Sacatra. Griffe. Marabou. Quarteron. Métis. Mamelouk. Quarteronné. Sang-mêlé. To most people today, these words hold little significance but not much longer than two hundred years ago in a small French colony in the Caribbean known as Saint-Domingue, these words defined society. Saint-Domingue, the future site for the current nation of Haiti, though known for having had one of the largest scale applications of slave-based agriculture, was also host to a diverse population of free people of color or gens de couleur libres as they were known. While most colonial-era Caribbean islands included mixed race mulattoes and mestizos, none of them reached the intricacy that existed in Saint-Domingue. Whether as dark as sacatras with seven-eighths African ancestry or as nearest to white as the one-sixty-fourths black sang-mêlés, Saint-Domingue society was much more multifaceted than simply black and white. For this reason, the Haitian Revolution was also much more multifaceted than simply slaves versus planters. Among this violent conflict were also these gens de couleur.
The Haitian Revolution has mostly been remembered as being a slave revolt while typically neglecting the contribution of the free colored population that was just as adamant on achieving change. While unquestionably in a higher position than slaves in Saint-Domingue’s race-based hierarchy, they were also unquestionably lower than whites hence the inner struggle among the gens de couleur as to what contribution to make in the Haitian Revolution and the side with which to fight: the French planters with whom many of them closely identified or the slaves that offered the greatest potential of getting equality? In reality, however, this matter was much less clear-cut. The gens de couleur of Saint-Domingue did not definitively choose one group to stand behind. The liminal position they held in society–being lighter than slaves but darker than the elite–meant that not only did they change allegiances as the revolution progressed, but they also did so incompletely with some remaining loyal to one faction and others to a different one. The role that free people of color played during the Haitian Revolution was thus a complicated one as their goals for equality were often challenged by their ambiguous racial identity in such a highly racialized conflict.
Saint-Domingue’s complex racial composition goes back to France’s acquisition of the colony from Spain in 1697 as part of the Treaty of Ryswick. Driven by the economic success realized by growing sugar, the crop quickly became the colony’s chief export. The intense labor associated with running sugar plantations led to the import of slaves at a number unmatched by any other island in the Caribbean. Over the century Saint-Domingue was ruled over by France, upwards of 900,000 African slaves reached its shores. This excessive exploitation of African labor gave way to frequent racial mixing, often between French planters and their female slaves, especially when compared to other colonies that relied less on slavery. The result of these encounters spawned mixed race children who eventually bore children themselves that were even more racially diverse. It was highly uncommon that mixed-race children of slaves were not freed at birth “as white or mixed-race free fathers were under strong social pressure to see to it that their offspring were freed.” These gens de couleur were allowed to live independently of whites but they were perpetually viewed as subordinate to them and deprived of the full rights given to French citizens. This strict phenotypic social structure instituted in Saint-Domingue meant that even the wealthiest free people of color still had less rights than the poorest white farmers known as petit blancs.
127 our experts are availableright now
Even prior to the Haitian Revolution, the gens de couleur had been calling for equal treatment. This was especially so in the years right before the revolution during which the free colored population significantly grew from 6,897 in 1775 to 10,427 in 1780 to 21,723 in 1788. Similarly to slaves in Saint-Domingue, they became especially motivated by the ideologies of liberté, égalité, and fraternité–liberty, equality, and fraternity–promoted at the outbreak of the French Revolution. In fact, a French abolitionist group formed in 1788, known as the Société des Amis des Noirs, or Society of the Friends of the Blacks, played a major role in sparking this more active stance taken by the gens de couleur to demand more rights.
The Society included notable gens de couleur including Alexandre Pétion, the first president of Haiti, and Julien Raimond, a planter who was one of the first to advocate the idea of equal rights for the free colored population to the National Assembly. While free people of color were considered French nationals and were granted several legal rights including those to marry, draw up contracts, and give away and inherit property, political rights that whites were entitled to were denied to them. Given how complex attacking the entire institution of slavery was, the extension of these rights to free people of color was soon brought to the forefront for the Société des Amis des Noirs as a more pragmatic goal. A major win came for the Society and free people of color on May 15, 1791 when the National Assembly granted political rights to all people of color whose parents were both free.
The slave revolt that took place on the night of August 21, 1791 at Bois Caïman initiating the Haitian Revolution clearly placed the gens de couleur in a difficult position. Not only had a notable portion of them just been declared as citizens under French law three months earlier but even those that were not granted political rights largely identified closer to the white planter class than African slaves. The gens de couleur, especially those from upper class families, often had strong ties to France where many were educated and even raised in some instances, which explains why the Société des Amis des Noirs had several free colored members from Saint-Domingue. The slaves that started the revolution were largely rebelling against their immediate oppression embodied in the slaveholding planters of Saint-Domingue and eventually the greater French Empire.
For free people of color, however, taking up arms with slaves would effectively make them turn their back on France, both the country many saw as a second home and the one that granted some of them equal rights. On the issue of slavery itself, many of the gens de couleur were not necessarily in favor of the freedom fight being carried out by slaves. Even before the May 15 decree was announced, the free colored population was allowed to hold property and the wealthiest of them even owned slaves. It was estimated that in 1789, free colored planters owned one-third of all land and one-quarter of all slaves in Saint-Domingue. For those not wealthy enough to own plantations, free people of color were also prevalent within the local police force and militia to defend against the enormous slave majority. Unlike freedmen who were born into slavery like the prominent Haitian Revolution Toussaint Louverture, free people of color never understood what it meant to be enslaved and thus did not have that common bond with rebelling slaves. Instead, the initial slave revolt of 1791 was in some ways encroaching on way of life of many for the gens de couleur just as it was for the white planter class.
The relatively positive relationship between Saint-Domingue’s free colored population and France did not last long. For one, the whites in colony displayed an overwhelming refusal to accept the new status granted to their inferiors which served as a sort of “re-entrenchment of the hierarchical standing of the political subject within a graduated scale of intermixture of black blood.” Petit blancs, especially, were unwilling to yield their already low social standing to people of color.
Additionally, the rights granted by the May 15 decree only applied to a portion of the free colored population that was born to free parents, excluding those whose mothers were slaves. A turning point for the allegiance of many of the gens de couleur came on September 24, 1791, little more than a month after the slave revolt at Bois Caïman, when the May 15 law was overturned while revising the new French constitution. There had already been gens de couleur who had taken up arms and freed their slaves in defense of equal rights, especially those following the example of Vincent Ogé, a one-quarter African quarteron who led a short uprising in 1790 before being executed. By the end of 1791, however, free people of color, both from upper and lower classes, began to view France more antagonistically. With the leadership and access to arms many of the gens de couleur had having been in the colonial militia combined with the multitude of slaves, many of them were gradually seeing the benefit of an alliance with the slave rebels in Saint-Domingue.
Despite this newfound direction the free colored population had in the Haitian Revolution, they were not a completely united front. Although 1792 surely saw many more of them side with the slave insurgents, there were still some that remained loyal to France. Some even wrote declarations to the French government proclaiming their loyalty as was done by a group of gens de couleur in the southern parish of Aquin . A major effort taken by France to break up this free person-slave unity was its passage of a decree on April 4, 1792 that granted political rights to all free people regardless of whether or not their parents were free. Passed largely in response to the disorder existing in Saint-Domingue and being titled as a law “concerning the colonies and the means of appeasing the troubles there,” the decree was an attempt to regain the allegiances of the gens de couleur and thus suppress the slave rebellion. However, given the persistent refusal of colonial whites in accepting the free people of color as equals as well as the lack of faith many had in the unstable French government carrying out and enforcing the decree, the free colored population largely continued fighting with the slaves.
The fracturing of the free colored force became increasingly evident once existing coalitions began to crumble as other nations got involved in the Haitian Revolution. Intervention from Spain and Great Britain starting in 1793 came as a result of the potential power play of acquiring the valuable Saint-Domingue colony as well as, particularly for Great Britain, the desire to suppress the slave rebellion so as for it to not incite slave revolts in other colonies. Some of the gens de couleur actually began to ally themselves with the British. While some made this decision to oppose the abolition of slavery, others did so to fight off the French as they began to more actively take back the colony after abolishing slavery in Saint-Domingue on August 29, 1793 and throughout the French Empire on February 4, 1794. Along with Louverture, other free people of color even joined the French side. These crisscrossing alliances that existing among the free colored population meant that infighting became more common despite the fact that all of them desired the same goal of equal rights with the only discrepancy being the path toward achieving it.
Conflict within the free colored population, as well as with former slaves, developed largely due to the presence of additional players in the Haitian Revolution. This infighting, however, continued even after Spanish and British forces began to withdraw from Saint-Domingue. Given the intermediary period Saint-Domingue revolutionaries were currently in– after slavery was abolished but before genuine independence was achieved–much of the conflict existed among each other in the form of power struggles. With Toussaint Louverture in alliance with France and being placed in charge of the colony, tensions grew between his regime and other prominent military leaders, namely André Rigaud, a mulatto general who governed the southern region of Saint-Domingue under Louverture.
By June 1799, these tensions erupted into an armed struggle for control of the colony in a conflict known as the War of the South. Though not an exclusive rule, support for each side tended to be divided along racial lines, with former slaves and free blacks gravitating towards Louverture and the gens de couleur, including Alexandre Pétion, backing Rigaud. The fact that these two factions were quite similar in their ties with France, class statuses, and views for the future of Saint-Domingue emphasizes the antagonism that existed between the free colored and black populations for territorial dominance. After a year of fighting, Louverture’s forces prevailed which led Rigaud to flee the colony for France in July 1800. Shortly after this, the gens de couleur’s alliance with former slaves of Saint-Domingue was to be tested one final time.
The somewhat stable relationship between Saint-Domingue and France that lasted since the mid-1790s soon came to an end with the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. After his 1799 coup, Napoleon became determined to end the colony’s semi-autonomous rule by restoring imperial authority and reinstituting slavery, a task he entrusted to General Victor Emmanuel Leclerc. At this point, the strong unity that existed with the Saint-Domingue population appeared again after Rigaud’s exile brought the gens de couleur under Louverture’s leadership. It was also at this point that the revolution that had begun as a fight to end slavery and gain equal rights shifted to a fight for absolute national independence. With the former slaves wanting freedom and the free colored population desiring equality, both groups clearly saw this renewed French encroachment as the common enemy to their goals.
Despite the stronger connection the gens de couleur had with French culture when compared with former slaves, the long-perpetuated alienation they felt as second-class citizens up until 1791 as well as their inconsistent relationship with France that followed throughout this revolutionary period caused them to find more trust among Louverture’s ex-slave army. This bond between the two groups continued once the French were driven out of Saint-Domingue and the official declaration of an independent Haiti was made on January 1, 1801. The common racial background they saw as being separate from the French was exhibited in the constitution adopted in 1805 which proclaimed that Haitian citizens “shall hence forward be known only by the generic appellation of blacks.” No longer did the rigid race-based social hierarchy exist, at least not by law. The goal of creating a government based on liberty, equality, and fraternity as inspired by the French Revolution was finally achieved and able to be enjoyed by all Haitians, former slaves and gens de couleur alike.
The Haitian Revolution told through the eyes of the gens de couleur offers quite an atypical perspective when examining such a pivotal point in history. The free colored population in Saint-Domingue for so long struggled with having a sense of belonging and even more with a sense of identity once fighting began. Seeing this struggle shows how the revolution was more than just a slave rebellion. In fact, the success of the Haitian Revolution could have predicated on the decision of most gens de couleur to ultimately fight alongside the slaves instead of fighting to suppress them. Just as the abolition of slavery in Haiti was decades before its time compared to the rest of the world, forming a nation built on racial equality was, too, an almost unfathomable development when even places like the United States did not yet promote such principles. Granted, although Haiti would certainly still struggle with maintaining a nation founded on these ideals, the victory gained by gens de couleur in overcoming and ending the hegemonic discrimination and subordination they were subject to for so long truly embodies the fervent desire they had for equality.
