This book offers an account of the French Revolution in Guadeloupe from its outbreak in 1789 until the colony’s capitulation to the British in 1794. The revolution in Guadeloupe is analyzed as a struggle for freedom of commerce that has its origins inscribed in the structure of the French colonial system. The first third of the book provides a useful summary of the evolution of French colonial trade and policy during the ancien régime, and delineates the conflicts and rivalries between the various groups in Guadeloupe against this background. In the remainder of the book, the author carefully traces the initiatives emanating from France during the course of the revolution and the formation of the First Republic, and examines the local interests and conditions that modified them. The course of the struggle in Guadeloupe of the prorevolutionary local merchant class supported by the lower-status white and free colored populations against the royalist planters allied with Great Britain is examined in detail.
Pérotin-Dumon demonstrates that the revolutionary forces in the colony sought commercial autonomy, but remained politically and culturally tied to the metropolis. Local conditions generated by the war with Britain and isolation from France created a tendency toward political centralization in the colony that, on the one hand, anticipated revolutionary dictatorship, and, on the other hand, compelled the governments of Thermidor and then of the Directory to countenance the Robespierrist Committee of Public Safety of Victor Hugues after 1794. The provocative last chapter argues that the historical genesis of the French colonial policy of assimilation and its cornerstone, the abolition of slavery, can be found in this phase of the revolution in Guadeloupe.
Throughout the book, the focus is on the evolution of political and administrative institutions. Social and economic processes receive relatively little emphasis, and are viewed only through the perspective of these institutions. Nevertheless, the author is meticulous in her treatment of the sources, and is balanced and moderate in her judgments. She raises significant questions about a subject that deserves further attention, and provides a useful framework for future historical inquiry.
