Leclerc suppressed racial rhetoric in France to avoid destabilizing Saint-Domingue.

Evidence

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: Connects to the reader’s interest in how colonial powers policed narratives about race from the metropole; parallels the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ piece on political signaling through rhetoric.