Leclerc suppressed metropolitan racism because it threatened his military control

Evidence

Leclerc was aware that the loyalty of the recently surrendered black troops was quite fragile. The colonial minister in Paris had published some of Leclerc’s earlier reports in French newspapers, and these publications had made their way back to Saint-Domingue. In order to avoid antagonizing the people in the colony, Leclerc asked the minister to make sure that future publications not include anything that “can destroy the ideas of liberty and equality, which all here have on their lips.” Writing to Bonaparte, he requested something more difficult: “I beg you to outlaw the publication of any jokes about blacks in the French newspapers. These undermine my operations here.” Leclerc was certainly not committed to antiracism— in the same letter to Bonaparte he complimented General Rochambeau for being an honest man and a good soldier, and added, “he doesn’t like blacks”—but he knew that anything that smelled of racism might make it very difficult for him to hold onto Saint-Domingue. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 977

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the wider Atlantic narrative of how the language of liberty circulated between colony and metropole; parallels the reverse dynamic seen in the American revolutionary era with newspapers crossing the ocean.