Free-colored militia service made them indispensable yet French policy rewarded them with officer bans

Evidence

In the early eighteenth century, segregated free-colored militia units were formed, and over time administrators came increasingly to depend on them to assure the defense of the colony. The first free-colored army units were formed during the Seven Years’ War, and although the several hundred men who joined spent the war quietly along the border with Santo Domingo, observers noted their value. Whereas many of the fresh French troops who arrived in the colony during the war succumbed to tropical diseases, the local free-colored troops remained healthy. … When d’Estaing arrived as governor a few years after the war, he introduced a plan to make free-coloreds “the backbone of colonial defense.” All men of African descent would be required to serve in the militia, without the right to purchase exemptions as whites could. At the same time, d’Estaing declared it would no longer be possible for free-coloreds to serve as officers in their units—as Ollivier, Auba, and others had done for decades. To soften the racial discrimination of the plan, he proposed that anyone who had less than one-eighth African ancestry be decreed officially white. This aspect of the proposal enraged many colonial whites, and d’Estaing was unable to institute his reforms, although a ban on free-colored officers was instituted. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 235

Categorization

• XREF: The colonial pattern of relying on free-colored military service while denying them rank previews the later racial tensions of the revolution; connects to the reader’s understanding of how Saint-Domingue’s racial hierarchy bred the conflict.
• QUESTION: The paradox of making free-coloreds ‘the backbone of defense’ while simultaneously stripping their officer ranks is curious — what rationale did d’Estaing give for this simultaneous dependence and demotion?