Freedom of Movement, Access to the Urban Centres, and Abolition of Slavery in the French Caribbean

Marion Pluskota

doi:10.1017/s0020859020000103

Abstract

AbstractHow did the abolition of slavery influence the relations between urban centres and rural areas? How did “new” French citizens experience access to the urban environment? Based on the archives of the correctional courts, this article focuses on how race and citizenship determined the accessibility of French colonial urban spaces and institutions after 1848. The abolition of slavery in the French Antilles on 27 April 1848 led to a modification of the legal and judicial systems: the changing legal status of former slaves gave them new opportunities to move around the colonies, at least on paper. In theory, after 1848, everyone should have had freedom of social and spatial mobility and access to the urban centres and their institutions; what happened in practice, however, still needs to be researched. This article shows that the abolition exacerbated two dynamics already at play since the beginning of the nineteenth century: the control of the population and the attraction of the urban environment for the elite. The plantation system in the mid-nineteenth century was suffering both economically and politically: the newly acquired freedom and possible migration of former slaves to the towns (Saint-Pierre and Fort-de-France in Martinique, Pointe-à-Pitre and Basse-Terre in Guadeloupe) threatened to destabilize the system of private justice as well as the economic apparatus. To counteract these legal changes, vagrancy laws were implemented to restrict citizens’ mobility while, at the same time, the white elite's discourse on urban spaces changed from them being seen as a hotbed for revolutionary ideas to representing a safe environment to which access needed to be restricted.

Highlights

Controlling, and criminalizing if necessary, the mobility of colonial subjects was an early priority for early modern colonial authorities
How did the abolition of slavery influence the relations between urban centres and rural areas? How did “new” French citizens experience access to the urban environment? Based on the archives of the correctional courts, this article focuses on how race and citizenship determined the accessibility of French colonial urban spaces and institutions after
Martinique was the official centre of the French Antilles, with the governor residing in Fort-Royal since. Both Guadeloupe and Martinique’s economies turned towards the production of sugar in the seventeenth century and the labour-intensive monoculture of sugar cane had a strong impact on the demographics of the islands: sixty to seventy per cent of the population were still working in the rural areas by the mid-nineteenth century

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Controlling, and criminalizing if necessary, the mobility of colonial subjects was an early priority for early modern colonial authorities. Some historians have suggested that, before emancipation and abolition, vagrancy laws were mostly aimed at “undesirable” Europeans, who were not carrying their weight in the development of the colony In port cities such as Calcutta and Zanzibar, vagrancy acts were used to get rid of drunk and disorderly Europeans, who were seen as a bad influence to the local communities whose labour was essential for economic development. This article on vagrancy in the French colonies argues that the study of vagrancy acts against the new French citizens reveals more than a willingness by the local elite to prevent the mobility of the workforce. It highlights their attempts to create white urban enclaves by limiting access to the urban territory and urban institutions by freed people. Correctional courts, this article focuses on how race and citizenship determined the accessibility of French colonial urban spaces and institutions after

URBANIZATION IN THE FRENCH ANTILLES

Islands Martinique

POPULATION CONTROL AND RESTRICTED MOBILITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CONCLUSION