Peace with Britain empowered Napoleon to reimpose control over Saint-Domingue

Evidence

Emancipation had been decreed in 1793 in large part to secure Saint- Domingue from British occupation, and in the intervening years war had made Louverture and his army necessary allies for the French government. Laveaux and others had celebrated the military services rendered by the ex-slaves in order to mitigate concerns in France about the economic disruption caused by emancipation. With peace, however, military necessity could no longer be used against those clamoring for a reconstruction of the plantation economy. Consistently attacked during the previous years in Paris, Louverture came to be seen in government circles less as a valuable ally than as an obstacle to Bonaparte’s new colonial plans. Peace made the Leclerc expedition both politically expedient and militarily possible. The end of the global struggle with the British freed up French forces that had been tied down in Europe. It also rendered the British willing to allow a major military force to cross the Atlantic without hindrance. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 896

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader Atlantic revolutionary war logic where emancipation was a wartime expedient easily revoked in peacetime.