Thanks as ever to
@AndyC for adding pictures and editing this.
Poor
@Redolegna has routinely had to put up with me taking any conversation about the first French republic and making it instead about Haiti but I do think Haiti is that Republic at both its worst and it’s best.
I talk more about the atrocities committed by the Leclerc expedition in the next article but it’s worth noting that the ‘kill all adults and repopulate the Island with new slaves’ plan was seriously discussed and advocated among various soldiers and officials, not just Leclerc.
But well also the reason it was taken seriously is because, to some extent that’s how all the slave societies under the old Monarchies of Spain, Portugal, France and Great Britain already worked. It was only the USA that really had a self-sustaining slave population. In Haiti, Brazil, Cuba and Jamaica, most of the slaves died and were replaced by new slaves. The Leclerc plan was a continuation and only slight escalation of the pre republic status quo and upon the restoration, a number of monarchists loudly championed it.
Which is why the emancipation and offer of citizenship is such a big moment, because the Leclerc expedition is merely more of what the Monarchy had already offered whereas Sonthonax's actions are a huge break from what came before. And you can see why Louverture and the like put such hope in that before being let down by Leclerc, which is probably why there was such a concerted attempt to keep the plantations running and so France happy even when it was driving the country to further civil strife and oppression.
It’s possible I’m too quick to write off Loverture's hopes of becoming a free part of the French Empire as a pipe dream, because Napoleon himself said that the economic motives, which I argue are deal breakers, were secondary to a motive of ego, i.e to show an uppity slave who was boss and so discourage too much free action from other officers in distant provinces.
But I’m a cynic, the idea of France ever accepting the huge loss of money of the end of the plantation system and having to invest in infrastructure in Haiti rather than rake in the sugar sales feels like a fairy tale. It’s the kind of empire apologetica AH people write where you get the empire without the oppression and nah, one came with the other.
I can't help but think that as soon as France is at peace and can look at Haiti, any attempt at ending the plantation system, which needs to happen to keep the Haitians on board, will be met by something like the Leclerc expedition even if Napoleon doesn't rise to the top. Either the Republic loses in which case the Monarchy is bound to do it or it doesn't, in which case someone is going to look at the way Haiti has gone from a goldmine to a money drain and attempt to reverse that, as happened in OTL.