France reversed its May 15 concession to free people of color

Evidence

With the news of the uprising arriving in Paris, the arguments in favor of racial equality at last carried the day. Brissot and some of his allies gained control of the Colonial Ministry. They blamed the planters for the revolt and, publicizing the overtures some of them had made to the British, painted them as dangerous counterrevolutionaries. The only way to save the colony, they argued successfully, was to give political rights to the free-coloreds. Their victory was facilitated by the increasingly radical tone of the Revolution in France, and by the looming possibility of war with Great Britain, but it was driven by the events in Saint-Domingue, and based on the principle of the “Concordats” signed between whites and free-coloreds there. The argument about free-coloreds’ political rights, as Robin Blackburn notes, “had been transformed by the sight of the smoke rising from burnt-out plantation buildings and cane fields.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 443 (#responds-to, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: France granted free-colored citizens full political equality in April 1792; The slave uprising drove France to grant political rights to free-coloreds — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 443; British capitulation stripped free people of color of their full racial equality (+1 more)

Related

• The slave uprising drove France to grant political rights to free-coloreds (similarity 0.91)
• British capitulation stripped free people of color of their full racial equality (similarity 0.90)
• Saint-Domingue whites built a racist democratization that excluded free people of color (similarity 0.86)
• Free people of color defected to Britain to keep slaves while preserving racial equality. (similarity 0.84)
• The 1791 decree enfranchised only free-born coloreds, excluding the recently freed (similarity 0.83)
• France legally abolished racial distinctions among free people in 1792 to save slavery (similarity 0.83)
• France granted free-colored citizens full political equality in April 1792 (similarity 0.82)
• The slave uprising in Saint-Domingue shifted the French revolution into granting racial equality (similarity 0.82)
• France legally granted racial equality in its colonies in April 1792 (similarity 0.80)
• French enfranchisement of free-coloreds excluded the recently freed (similarity 0.80)
• France outlawed legal racial distinctions in its American colonies in 1792 (similarity 0.80)
• French law first enfranchised only propertied free people of color born free. (similarity 0.79)
• White colonists themselves petitioned for general emancipation by 1793. (similarity 0.79)
• Saint-Domingue’s 1790 democratization extended to all whites but excluded free people of color. (similarity 0.79)
• Free-colored planters claimed the Code Noir promised them citizenship rights (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• France granted free-colored citizens full political equality in April 1792 #contradicts (0.60)
• The slave uprising drove France to grant political rights to free-coloreds #responds-to (0.50) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 443
• British capitulation stripped free people of color of their full racial equality #corroborates (0.45)
• Bonaparte’s May 1802 decree restored slavery in French colonies. #corroborates (0.40)