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Editorial

Myriam Cottias, Céline Flory et Ary Gordien
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Éditorial [fr]

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1The publication of issue 11 of Esclavages & Post-esclavages coincides with a unique moment in the history of post-slavery. Two hundred years ago, Charles X forced slaves to buy recognition of their new sovereignty, proclaimed on 1 January 1804, after their triumph over their masters in the 1791 revolution in Saint-Domingue. This was decisive for the world’s first black republic. Negotiations with France, which began in 1814, finally allowed it to become a member of the international community and trade in its own name. What, then, did the French expect in return? Compensation for the land and slave labour lost by French colonists in Haiti. In a decree dated 17 April 1825, 150 million gold francs were demanded from the fledgling nation. President Boyer signed the text under pressure from the presence of French warships in Port-au-Prince harbour. This plunged the country into a spiral of never-ending debt. The initial sum was compounded by interest on loans from French banks and penalties for late payment. Haiti’s peasants, who produced the coffee mainly traded to pay the “independence debt”, were under enormous pressure. Ultimately, the whole country was held hostage to a system that destabilised it politically.

2Before the levies began to be collected directly by French agents in Port-au-Prince, and despite widespread opposition to the transfer of money to France, which was seen by the population as unfair, the entire amount demanded was paid. Payments continued until 1888. However, the deficit continued to grow indefinitely. In 1915, a loan was taken out from an American bank. This marked the beginning of the United States’ occupation of Haiti, which lasted until 1935. This goes a long way towards explaining why Haiti never recovered.

  • 1 Histoire de la Révolution française, Paris, Gallimard, 1952.

3This counterintuitive paradox remained hidden for a long time: The victorious slaves were forced to pay the defeated country for their freedom. Both historians and certain political discourses on the counter-revolutionary French monarchy have denied responsibility for this moral failure. However, it cannot be denied that the Republic was also complicit in this historical injustice. From the Third Republic onwards, all successive French governments accepted payments to colonists, and historians have consistently described the Haitian War of Independence as “the most terrible war of savages ever seen”1, in the words of Jules Michelet. Ultimately, all the countries of the so-called North (with the exception of the First French Republic in 1794) could only accept the emancipation of slaves if they purchased their own freedom. However, this did not necessarily lead to real political, economic, cultural, or symbolic equality.

4This issue, coordinated by Antonio de Almeida Mendes, Baptiste Bonnefoy, and Vincent Vilmain, focuses on the central theme of “Slavery, Color and Religion(s)”. Through some surprising connections, it is striking to see how the effects of systems of slavery persist in the form of inequality, whether at the institutional, organisational, or individual level. As discussed here, the challenge of eradicating the “stigma of servitude” in both Islam and Christianity shows the extent to which inequalities of origin persist. Sometimes they disappear slowly, and sometimes they do not disappear at all, depending on the visibility of racial status. As the coordinators of this special issue point out, “in both Christian and Muslim societies, the legacy of this original stain of slavery, embedded in normative regimes or perpetuated by public opinion, has often weighed heavily on individuals, lineages, and communities for centuries”.

5The articles by Martin Frager-Perrier and Morgane Le Guyader both focus on this theme. Marie Rodet’s article on the experience of writing a play by Marcus Rediker and Naomi Wallace, based on the story of Benjamin Lay, and the interview with Simon Moutaïrou, author of the film Ni chaînes ni maîtres (No chains, no masters), place the agency of the enslaved at the heart of the struggle against slavery, sometimes to the point of death.

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Notes

1 Histoire de la Révolution française, Paris, Gallimard, 1952.

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Référence électronique

Myriam Cottias, Céline Flory et Ary Gordien, « Editorial »Esclavages & Post-esclavages [En ligne], 11 | 2025, mis en ligne le 26 mai 2025, consulté le 09 juillet 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/slaveries/13117 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/140oe

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Auteurs

Myriam Cottias

National Center for Scientific Research, UMR 8053 CIRESC-PHEEAC (France)

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Céline Flory

National Center for Scientific Research, UMR 8168 Mondes Américains and affiliate researcher at UMR 8053 CIRESC-PHEEAC (France)

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Ary Gordien

National Center for Scientific Research, URMIS and affiliate researcher at UMR 8053 CIRESC-PHEEAC (France)

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Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

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