Redeeming the “Character of the Creoles”: Whiteness, Gender and Creolization in Pre‐Revolutionary Saint Domingue

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the political significance of white creolization in pre‐revolutionary French Saint Domingue. Eighteenth‐century Europeans tended to view white creoles as having physically, morally, and culturally degenerated due to the tropical climate, the monotony of plantation life, and their interaction with enslaved and free people of color. Yet elite white colonists in Saint Domingue claimed that white creoles possessed certain positive traits due to their new world birth, traits that rendered them physically stronger and potentially more virtuous than the French. Focusing on little‐known publications authored by the white creole Moreau de Saint‐Méry, this article highlights the deployment of gendered notions of virtue and noble savagery in debates over white creolization. Moreau's claims, when placed in the context of a conflict between local colonial magistrates and the French Colonial Ministry, challenge interpretations of white creolization as an undesirable, subversive side‐effect of colonial slavery. Rather, white colonial men claimed that white colonists knew best how to ensure the obedience of the enslaved precisely because of their creolization.