Louverture appropriated French language of difference to justify his own black-led constitution

Evidence

On February 4, 1801—the seventh anniversary of the abolition of slavery by the National Convention—he announced the convocation of a “Constituent Assembly” that would draft a constitution for Saint-Domingue. The time had come to “lay the foundations” for the colony’s “prosperity” by creating “laws appropriate for our habits, our traditions, our climate, our industry.” He used the language of difference deployed by the French government, but with a different intent. Where it had once served to assert white supremacy in the colony despite the universalist promises of the Revolution, Louverture now used it to justify the creation of a body of law that sanctified and solidified a new regime in which men of African descent were in command. Instead of waiting for Bonaparte to send his own laws, he decided to make his own. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 857

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The brilliant inversion: the very creole legal ideology of racial difference that French planters built to preserve white supremacy becomes, in Louverture’s hands, the foundation of a black-ruled constitutional order. Also: he dates his own constitution on the anniversary of abolition, announcing a competing sovereignty.
• XREF: Connects to the earlier chapter on the 1794 abolition and Laveaux’s vision of unified colonial representation.