Jeremy D. Popkin

A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution


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on the commandeurs: even though the commandeurs were enslaved themselves, plantation-owners and managers treated them with respect to maintain their authority over the rest of the workforce. While most enslaved workers on the plantations worked in the fields or processed sugar and coffee, some were used as domestic servants for the masters and their families. The one skilled job usually reserved for women was the direction of the infirmary; supervising the care of the sick and ferreting out malingerers who were trying to escape work was an important task in the overall management of a plantation.

      Figure 1.1 Plantations and enslaved labor. An image commissioned by a French plantation-owner around 1780 shows the “purgerie,” where enslaved blacks worked to refine sugarcane juice into sugar for export. In the foreground, a black woman on the right carries cane stalks to be processed, while on the left, a man with a raised whip chases another woman. Even at the height of the Enlightenment period, European whites were not embarrassed by the cruelty and the exploitative nature of the slavery system.

      Source: © RMN-Blérancourt, Musée franco-américain du château de Blérancourt.

      In theory, the treatment of slaves was regulated by the Code Noir or “Black Code” issued in 1685 by the French king Louis XIV. The Code Noir provided a legal basis for slavery in the French colonies, even though the institution was officially barred from the metropole where French judges had laid down the principle that “there are no slaves in France” in 1571. Although the Code Noir was meant to uphold the authority of slaveowners over their human property, it did include some provisions meant to prevent the worst abuses of slavery. Masters were made responsible for providing their captives with adequate rations, they were supposed to furnish them with two new sets of clothing every year, and they were encouraged to provide for their instruction in the Christian religion. In extreme circumstances, the code permitted enslaved blacks to appeal to the royal authorities for protection from their masters. In practice, however, both colonial plantation-owners and French administrators ignored these clauses of the code: enslaved workers were left to furnish most of their own food, clothing was distributed erratically, and little effort was made to Christianize the blacks, for fear that this would require recognizing that they had at least some minimal rights. Few among the enslaved population even knew that they were supposed to be able to protest about extreme mistreatment, and colonial officials rarely paid any attention to their complaints. Nevertheless, blacks who did become aware of the protections they were supposed to enjoy under the Code Noir began to think of themselves as having at least a minimum of rights. In this way, historian Malick Ghachem has suggested, the legal code that defined slavery served, paradoxically, to spread ideas that could ultimately undermine it.4

      The Culture of the Black Population