaries.
400
Social History
vol. 32 : no. 4
princes of Europe. They should disprove the calumnies of tyrants who would claim that freed
Africans would not work, and should prove themselves by joining their efforts (i.e. plantation
labour) with those of France to increase and fortify her resources.14 What this meant, of
course, was that the plantation regime of export commodity production would prevail, and the
only yardstick by which the ex-slaves could measure their citizenship, that is, the right to
individual access to land and the opportunity to become independent freeholding peasants,
would not be applied.
By the terms of Sonthonax’s proclamation, the field workers would be tied for the first year
to the plantations of their former owners and would continue to be engaged in cultivation.
Their recompense, or wages, would consist, collectively, in one-third of the plantation
revenues, or one-quarter after government tax deductions, to be divided among them in
accordance with rank, occupation, age and sex. Another one-third would constitute the
owner’s profits, and the remaining third would be attributed to maintenance and operating
expenses. The primary conducteurs, as the former slave drivers were now called, would receive
three parts, secondary conducteurs two, and all male workers over fifteen years of age one part,
while women workers received two-thirds of a share, all children between the ages of ten and
fifteen received one-half, and women with children under ten a full share. The women,
however, were exempted from field labour after the seventh month of pregnancy and during
the first two months after childbirth without loss of their two-thirds’ share. To be entitled to
this remuneration, workers would be required to labour from dawn to sundown for a full six
days per week, with the exception of Sundays and holidays and two hours per day to tend to
their gardens, as they had under slavery. The whip was permanently abolished, and
punishments for disciplinary offences now consisted either of a few days in the stocks or, at the
worst, by the terms of the proclamation, the loss of part or all of one’s wages, the amount to be
decided upon by a justice of the peace and put back into the revenues belonging collectively to
the workers.
The collection and distribution of revenues that derived from plantation crop production,
however, was dependent upon prevailing market conditions and the discretion of the owner,
whose prerogative it was to sell the goods at market, after which one-third would be
distributed to the workers. In a colonial wartime economy, in which hard specie was virtually
non-existent and credit the medium of exchange, the chances of workers receiving their fair
share were slim indeed. Any dispute between the owner and the workers, or between workers
themselves, over the division and distribution of shares would be settled by two assessors and a
justice of the peace, whose responsibility it was to supervise discipline and law enforcement on
the plantations and despatch weekly reports to the inspector general, with copies going to the
civil commissioners, the governor-general and the treasurer. Any person found wandering
after two weeks from the date of promulgation of the decree, who was without property or
other means of support, who was not assigned to a plantation or employed as a domestic and, if
a male, was not enroled in the military, was thrown into prison – one month for the first
offence, three months for the second and one year at public works without pay after the third.
Finally, the laws and ordinances of the Code Noir, the former slave code, were provisionally
suspended.
14
From the Preamble cited in Sannon, op. cit., in
n. 13.
November 2007
The Haitian revolution and citizenship
401
Thus the kind of citizenship that Sonthonax designed for the former slaves of the North
might best be described as a plantation citizenship.15 The emancipation proclamation of 29
August, the first of its kind in the history of New World slavery, was in fact a regimented
labour code. In fact, it was the first, a prototype, in a series of work codes that would be
promulgated throughout the post-emancipation era to define the duties and circumscribe the
rights of Saint Domingue’s former slaves. For the plantation labourers, the rights of citizenship
are exercised on the plantation and within the confines of the plantation economy; individual
liberties and the rights of equality are thus not those of the civic or public sphere.
For the moment, though, Sonthonax’s proclamation applied only to the North. On 27
August 1793, two days prior to, and unaware of Sonthonax’s proclamation of general
emancipation in the North, Polverel freed all of the slaves on sequestered plantations in the
West that had belonged to emigrés and deportees. In a novel but impracticable manner, he
intended to combine the rights of citizenship with the rights of property for these slaves, and
since the plantations had belonged to enemies of the republic, Polverel argued that
confiscation and reallocation of the land for the mutual benefit of the republic and the freed
slaves did not violate the owners’ property rights. These plantations, or at least the production
profits, would be held in common among the slaves who still resided on them and who had
been abandoned by their owners, but were now free, alongside the slaves that had been freed
by the decrees of June and July, who were now in the army legions. The remaining slaves in
the province were promised an amelioration of their condition and, in due time, their
emancipation.
But what kind of property rights would the former slaves have had under Polverel’s system?
Would their rights of citizenship be substantially any different from those defined by
Sonthonax? And exactly how would all this have been implemented? Presumably these estates
would become something like government-run co-operatives or collective farms. But how
would they be administered? And if the former slaves should have collective rights to the
profits, would they also have a say in the management of the estates? Would they be able to
decide what to produce or have a measure of control over the rhythm of production? All of this
remained vague. Ideally, Polverel wanted to give the freed slaves a real incentive to work for
themselves and to become responsible citizens and ‘landholders’ with a vested interest in
plantation production. He explained his ideas to them in this way, and would ask them to
choose between his system and that of Sonthonax in the North:
[Sonthonax] has given you freedom without property, or rather, with one-third of the
revenues of the land which is devastated, without installations, without lodging. [He has
given you freedom] without the means by which to make the land productive; and I have
given you liberty, either with land under production or the means with which to
promptly regenerate those lands that have been devastated. He has given no property
rights to those of your brothers who are armed in the defence of the colony. . . . I have
given the right of co-ownership to those who fight while you cultivate.16
15
The term is that of V. Saint-Louis, ‘Les termes
de citoyen et Africain pendant la révolution de
Saint-Domingue’ in Laënnec Hurbon (ed.), L’insurrection des esclaves de Saint-Domingue: 22–23 août
1791 (Paris, 2000), 83.
16
Cited in Fick, Making, op. cit., 176. Polverel’s
intention was to have the district military
commanders poll the workers on the abandoned
plantations and ask them to vote on which of
the two regimes they wanted. See C. Fick,
402
Social History
vol. 32 : no. 4
In the portioning of plantation revenues, however, the soldiers, ‘who risk their lives and
expose themselves to far greater dangers’ than the farm workers, would obtain a larger share.17
In less turbulent times, Polverel’s plans might have been sufficiently elaborated and even
implemented, but urgency dictated a uniform policy for emancipation and, for the moment, it
was Sonthonax’s more expedient proclamation that prevailed and the complicated notion of
co-ownership or collective proprietorship was simply abandoned. Polverel’s own work code,
however, promulgated on 7 February 1794 for the West and South provinces after general
emancipation had become universally operative, was far more explanatory than Sonthonax’s
regarding the former slaves’ rights and duties of citizenship; as such, it deserves closer attention.
So by now nearly half the slaves of the West were emancipated, but there were still those
remaining in slavery on plantations where owners were present. Without attacking their
property rights, Polverel had urged these owners to free their slaves voluntarily and, on 22
September 1793, marking the first anniversary of the French republic, opened public registers
for them to do so. In this way he hoped to conjugate slave emancipation and citizenship with
French republican principles. The death on 27 September of the South province’s
commissioner, Olivier Delpech, a man staunchly opposed to general emancipation, settled
the matter here. On 31 October 1793 Polverel proclaimed slavery abolished universally in the
West and the South, thereby extending the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
throughout the entire colony.
In his preamble, Polverel spoke directly to the farm workers about their freedom and their
rights, using the term Africain to address them. He made it unequivocally clear that freedom
would entitle them neither to individual nor to collective proprietorship of the land: ‘Africains,
listen well. This land does not belong to you. It belongs to those who purchased it or to their
inheritors.’18 The workers did have a right to a portion of the yield, however, but only if they
worked a full six days per week, as they did under slavery, and only as a recompense for their
labour. Since they
