Paris was at the center of the French Revolution of 1789. It was also home to hundreds of people of color from the French colonies. As the dramatic events of the summer of 1789 unfolded, some of them began to hold meetings, looking for ways to make their concerns part of the revolutionary political dialogue. Their initial efforts were directed at white planters residing in Paris, with whom they hoped to forge a coalition in support of colonial rights. When this failed, they turned to the national government for support. In this petition, Parisian people of color make a direct appeal to the National Assembly for full rights of citizenship. As you read it, consider the way the authors used the events, language, and principles of the Revolution to make their case.
Our lords, the free citizens and landowners of color of the French islands and colonies are honored to inform you that there still exists in one of the lands of this empire a species of men scorned and degraded, a class of citizens doomed to rejection, to all the humiliations of slavery: in a word, Frenchmen who groan under the yoke of oppression.
Such is the fate of the unfortunate American colonists known in the islands under the name of mulattos, quadroons, etc.
Born citizens and free, they live as foreigners in their own fatherland. Excluded from all positions, from honors and professions, they are even forbidden to practice some of the mechanical trades. Set apart in the most degrading fashion, they find themselves enslaved even in their liberty.
The Estates General has been summoned.
All France has hastened to support the king’s benevolent plans; citizens of all classes have been called to the great work of public regeneration; all have contributed to writing complaints and nominating deputies to defending their rights and set forth their interests.
The call of liberty has echoed in the other hemisphere.
It should certainly have erased even the memory of these outrageous distinctions between citizens of the same land; instead, it has brought forth even more appalling ones.
For an ambitious aristocracy, liberty means only the right to rule other men, without sharing power.
The white colonists have acted according to this principle, which even today consistently guides their behavior.
They have taken upon themselves the right to elect colonial representatives.
Excluded from these meetings, the citizens of color have been deprived of the ability to look after their own interests, to discuss things that affect them too, and to carry their wishes, complaints, and demands to the National Assembly.
In this strange system, the citizens of color find themselves represented by the white colonists’ deputies, although they have still never been included in their partial assemblies and they have not entrusted any power to these deputies. Their opposing interests, which sadly are only too obvious, make such representation absurd and contradictory.
You, our lords, must weigh these considerations; you must return to these oppressed citizens the rights that have been unjustly stripped from them; you must gloriously complete your work, by ensuring the liberty of French citizens in both hemispheres.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen has awakened the colonists of color to their past condition; they have shown themselves worthy of the dignity that you have assigned to them; they have learned their rights and they have used them. . . .
The citizens of color are clearly as qualified as the whites to demand this representation.
Like them they are all citizens, free and French; the edict of March 1685 accords them all such rights and guarantees them all such privileges. It states “that the freedmen (and all the more so their descendants) have earned their liberty; let this liberty produce in them, as much in their persons as for their property, the same effects as the fortune of liberty that is natural to all Frenchmen.” Like them they are property owners and farmers; like them they contribute to the relief of the state by paying the levies and bearing all expenses that they and the whites share. Like them they have already shed their blood and are prepared to spill it again for the defense of the fatherland. Like them, finally, though with less encouragement and means, they have proven their patriotism again and again. . . .
They beseech you, our lords, not to forget them, and to act strictly on principle.
They ask for no favors.
They claim the rights of man and of citizen, those inalienable rights based on nature and the social contract, those rights that you have so solemnly recognized and so faithfully established when you established as the foundation of the constitution “that all men are born and remain free and equal in rights.
“That the law is the expression of the general will; that all citizens have the right to participate personally, or through their representatives, in its formation;
“That each citizen has the right to certify the necessity of public contribution, and to freely consent to it, either personally or through his representatives.”
Is it your intent to reject these fundamental principles, setting the interests of the whites against those of the colonies? Do we want to muffle nature’s voice with the calculations of sordid profit?
Can we not recognize the language of ambition and greed, whose speakers do not value the prosperity of the state unless they profit personally?
But this is not the place to conduct such serious discussions about basics of the rights of the citizens of color.
After you have agreed to their preliminary claims: when they have descended into the arena to fight their adversaries, they will easily show that the legitimate interests of the whites themselves, like those of the colonies, lie in guaranteeing the status and the liberty of the citizens of color. For a state’s good fortune consists in the peace and harmony of its constituent members, and there can be no true peace or strong union between a strong group that oppresses and a weak one that yields; between a commanding master and an obedient slave.
Source: Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1709–
Questions to Consider