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To deceive the Mulattoes the planters were trying tricks, but against the slaves they knew only one weapon – terror. The blacks had their stockades covered with the heads of white victims. The Colonial Assembly stuck the heads of Negroes on pikes placed all along the roads leading to Le Cap. When B…

The slaves destroyed tirelessly. Like the peasants in the Jacquerie or the Luddite wreckers, they were seeking their salvation in the most obvious way, the destruction of what they knew was the cause of their sufferings; and if they destroyed much it was because they had suffered much. They knew th…

On the other side were the radicals, humanitarians and philosophers, the intellectuals of the day, led by the Friends of the Negro. Looked upon as dreamers and unpractical men, the solution they proposed, rights to Mulattoes and gradual abolition of slavery, would have best served the interests of …

The taking of the Bastille on July 14th had done more than intimidate the King and the Court. It had frightened the bourgeoisie, who hastened to form a National Guard, strictly excluding the poor. But the bourgeoisie hastened also to profit by the blow against the monarchy. It drew up the Declarati…

With the growth of trade and of profits, the number of planters who could afford to leave their estates in charge of managers grew, and by 1789, in addition to the maritime bourgeois, there was a large group of absentee proprietors in France linked to the aristocracy by marriage, for whom San Domin…