SOCIETY
OF THE FRIENDS OF BLACKS: ADDRESS TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY IN FAVOR OF THE
ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE (1790)
Passage
of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen provided solid
ground from which to assail slavery in France’s colonies and French
participation in the colonial slave trade.
The most important and influential of these was the Paris-based Society
of the Friends of Blacks (Société des amis des noirs de Paris).
Many
of its members had been prominent Enlightenment figures before emerging as key
players in post-Revolutionary French politics and society. Thus their philosophical opposition to
slavery had deep roots. However they
also tended to be mercantilists who believed that France needed its overseas
possessions if it were to be strong.
Few Society members wished to bring down an Empire whose economic
well-being was heavily dependent on slavery.
Treading lightly lest it provoke powerful commercial interests, the
organization avoided all talk of immediate abolition. Instead it attempted to make a case for gradually extending the
universal principles of the Declaration to non-whites in France’s overseas
colonies and possessions.
Humanity,
justice, and magnanimity have guided you in reforming the most deeply rooted abuses. They have given the Society of the Friends
of Blacks hope that you will look benevolently on its demand on behalf of that
large portion of humankind which has been so cruelly oppressed for two
centuries.
This
Society, which has been slandered in cowardly and unjust fashion, takes its
mission from the humanity that led it to defend blacks even under past
despotism. Can there be a more
respectable name in the eyes of this august Assembly, which has so often avenged
the rights of man in its decrees?
You
have declared these rights. You have
carved into stone that all men are born and remain free and equal in
rights. You have restored to the French
people rights that despotism had despoiled for so long. ...You have broken the chains of feudalism
that continued to degrade so many of our fellow citizens. You have heralded the destruction of all the
stigmas and distinctions that religious and political prejudices have
introduced into the great family of humankind....
We
are not asking you to restore to French blacks those political rights which
attest to and maintain the dignity of man.
We are not even asking for their liberty....
Immediate
emancipation would not only be fatal for the colonies. It would be a deadly gift for the blacks,
given the abjection and incompetence to which avarice has reduced them. It would be like abandoning babies in the
crib or the disabled and powerless to their own devices, without assistance.
It
is therefore not yet time to demand that liberty. We ask only for a stop to the regular butchering of thousands of
blacks every year so as to take hundreds of captives. We ask for a stop to the prostitution and the profaning of the
name of France that is used to authorize these thefts, these atrocious
murders. In a word, we demand the
abolition of the slave trade....
Some
will tell you that abolishing the slave trade will strike a most deadly blow to
the Navy, to public tax revenues, to the Colonies, and to commerce.
We
will demonstrate that this commerce carries half of the sailors condemned to
work at it to the grave each year, that it makes the other half of them
physically and morally gangrenous, and that it infects all of our other trade
with its contagion.
We
will demonstrate that the slave trade is a burden on public revenues. In order to support it, the State is forced
to maintain settlements in Africa at great expense. It is obliged to pay an annual subsidy of around 2,500,000 livres
and this subsidy is triply deadly:
In
reality, is not the French slave trade only a pretext to rob the State for the
profit of foreigners....
As
for our colonists, if they need to recruit blacks in Africa to keep the
population of the Colonies constant, we will demonstrate that it is because
they wear out the blacks with work, whippings, and starvation. If they treated them with kindness and as
good fathers of families, these blacks would multiply. This population, always growing, would
increase cultivation and prosperity....
Do
not step back from the duty that humanity imposes upon you. Do not be afraid of interrupting the minor
work that the slave trade occasions in France.
Did you heed this fear when you boldly overturned all the abuses that
hindered a free Constitution? These
abuses supported thousands of individuals.
The commotion caused by the Revolution threw all fortunes into question,
tightened all investment capital, and suspended nearly all work. What evil citizen dares, however, complain
of these necessities? Tyrants no longer
shed your blood. They do not violate
constantly the haven of your house.
They do not unjustly condemn you in order to have the right to sell
you. They do not snatch you from your
home to throw you into eternal captivity in a foreign land....
If
some motive might push blacks to insurrection, might it be the indifference of
the National Assembly to their fate?
Might it be our insistence on weighing them down with chains, while
consecrating the eternal axiom: that all
men are born free and equal in rights. Should there be only fetters and
gallows for blacks, while good fortune shines only on whites? Have no doubt, our happy revolution must re‑energize
blacks whose resentment and desires for vengeance have been building for so
long. The effect of this upheaval will
not be repressed with punishments. From
one insurrection badly pacified, twenty others will be born. Any one of them could ruin the colonists
forever.
It
is worthy of the first free Assembly of France to consecrate the principle of
philanthropy which makes of humankind one single family. [It is worthy of the Assembly] to declare
that it is horrified by the carnage which takes place annually on the coasts of
Africa; that it has the intentions of abolishing it one day, and of mitigating
the slavery that is the result; and that it is looking for and preparing, from
this moment on, the means to do so
1.
On
what grounds does the Society criticize the slave trade? To whom is the criticism directed?
2.
Does
the Society distinguish between slavery and the slave trade? If so, why?
How does the Society justify the distinction?
3.
What
attitudes does the text express toward African slaves? How do these attitudes leave undecided the
question of when (if ever) slavery might be abolished?
4.
How
does the Society use nationalistic sentiments to leave slavery in place while
attacking the slave trade?