Colonization and Slavery

René Maran

COLONIZATION AND SLAVERY1

Edited by Jean Jonassaint and Translated from the French by Asselin Charles

This brief survey of seventy years of colonization in Martinique would be incomplete if nothing was said about the different human races who contributed to the development of the colony founded by Belain d’Esnambuc, and about the important things to know regarding slavery in the Antilles. Slavery goes back not only to early antiquity but to the early days of the human race. When one clan exterminated another clan, or one tribe obliterated another, the outcome was always the same. The winners took as slaves the women and children of the adversaries they had just vanquished and annihilated. Slavery has always existed. It still exists in some regions of White and Black Africa, the Near East and the Orient. A number of official reports, which are currently the object of noisy controversy, have drawn the attention of the international press to the subject. Martinique was inhabited by the Caribs when the French took possession of it and settled there in 1635. Mr. C. A. Banbuck, citing Mr. Ph. Barrey in his Histoire politique, économique et sociale de la Martinique sous l’Ancien Régime (1635-1789)2 (Political, Economic, and Social History of Martinique under the Old Regime [1635-1789]), says that the representatives of the various European countries who came in contact with the Caribs had the same [disastrous]3 impact on them as [did] “the Spaniards on the natives of the big islands to the north. Pitilessly hunted down, their numbers quickly dwindled. Barely a generation after the settlement of the French and the English, the native race had disappeared almost everywhere.”

1 This editor-provided title is taken from an unpublished and rather incomplete Maran typescript, La Révolution française et la Martinique [The French Revolution and Martinique], probably dated 19401950. It is listed in the catalogue of the library of the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar under the title La Martinique coloniale de 1493 à 1802. The text reproduced here is found on pages 108 to 114 of the typescript. It is the draft of a conclusion in which Maran records more or less literally the words of other French historians. From a perspective of textual genetics, the efforts made throughout by the editor Jean Jonassaint, in collaboration with Lélia Lebon, to establish sources and texts are intended first and foremost to enable today’s readers to better understand the author’s writing process. –Editor’s note. 2 The typescript gives “M. C. A. Bambuc” as the author’s name and truncates the title to Martinique. We have corrected the spelling of the author’s name and provided the full title of the work based on bibliographical information found on the Manioc website. As for the quotations, we flag only the textual differences. Spelling, typographical, and punctuation errors are corrected (without fuss) consistently within the quoted text. Unless otherwise indicated, the following notes are by the editor, Jean Jonassaint and translated from his French version. 3 The words in brackets are omitted from Maran’s typescript. They are added in based on the Banbuck text, p. [283].

The introduction of Black slaves in the Antilles was the only means found to remedy the disappearance of the Carib labor force on the islands and territories discovered and conquered by Christopher Columbus and his lieutenants. The Caribs knew nothing of work as commonly understood. The Reverend Father Jean-Baptiste du Tertre, the Herodotus of the Antilles, to use Pierre Magny’s phrase, said this about this race of people who would rather starve to death than allow themselves to be enslaved: “The natives4 of these islands are the most content, the happiest, [the least depraved]5, the most sociable, [the least pretentious, and the least disease prone] of all the nations of the world. They are as nature made them, that is to say, endowed with the great innocence and simplicity they had originally.6 They are all equal […].7 No one is richer or poorer than his neighbor, and everyone desires only what is useful, and therefore necessary, scorning whatever they possess over and above that as not worth having. […] “There is no police to be seen among them. They all live freely. They eat and drink when they’re hungry and thirsty. They work and rest when they please […]. […] There are no people8 in the world who are more jealous of their liberty and more resentful and impatient when they sense the least threat against it. So they mock us when they see us obeying our superiors. They say we are the slaves of the people we obey, for those people have taken the liberty of giving us orders and we are cowards for obeying their orders.”

4 Maran is quite probably quoting du Tertre from Henri de Lalung’s book, Les Caraïbes : un peuple étrange aujourd’hui disparu (Paris : Éditions Bourrelier et Cie, 1948), chapter II, “Portrait physique et moral.” The e-book edition we consulted is unpaged. Like du Tertre, de Lalung writes “Sauvages” [Savages]. We keep the term “natifs” [natives] which Maran seems to have deliberately used as a more respectful designation for the Caribs. 5 The words in brackets are omitted in Maran’s typescript. Corrections are based on the de Lalung text. On the other hand, when an omission is also found in de Lalung, if necessary, as is the case here, we correct the text according to du Tertre’s book, Histoire générale des Antilles habitées par les François, T. 2 (Paris: Chez Thomas Lolly, 1667), Traité VII, chapitre I, p. 357. As for the suspension points in brackets, they indicate a break in the Maran quotation. 6 Following de Lalung but omitting the “s” indicative of the plural, Maran writes “originelle [at the origin] instead of “naturelle” [in nature, of nature] as in R. P. du Tertre, op. cit., p. 357. 7 Maran is following de Lalung in omitting the final clauses of du Tertre’s original sentence: “sans que l’on connaisse presque aucune sorte de supériorité ni de servitude; et à peine peut-on reconnaître aucune sorte de respect, même entre les parents, comme du fils au père” [almost with no noticeable mark of superiority or subservience; one can in fact barely observe any sort of respect even between parents or between a son and a father]. – du Tertre, op. cit., p. 357. 8 From this sentence on de Lalung no longer follows du Tertre, even though, like Maran after him, he seems to attribute all those statements to du Tertre. As we ignore which edition of du Tertre’s book de Lalung may have consulted, several hypotheses are possible. We decline to speculate about it, however, for this is neither the time nor the place to do so. On the other hand, save for a different word—point [not] instead of pas [also not], we have found this last paragraph in extenso on page 329 of Volume IV of Nouveau Voyage aux îles françaises de l’Amérique by R. P. Labat (La Haye: chez P. Husson. T. Johnson. P. Gosse. J. van Duren. R. Alberts, & C. Levier, 1831).

Such was the character of the Caribs and their customary comportment. The replacement of the New World’s indigenous population as a labor force by Blacks from the western and eastern coastal regions of Africa came about in the wake of the accusations leveled against the Spanish conquistadors, his congeners9 and compatriots, by the pious Bishop Bartolomeo de las Casas10, who was outraged by the fact that injuries of all sorts, ill treatment set up as a colonization system, and the most inhumane arbitrariness had, in a dozen years, reduced the total population of the Caribs who inhabited the Antilles when Christopher Columbus discovered them from three million to two million souls. The disappearance of the Carib labor force is therefore at the origin of the “ebony wood” trade and the “negro India piece” (pièce d’Inde) trade. West Africa11, from Cape Verde to the Cape of Good Hope, provided the “ebony wood”. East Africa provided the “India piece”. Slave traders of all nations were involved in this traffic. The transportation of this living merchandise, which repulsed both its transporters and their clients, was encouraged at the beginning by a royal ordinance dated January 1672.12 The slave trade became gradually a commerce with its sui generis fiscal legislation. Some French ports were open to it. Among those were the ports of Nantes, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Calais, Dieppe, Hâvre13, Brest, Bayonne, Cète14, and Marseille. In 1685 Colbert wrote an edict, signed by King Louis XIV, concerning “the role of the State and the Church and the status of the slaves in the islands of America.” This odious ordinance is known in history as the Code Noir [Black Code]. It concerned slavery in the French colonies of the New World.

9 The word is spelled congénaires in the typescript. It should be written congénères [congeners]. It has been corrected accordingly. 10 We read Las Cagnas in the typescript, undoubtedly a typo, as is the spelling of évèque, which should be évêque [bishop]. We have corrected both words. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that Maran seems to exculpate Las Casas, one of the main instigators of the triangular trade. 11 When necessary, we discreetly correct proper nouns and adjectives by using an initial capital letter or a lowercase letter as appropriate 12 Maran’s typescript gives the year as 1762. We have corrected it to 1672. The first Code Noir having been decreed in 1685, this earlier ordinance that preceded it, as Maran stipulates in his argument, could not have been issued in 1762. Furthermore, it seems obvious here that Maran is paraphrasing J. Saintoyant, whom he later quotes at length. Thus, on page 245 of La Colonisation française sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: La Renaissance du livre, 1929) we read the following: “The slave trade was at first free and, given the urgent need to import Negroes to the Islands, it was encouraged by a royal ordinance dated January 1672 that granted 10 pounds to the shipowner and 3 pounds to the ship captain for each imported slave.” 13 We spell the word as it is in the typescript, as it is consistent with contemporary usage. 14 We keep this old spelling for the city of Sète on the Mediterranean coast, also known as “Cette.” See, among other sources, “Les villes à travers les documents anciens: Sète (anciennement CETTE), dans l’Hérault,” at https://www.visites-p.net/ville-histoire/sete-histoire.html.

Below are some of the articles regulating the condition of the slaves in those colonies.15 The pages where J. Saintoyant16 spotlights the reasons justifying the implementation of the Code Noir in the Antilles are excellent. These are a few excerpts from one of his three17 volumes on French colonization under the Old Regime, Colonisation française sous l’ancien régime: On pages 255 and 256 of the first volume we read18 that “the very existence of a constantly growing population of slaves made it permanently necessary for both the monarchy and the Sovereign Councils to devise rules and regulations concerning said population, legal prescriptions based on day-to-day experience19 with conditions on the ground. However, besides the Code Noir20 there was no uniform legislation applicable in all the different colonies. The necessary regulations21 were decreed first by the King, or else by the Sovereign Councils for the islands in general, then extended gradually as required by circumstances to each of the slave colonies. It would be fastidious to go into the minutiae of those legal measures. However, some are interesting in that they are very broad or else very revealing of the prevailing mores of the time. “The frequent occurrence of wars made it necessary to establish ways of determining the fate of enslaved enemies. Prisoners of war had to be distributed among the colonists and farmed out to the small plantations so these could be developed. Captured deserters belonged to the royal domain (1708).22 At the same time it was decreed23 that in no case could a

15 Maran announces some articles from the Code Noir but he does not provide them. This is a further indication that the typescript is only a draft, or else reading notes for a book being written or to be written. 16 We have M. G. Saintoyant in the typescript. This is obviously an error to be corrected. According to the catalogues we have consulted, the author of the two-volume work La Colonisation française sous l’Ancien Régime (du XV e Siècle à 1789), published in 1929, is J. Saintoyant, also known as Jules François Saintoyant. 17 Contrary to Maran’s statement, we were able to identify only two volumes with this title. Our author was probably referring to Saintoyant’s three books on French colonization: La Colonisation française sous l’Ancien Régime (du XVe Siècle à 1789), 2 tomes (1929); La Colonisation française pendant la Révolution (1789-1799), 2 tomes (1930); La Colonisation française pendant la période napoléonienne (17991815), 1 tome (1931). 18 The opening quotation mark is the editor’s addition. In this long quotation from the first volume of La Colonisation française sous l’Ancien Régime by Saintoyant (Paris : La Renaissance du livre, 1929), p. 255-56, we flag only the textual errors. Spelling, typographical, and punctuation errors are corrected without fuss consistently with the quoted text. 19 This word is missing in Maran’s typescript. We found it in Saintoyant’s original text and corrected Maran’s omission accordingly. 20 Contrary to Saintoyant, whose practice we follow here, Maran writes the title CODE NOIR twice, in all capital letters and underlined. 21 Maran writes normes [norms]. 22 The date is omitted in the typescript. 23 In Maran’s typescript we read instead: “en tous les cas ordonné” [in all cases it was decreed]. We substitute the correct phrase “en même temps ordonné” [at the same time it was decreed] found in Saintoyant’s text.

white enemy made prisoner by the French be enslaved24 or sold into slavery. It may seem stupefying, from a twentieth century perspective, that such a legal provision could ever have been conceived.25 But whereas no such cases have been recorded in France, in England, during the religious and political troubles of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, kings frequently gifted26 the lords in their entourage with entire vanquished populations, a practice recorded even in mid-18th century27 . In 1747,28 Mr. de Caylus, lieutenant general stationed on the Islands, reported to the Minister of the Navy “the seizure by a29 Martinique corsair of an English ship with 160 Scots, including 16 women, onboard, who had been condemned by George II to be sold as slaves for having supported the cause of the Pretender.” 30 Some masters, driven by the need for money or by some other motives, granted manumission for a price, which negated the meaning of the act as a reward. A royal decree of 1718 stipulated that manumission could be granted only with the authorization of the Governor, after the latter had studied the reasons given for the act.

René Maran © Bernard Michel and Maran’s heirs

24 In Maran’s typescript we read instead: “put” [could have] and “mis” [been placed]. We make the correction based on Saintoyant’s text. 25 Maran writes instead: “ait été faite” [had been made]. We make the correction based on Saintoyant’s text. 26 Maran writes: “donneront” [will give]. We make the correction based on Saintoyant’s text. 27 Maran writes instead: “au dix-neuvième siècle” [in the 19th century]. We make the correction based on Saintoyant’s text. 28 The typescript says “1742.” We make the correction based on Saintoyant’s text. 29 Maran writes instead “d’un” [of a]. We correct it to “par un” [by a] based on Saintoyant’s text. 30 Maran places “Prétendant” [Pretender] between quotation marks. We make the correction based on Saintoyant’s text.

René Maran (1887-1960) is the first Black writer to win the Goncourt, the most prestigious French literary prize, for Batouala: véritable roman nègre (1921; transalted as Batouala: A Negro Novel, 1922), a novel that depicts the daily life of an African village from the viewpoint of its chief, Batouala. Born on a boat off the shore of Fort-de-France, Martinique, where his birth was registered by his French Guyanese parents, educated in West Africa and France, Maran served as a colonial civil servant before becoming a professional writer in Metropolitan France, where he spent most of his life. Beyond his very first novel, his work includes books of poetry, of tales, and historical essay such as Le Livre du souvenir, poèmes, 1909-1957 (1958); Djouma, chien de brousse (1927); Le Petit Roi de Chimérie (1924), Bacouya, le cynocéphale (1953); Un homme pareil aux autres (1947); Livingstone et l’exploration de l’Afrique (1938), Brazza et la fondation de l’A.E.F (1941) and Bertrand du Guesclin, l’épée du roi (Paris, 1960). He is, according to Senghor, the one ‘‘who prepared the way to Negritude for us.’’