PDF Somerset Homecoming: Recovering a Lost Heritage by Dorothy Spruill Redford in History

Description

The idea of universal rights is often understood as the product of Europe; but as Laurent Dubois demonstrates; it was profoundly shaped by the struggle over slavery and citizenship in the French Caribbean. Dubois examines this Caribbean revolution by focusing on Guadeloupe; where; in the early 1790s; insurgents on the island fought for equality and freedom and formed alliances with besieged Republicans. In 1794; slavery was abolished throughout the French Empire; ushering in a new colonial order in which all people; regardless of race; were entitled to the same rights. But French administrators on the island combined emancipation with new forms of coercion and racial exclusion; even as newly freed slaves struggled for a fuller freedom. In 1802; the experiment in emancipation was reversed and slavery was brutally reestablished; though rebels in Saint-Domingue avoided the same fate by defeating the French and creating an independent Haiti. The political culture of republicanism; Dubois argues; was transformed through this transcultural and transatlantic struggle for liberty and citizenship. The slaves-turned-citizens of the French Caribbean expanded the political possibilities of the Enlightenment by giving new and radical content to the idea of universal rights.