Insurgent leaders invoked the Rights of Man and demanded general liberty

Evidence

In the north the tone of the insurgents was changing. Jean-François and Biassou, who in late 1791 had negotiated for a small number of emancipations and limited reforms in slavery, joined with a young leader named Charles Belair and issued a letter to the Colonial Assembly and the commissioners. The French, they pointed out, had “formally sworn” to follow the Declaration of the Rights of Man. This declaration, they continued, pronounced that “men are born free and equal in rights” and that their “natural rights were liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.” In resisting slavery, then, the insurgents were clearly “within their rights” as stipulated in the Declaration. Nevertheless, there were French officials who had “crossed the oceans” to combat them. In place of such hypocritical behavior, the insurgents suggested an alternative. They would lay down their arms if two major demands were met: “general liberty for all men retained in slavery” and a “general amnesty for the past.” The leaders would then oversee the return of the insurgents to the plantations, where they would go back to work not as slaves but as laborers receiving a yearly salary. With a keen awareness of the political forces that might shape the future of the colony, the insurgent leaders requested that the plan be presented to both the king and the National Assembly and be guaranteed by the Spanish government. Nothing came of this proposal at the time. But it stands as a testament to the expanding goals and ambitions of the insurgents. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 483

Categorization

• XREF: The insurgents wielding the Declaration of the Rights of Man against French colonial hypocrisy parallels how subjugated groups elsewhere weaponize the colonizer’s own stated values — connects to Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and decolonial argumentation generally.