Planters feared slave testimony more than they valued royal protection
Evidence
“How can we contain the negroes if they can accuse whites?” he asked. “To believe the accusations of the slaves is to open the door to revolt and arm them against the whites.” He saw in the royal decrees a sinister goal, that of “emancipating the negroes and placing the whites in chains.” … The court in Le Cap refused to register the ordinance, setting off a battle between the local administrators and Versailles that led to a 1787 royal edict shutting down the rebellious court and transferring its powers to Port-au-Prince. In the same year, while Martinique and Guadeloupe were granted the right to create colonial assemblies, Saint-Domingue was not. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 119
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
Related
- Colonial masters saw even modest legal protections for slaves as arming them for revolt (similarity 0.90)
- Leclerc pleaded with Paris to delay restoring slavery to avoid self-contradiction (similarity 0.80)
- Planters believed the Assembly would abolish slavery and sought transnational slaveholder alliance (similarity 0.80)
- Reported plantation uprisings drove France’s 1780s royal reforms granting slaves legal complaint rights (similarity 0.80)
- Planters who lost the emancipation battle in 1794 won legal revenge by 1800 (similarity 0.79)
- Saint-Domingue’s denial of colonial assembly rights fueled the self-government demands that preceded rebellion (similarity 0.79)
- French commissioners sent to end the revolt would end up embracing it instead (similarity 0.79)
- Slave rebels sought freedom through alliance with France, not secession (similarity 0.79)
- French revolutionaries in Paris disagreed over whether to excuse or condemn the slave revolt (similarity 0.79)
- Planters’ treason pushed the French to arm rebel slaves (similarity 0.79)
- Some planters fled even unbeleaguered colonies out of fear of contagion (similarity 0.78)
- Violence by insurgent slaves was no greater than that of other revolutions (similarity 0.78)
- White fears of slave insurrection in 1789 were premature but not deluded. (similarity 0.78)
- Saint-Domingue planters in Paris launched a reactionary attack on emancipation (similarity 0.78)
- Planters saw the Declaration of the Rights of Man as a threat to slavery. (similarity 0.78)