As Hunter Wallace has documented at Occidental Dissent, the unfortunate French Revolution unleashed egalitarian radicalism and the world has never been the same. The egalitarians were not merely content to spread their ideology throughout mainland France, but took it to the colonies as well. Saint-Domingue (Haiti) was then one of the wealthiest places on Earth and was invaluable to the French. After ‘liberty, equality and fraternity‘ were brought to the colony it quickly descended into chaos and genocidal slaughter. The African slaves took over and a fabulously wealthy and productive society was quickly reduced to abject poverty, rampant violence, cannibalism and voodoo. For many generations afterwards the specter of Haiti and the fear that their own society might be likewise destroyed by egalitarian ideologies haunted people throughout the Americas. Civilisation was all but stamped out in the former French colony.
A similar fate was tragically visited upon the French colony of Guadaloupe:
In 1790, following the outbreak of the French Revolution, the upper classes of Guadeloupe refused to obey the new laws of equal rights for the free colored. They attempted to declare independence, causing a fire to break out in Pointe-à-Pitre that devastated a third of the town. A struggle between the monarchists (who wanted independence) and the republicans (who were faithful to revolutionary France) ensued. It ended with a victory by the monarchists, who declared independence in 1791. The monarchists refused to receive the new governor appointed by Paris in 1792. In 1793, a slave rebellion started, which made the upper classes turn to the British and ask them to occupy the island.
In an effort to take advantage of the chaos ensuing from the French Revolution, Britain attempted to seize Guadeloupe in 1794 and held it from 21 April until December 1794, when Victor Hugues obliged the English general to surrender. Hugues succeeded in freeing the slaves. They revolted and turned on the slave owners who controlled the sugar plantations.
In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte issued the Law of 20 May 1802. It restored slavery to all of the colonies captured by the British during the French Revolutionary Wars, but this did not apply to certain French overseas possessions such as Guadeloupe, Guyane, and Saint-Domingue. Napoleon sent an expeditionary force to recapture the island from the rebellious Mulattos. Louis Delgrès and a group of revolutionary soldiers killed themselves on the slopes of the Matouba volcano when it became obvious that the invading troops would take control of the island. The occupation force killed approximately 10,000 Guadeloupeans.
On 4 February 1810 the British once again seized the island and continued to occupy it until 1816. By the Anglo-Swedish alliance of 3 March 1813, it was ceded to Sweden for a brief period of 15 months. The British administration continued in place and British governors continued to govern the Island.
By the Treaty of Paris of 1814 Sweden ceded Guadeloupe once more to France. An ensuing settlement between Sweden and the British gave rise to the Guadeloupe Fund. French control of Guadeloupe was definitively acknowledged in the Treaty of Vienna in 1815. Slavery was abolished on the island on 28 May 1848 at the initiative of Victor Schoelcher.
It should be noted that today Guadaloupe survives mainly due to a combination of generous French subsidies, social welfare programs and tourism.
Of course, many factors contributed to this tragic fate of the people of Guadaloupe. One of the key factors was the radical self-hatred of those such as the marquis de Condorcet, a militant abolitionist. He believed the African slaves of the French colonies to be superior to the French colonists and stated: ‘If you were to search for a man in the American islands, you would not find him among the whites.’
Click here to read more about the ruinous results the French Revolution had upon the Caribbean
For a more detailed retelling of the Haiti nightmare see: The French Revolution In San Domingo by T Lothrop Stoddard.
Rog