France, the Abolition of Slavery, and Abolitionisms in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

This chapter distinguishes between abolitionism as an intellectual movement that had its epicenter in the later eighteenth century in Europe and the abolition of slavery that happened outside Europe. Abolition was – against the expectation of the vast majority of European abolitionists – not run by European actors mainly but on the contrary in the hands of former slaves, Maroons and free colored people. The French commissars sent to the Caribbean islands in 1793 were confronted with a new social balance and a new balance of military power they had rather to accept than to introduce, whatever their opinion about abolitionism had been. For the revolutionary assembly to which they reported back, de facto abolition was a new point of departure for further reflection upon the formulation of a post-abolitionist policy which had a huge impact not only on the former slaves and the plantation economy but also on the political organization of space across the French Empire. This new organization of the political space and the related question of citizenship were far from being accepted by the former elites and provoked in subsequent decades a series of efforts to turn the wheel back until abolition was eventually accepted half a century later.