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A Colonial Media Revolution: The Press in Saint-Domingue, 1789–1793

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2017

Jeremy D. Popkin
Jeremy D. Popkin*
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky
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Extract

Like metropolitan France, the Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue experienced a media revolution during the first four years of the French Revolution. In 1789, there was only one newspaper on the island, the officially licensed Affiches américaines, with two editions, one in the colony's capital, Port-au-Prince, and the other in its commercial center, Cap Français. By the time of the destruction of Cap Français, the colony's major city in June 1793, more than a dozen different newspapers had been founded in the colony, making it the second site in the New World, after Britain's North American colonies, to experience the phenomenon of a revolutionary press. Not only were there more newspapers, but their content and language were radically different from those of the Affiches. Like the newspapers created in France in 1789, those in Saint-Domingue denounced the vestiges of royal power and called on the colony's white citizens to demand the right to govern themselves. By helping to break down traditional authority, the press played an essential if unintentional role in making the revolts against white rule by Saint-Domingue's free people of color and its slave population possible.

Type
Articles
Information
The Americas , Volume 75 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 3 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2017 

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References

1. On the “media revolution” in metropolitan France, see Popkin, Jeremy D., Revolutionary News: The Press in France, 1789–1799 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Popkin, Jeremy D., La presse de la Révolution. Journaux et journalistes (1789–1799) (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2011), 17–55 Google Scholar. On print culture in Saint-Domingue, see Geggus, David, “Print Culture and the Haitian Revolution : The Written and the Spoken Word,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 116, pt. 2 (2007): 299–314 Google Scholar.

2. Courrier politique et littéraire du Cap-Français, March 12, 1790. Gatereau's name is spelled in several ways in period publications and documents; he is sometimes referred to as Gaterau or Gatterau.

3. Gazette de Saint-Domingue, prospectus, January 1, 1791.

4. Moniteur général de la partie française de Saint-Domingue, prospectus, November 1791. On Dubois de Saint-Maurice's life, see Benzaken, Jean-Charles, “Un personnage méconnu de la Révolution, Henry Dubois de Saint-Maurice,” Revue de l'Institut Napoléon 208 (2014): 57–74 Google Scholar.

5. Courrier politique, March 12, 1790.

6. Moniteur général, prospectus.

7. Gazette de Saint-Domingue, prospectus, n.d. but January 1, 1791.

8. Moniteur général, prospectus.

9. Gazette de Saint-Domingue, September 24, 1791.

10. Ballantyne, Tony, “What Difference Does Colonialism Make?: Reassessing Print and Social Change in an Age of Global Imperialism,” in Agent of Change: Print Culture Studies after Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, Baron, Sabrina Alcorn, Lindquist, Eric N. and Shevlin, Eleanor, eds. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 342–352, cit. 344Google Scholar.

11. On regulations for printing in the New World, see Popkin, Jeremy D., “La censura nel mondo atlantico del Settecento,” in La censura nel secolo dei Lumi, Tortarola, Edoardo, ed. (Turin: Libreria UTET, 2011), 225–242 Google Scholar.

12. McClellan, James E., Colonialism and Science: Saint-Domingue in the Old Regime (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 99 Google Scholar. On the affiches in France, see Feyel, Gilles, L'Annonce et la nouvelle: la presse d'information en France sous l'Ancien Régime, 1630–1788 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000)Google Scholar.

13. Ami de l'egalité, May 19, 1793, advertised the sale of a bakery, together with “the blacks who belong to it.”

14. Fouchard, Jean, The Haitian Maroons: Liberty or Death, A. Faulkner Watts, trans. (New York: Edward W. Blyden, 1981 [French original, 1972])Google ScholarPubMed.

15. Bookseller's note in collection labeled “Papiers relatifs au Comte de Peinier, chef d'escadre,” 2 vols., John Carter Brown Library, consulted September 2005. At that date, the collection was uncatalogued.

16. One example is the poem in honor of the free colored leader Pierre Pinchinat, written by the leader of the free colored community in Cap Français, Charles Guillaume Castaing, which appeared in the Moniteur général, October 18, 1792.

17. Moniteur général, July 23, 1792.

18. Moniteur général, January 1, 1793.

19. Affiches américaines (Port-au-Prince), May 27, 1789, and November 11, 1789.

20. The most comprehensive account of the tangled politics among the whites in the first years of the French Revolution is Gliech, Oliver, Saint-Domingue und die Französische Revolution: Das Ende der weißen Herrschaft in einer karibischen Plantagenwirtschaft (Cologne: Böhlau, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. On political agitation in Saint-Domingue in the 1780s, see Frostin, Charles, Les révoltes blanches à Saint-Domingue aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), 229–233 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tarrade, Jean, “L'esclavage, est-il réformable? Les projets des administrateurs coloniaux à la fin de l'Ancien Régime,” in Les abolitions de l'esclavage de L. F. Sonthonax à V. Schoelcher, Dorigny, Marcel, dir. (Vincennes: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 1995), 133–141 Google Scholar; and Ghachem, Malick, The Old Regime and the Haitian Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), chapts. 3 and 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. The most thorough bibliography of these publications, M. A. Ménier and G. Debien, “Journaux de Saint-Domingue” (in Revue d'histoire des colonies 36, published in 1949) lists only collections in French libraries and the French national archives. A complete count of the titles is complicated. Surviving collections of some titles are very incomplete (in some cases, papers are known only through a single surviving copy), and it is difficult to determine how many were independent publications and how many represent the continuations of other publications under new titles. Ménier and Debien also include some publications that were not, strictly speaking, newspapers, such as the Procès-verbaux des séances of the Second Colonial Assembly, which met in Cap Français from August 1791 through October 1792.

23. The British National Archives [hereafter BNA] contain 32 numbers of the Gazette des Cayes published between September 27, 1792, and April 18, 1793. BNA, High Court of the Admiralty [hereafter HCA] 30/392). Previously, only a single copy of the August 12, 1792 paper was known. Archives Nationales [hereafter AN], CC 9 A 6. Only a single copy of the Courier de Saint-Marc, from November 16, 1793, seems to have survived.

24. Ravinet, Laurette-Anne Mozard, Mémoires d'une créole de Port-au-Prince (Paris: Librairie-Papeterie, 19 rue de Grammont, 1844), 14 Google Scholar.

25. Printed statement by “compositors and printers working for M. Mozard,” tipped into the John Carter Brown Library collection of the Gazette de Saint-Domingue, between the issues of February 12 and 16, 1791. The nature of the dispute between Mozard and the abbé Ouvière to which it refers is unclear. On Batilliot's printing shop, see the letter of Robin, March 12, 1794, in AN, D XXV 81, d. 790.

26. Moniteur colonial, August 20, 1791.

27. The colonial livre was worth two-thirds of a metropolitan livre. These prices were equal to or higher than the prices of similar newspapers in France.

28. On the circulation figures for provincial newspapers in revolutionary France, see Feyel, Gilles, “Introduction. Réflexions pour une histoire matérielle et économique de la presse départmentale sous la Révolution,” in Dictionnaire de la presse française pendant la Révolution 1789–1799: la presse départementale, Feyel, Gilles, dir., Vol. 1 (Ferney-Voltaire: Centre International d'Etude du XVIIIe siècle, 2005), lxGoogle Scholar.

29. On the coverage of colonial events in the French metropolitan press, see Jeremy D. Popkin, “La presse et la question coloniale,” in Popkin, Presse de la Révolution, 139–169.

30. Ravinet, Mémoires d'une créole, 8, 14, 26.

31. Cabon, “Siècle,” 152.

32. Rey, Terry, The Priest and the Prophetess: Abbé Ouvière, Romaine Rivière, and the Revolutionary Atlantic World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 82–86 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A notice in the paper on February 16, 1791, said that Ouvière would not be writing for it in the future.

33. Moniteur général, September 26, 1792, and January 1, 1793. On Dubois de Saint-Maurice's birthplace, see Benzaken, “Un personnage inconnu,” 57. He spent six years in Turkey as a French consular official.

34. Bongie, Chris, “Introduction,” in Jean-Baptiste Picquenard, Adonis suivi de Zoflora et de documents inédits, Bongie, Chris, ed. (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006), ix–xiiGoogle Scholar.

35. Courrier politique, July 8, 1790; Cabon, “Siècle,” 155.

36. Declaration of Catineau (printer), in AN, D XXV 82, d. 799.

37. Affiches américaines, May 25, 1790 (for Assembly of Saint-Marc: May 22, 1790).

38. Courrier politique, May 19, 1790, July 1, 1790, and July 8, 1790.

39. Gazette de Saint-Domingue, March 5, 1791, and March 9, 1791. On this incident and Blanchelande's term as governor, see Popkin, Jeremy D., “The French Revolution's Royal Governor: General Blanchelande and Saint Domingue, 1790-92,” in William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 71:2 (April 2014): 203–228 Google Scholar.

40. de Blanchelande, Philibert Rouxel, Mémoire de M. de Blanchelande, sur son administration à Saint-Domingue (Le Cap, 1791), 22 Google Scholar; Blanchelande to Civil Commission, September 15, 1792, in AN, D XXV 11, d. 103.

41. Moniteur général, March 6, 1792 (Colonial Assembly, March 4, 1792). There is a large collection of the commissioners' pamphlet-sized publications in AN, D XXV 2, d. 24. Eventually, the commissioners began to number their publications, as if they were a periodical series.

42. Moniteur général, February 5, 1792.

43. Moniteur général, March 4, 1792.

44. On this episode, see Popkin, “The French Revolution's Royal Governor.”

45. On Roume's policy, see his memorandum of May 10, 1792, in AN, D XXV 2, d. 17.

46. Journal politique, October 4 and 6, 1792.

47. Journal politique, October 20, 1792; Moniteur général, October 21, 1792.

48. On Galbaud, see Popkin, Jeremy D., You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 155–166 Google Scholar.

49. See the improvised response to a toast in Moniteur général, October 15, 1792: “Pou répond'vou, ça pas facile,/Vou té fè mo contan en pile,/Mo pas connè ça mo va di,/Pou remécie vou jordi;/langue à moi sech tan com cassave,/Ça pas bon pou loué gen si brave;/Mo va blige contenté moé/De boire à vot santé gnion foé.”

50. Moniteur général, June 20, 1793.

51. On the crisis of June 1793 in Cap Français, see Popkin, You Are All Free, 189–245.

52. “Récit historique du malheureux événement qui a réduit en cendres la ville du Cap Français, capitale de la province du Nord, colonie de St. Domingue,” sheet tipped in at end of collections of the Moniteur in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the University of Wisconsin Library. An English translation of this vivid journalistic account is in Jeremy D. Popkin, Facing Racial Revolution, 184–208. There are a few minor variants between the two manuscript versions of this account.

53. Moniteur général, November 19, 1791, and March 15, 1792.

54. Ami de l'egalité, May 9, 1793.

55. On the situation of the free people of color in the last decades of the Old Regime, see Garrigus, John D., Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; King, Stewart R., Blue Coat or Powdered Wig: Free People of Color in Pre-Revolutionary Saint Domingue (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002)Google Scholar; and Dominique Rogers, “Les libres de couleur dans les capitales de Saint-Domingue: fortune, mentalités et intégration à la fin de l'Ancien Régime (1776–1789)” (Doctoral thesis, Université de Bordeaux III, 1999).

56. On Milscent and his paper, see Schultz, Alexandra Tolin, “The Créole patriote: The Journalism of Claude Milscent,” Atlantic Studies 11:2 (2014): 75–94 Google Scholar; and Popkin, Jeremy D., “Colonial Enlightenment and the French Revolution: Julien Raymond and Milscent Créole,” in Enlightened Colonialism: Civilization Narratives and Imperial Politics in the Age of Reason, Tricoire, Damien, ed. (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), 269–286 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57. Courrier politique, May 27, 1790.

58. Courrier politique, June 24, 1790.

59. Gazette de Saint-Domingue, May 21, 1791.

60. On the Ogé insurrection, see Garrigus, John D., “Vincent Ogé jeune (1757–1791): Social Class and Free Colored Mobilization on the Eve of the Haitian Revolution,” The Americas 68 (2011): 33–62 Google Scholar. Castaing's speech appeared in the Cap Français edition of Affiches américaines on November 10, 1790, and in the Port-au-Prince edition on November 13, 1790.

61. Gazette de Saint-Domingue, September 21 and 24, 1791.

62. Jean Girard to Stephen Girard, January 1793, American Philosophical Society, Stephen Girard papers, Letters Received, series II, roll 9.

63. Moniteur général, April 5, 1793.

64. Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 3 Google Scholar.

65. Geggus, David, ed., The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2014), 163 Google Scholar.