Image: A plantation on Saint-Domingue (Haiti), where Napoleon supported the abolition of slavery.
Like most of his European contemporaries, Napoleon was a racist. He referred to Bedouins, native Americans, Pacific Islanders and Africans as “savages” – a term he also applied to Cossacks. He treated the Saint-Domingue-born mixed-race general Alexandre Dumas (father and grandfather of the writers of the same name) with contempt. At the same time, he welcomed mixed-race men into his army in Egypt, and for the expedition to Saint-Domingue (Haiti).
Napoleon based his policies towards slavery on pragmatism. He favoured whatever would most benefit him and France. When he conquered Malta en route to Egypt in 1798, he freed 2,000 Muslim slaves found on the galleys of the Order of Malta. He called on the Turkish governors in Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli to reciprocate the gesture by liberating any Christians who might be found on their galleys. Yet in Egypt Napoleon condoned slavery, hoping to gain the goodwill of the Egyptians.
Although France abolished slavery in its colonies in 1794, this policy had not been fully implemented by the time Napoleon became First Consul in 1799. When insurrection broke out in Saint-Domingue, Napoleon argued that France should renew its commitment to emancipation, because “this island would go for England if the blacks were not attached to us by their interest in liberty…. They will produce less sugar, maybe, than they did as slaves; but they will produce it for us, and will serve us, if we need them, as soldiers. We will have one less sugar mill; but we will have one more citadel filled with friendly soldiers.”
Napoleon continued to express his commitment to emancipation even as he sent an expedition to try to overthrow the black leader Toussaint Louverture.
Nonetheless, by a decree of May 20, 1802, Napoleon restored slavery and the slave trade in Martinique and other West Indian colonies (the law did not apply to Guadeloupe, Guyane or Saint-Domingue). Napoleon argued he was “maintaining” slavery, since its formal abolition had not actually been realized. He hoped to encourage the return of French settlers to the colonies, believing they were better able than the blacks to defend French interests against the British. Also, white planters in La Réunion had threatened to secede rather than free their slaves.
When Napoleon returned to France in 1815 after his exile on Elba, he knew that he had to appear to be a more liberal leader. As part of this, he issued on March 29 a decree abolishing the slave trade.
Napoleon and the Slave on St. Helena
When Napoleon was in exile on St. Helena, he conversed (via the interpretation of one of his companions, the Count de Las Cases) with an old slave called Toby, who served in the household of the Balcombes, the family in whose pavilion Napoleon resided when he first arrived on the island in 1815. When Napoleon heard how Toby had been captured and enslaved, he reportedly expressed a wish to purchase Toby and send him back to his home country. He said to Las Cases:
“What, after all, is this poor human machine? There is not one whose exterior form is like another, or whose internal organization resembles the rest. And it is by disregarding this truth that we are led to the commission of so many errors. Had Toby been a Brutus, he would have put himself to death; if an Aesop he would now, perhaps, have been the Governor’s adviser, if an ardent and zealous Christian, he would have borne his chains in the sight of God and blessed them. As for poor Toby, he endures his misfortunes very quietly: he stoops to his work and spends his days in innocent tranquility…. Certainly there is a wide step from poor Toby to a King Richard. And yet, the crime is not the less atrocious, for this man, after all, had his family, his happiness, and his liberty; and it was a horrible act of cruelty to bring him here to languish in the fetters of slavery.”
For my novel Napoleon in America, I had to imagine how Napoleon might have reacted to the slavery he encounters in the places he visits in the book, starting with New Orleans. New Orleans society at the time (1821) was stratified into three race-based tiers: whites, free people of colour (gens de couleur libres), and slaves. For details, see “Napoleon’s View of Slavery and Slavery in New Orleans.”
