Saint-Domingue whites built a racist democratization that excluded free people of color

Evidence

With the news of the uprising arriving in Paris, the arguments in favor of racial equality at last carried the day. Brissot and some of his allies gained control of the Colonial Ministry. They blamed the planters for the revolt and, publicizing the overtures some of them had made to the British, painted them as dangerous counterrevolutionaries. The only way to save the colony, they argued successfully, was to give political rights to the free-coloreds. Their victory was facilitated by the increasingly radical tone of the Revolution in France, and by the looming possibility of war with Great Britain, but it was driven by the events in Saint-Domingue, and based on the principle of the “Concordats” signed between whites and free-coloreds there. The argument about free-coloreds’ political rights, as Robin Blackburn notes, “had been transformed by the sight of the smoke rising from burnt-out plantation buildings and cane fields.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 443 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: French republican civilizing policies were fundamentally racist in practice; The threat of slave revolt forced whites to grant free-coloreds political rights; The slave uprising drove France to grant political rights to free-coloreds — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 443 (+2 more)

Related

• The slave uprising drove France to grant political rights to free-coloreds (similarity 0.93)
• Saint-Domingue’s 1790 democratization extended to all whites but excluded free people of color. (similarity 0.91)
• The slave uprising in Saint-Domingue shifted the French revolution into granting racial equality (similarity 0.88)
• Colonial white political democratization explicitly excluded free people of color (similarity 0.87)
• France reversed its May 15 concession to free people of color (similarity 0.86)
• British capitulation stripped free people of color of their full racial equality (similarity 0.86)
• Saint-Domingue’s racial hierarchy was internally contradictory and internally divided. (similarity 0.83)
• British occupation of Saint-Domingue reimposed racial discrimination that alienated free-coloreds (similarity 0.83)
• The 1791 decree enfranchised only free-born coloreds, excluding the recently freed (similarity 0.83)
• France legally abolished racial distinctions among free people in 1792 to save slavery (similarity 0.83)
• Slave revolt threats forced whites to accept racial equality and integrated assemblies (similarity 0.83)
• Free people of color defected to Britain to keep slaves while preserving racial equality. (similarity 0.82)
• White colonists themselves petitioned for general emancipation by 1793. (similarity 0.82)
• British fear of colonial precedent drove them to impose racial discrimination in occupied Saint-Domingue (similarity 0.81)
• French enfranchisement of free-coloreds excluded the recently freed (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Saint-Marc whites defied French law, opening colonial ports and barring free-coloreds from power. #exemplifies (0.78)
• The threat of slave revolt forced whites to grant free-coloreds political rights #contradicts (0.70)
• The slave uprising drove France to grant political rights to free-coloreds #contradicts (0.62) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 443
• Racial categories were administratively imposed on people formerly counted as white in the 1760s #expands (0.55)