A Colony of Citizens

Laurent Dubois

The idea of universal rights is often understood as a product of Europe, but as Laurent Dubois demonstrates, it was profoundly shaped by the struggle over slavery and citizenship in the French Caribbean. Dubois focuses on Guadeloupe where in the early 1790s slaves fought for equality and freedom and formed alliances with besieged Republicans. Even though slavery was abolished throughout the Empire in 1794 French administrators on the island combined emancipation with new forms of coercion and racial exclusion, resulting in the re-establishment of the slave system in 1802. By contrast, rebels in St. Domingue were able to defeat the French and create an independent Haiti.

The political culture of republicanism, Dubois argues, was transformed through this transcultural and transatlantic struggle for liberty and citizenship. The slaves-turned-citizens of the French Caribbean expanded the political possibilities of the Enlightenment by giving new and radical content to the idea of universal rights.

“Dubois demonstrates how the dynamic for change in societies and empires can be powerfully influenced by the agency of an underclass who make their own way forward and upward”. Barry Gaspar, Duke University

“Adroitly linking the black revolutions of Guadeloupe and St. Domingue, Dubois neatly balances the local and Atlantic dimensions and stakes a claim to the centrality of those revolutions to the history of empire and democracy”. David Geggus, University of Florida.

Category: History
Publication Date: 2004
Extent: 446 pages
Size: 6 x 9
ISBN 978-976-637-181-4 / 976-637-181-4
Binding: Paperback
Price: US $9.95