French officials saw Louverture’s black army as a threat to colonial control

Evidence

From the moment of his arrival in the colony, even before the British evacuation had been secured, Hédouville had sought to limit the size and power of Louverture’s army. He resented the expenses incurred by the large army, complaining that the “black troops” were given a costly ration of bread when they could easily survive on cassava, bananas, and potatoes gathered in the countryside. (The troops never ate their bread, the agent claimed, selling it instead; but when it was not issued to them they nevertheless “murmured” in complaint.) Hédouville also thought the colony was overpopulated with black officers. Most of these men, he wrote, could barely read and were at the “mercy” of their secretaries, the detritus of the white community. They followed “no law but their will” and exercised an “intolerable despotism.” Since their rank was determined by the number of men they commanded, Hédouville claimed, they constantly pulled cultivators from the plantations, sometimes by force; he outlawed such recruitment, unless carried out under his explicit orders, in June 1798. Every “ravine” in the Northern Province possessed an arrogant officer who had been catered to by the “negrophile” policies of the white administrators who had preceded him. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 772

Categorization

• SHARE: Hédouville’s paternalistic complaint that black troops could survive on cassava while demanding bread shows how racism shaped even logistical disputes.