The enslaved insurgents of Saint-Domingue, not France, authored their own emancipation

Evidence

For the liberty of the ex-slaves of Saint-Domingue had not been a magnanimous gift from a benevolent Republic. The National Convention had taken the important step of ratifying and sanctifying the principle of emancipation, and in so doing had courageously put principle before profit. They had done so, however, following the lead of Sonthonax’s emancipation decree, which was a response to the powerful bid for liberty by the insurgents of Saint-Domingue. It was these insurgents—those who had “eaten misery” in pursuit of liberty, who were the real authors of abolition. Having suffered years of slavery at the hands of a French colonial regime, they had finally won emancipation through two years of war. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 664

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the standard French Republican narrative of abolition as benevolent gift; echoes the reader’s interest, from other sources, in emancipation-from-below historiographies.