A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History ... and the University of North Carolina Press)

This book looks at the results of the French Revolution in its Caribbean colonies. One of the results of the revolution was the declaration of the rights of man and the acceptance of the belief in the equality of all individuals. The brutal plantation system that operated in the Caribbean Islands was an anathema to this philosophy. So how would the new French Republic deal with this contradiction? This book charts the history of this focusing on the Island of Guadeloupe. I found this very interesting because we have all heard about Haiti but verily little is ever said about the other French Islands during the age of Napoleon. The book does a good job of presenting explaining the different tensions in revolutionary Guadeloupe. After the emancipation of the slaves there is still a desire to keep to colony profitable this goes directly against the freed slaves desire to strike out on there own. There is also the issue of how the colony will be defended against the British whom the French are at war with. What one gets is a picture of what emancipation could have looked like in the New World as different groups navigated around the new slave free society and despite the pleas of former plantation owners who appealed to various racist stereotypes and subversion of the new government to regain power. Unfortunately this idea of the future would be put to an end by the rise of Napoleon. The author also does a good job of connecting the better know struggle for freedom in Haiti to Guadeloupe and showing why it went different on the two islands.This is a very good book that deals with a subject that I was not very familiar with. We here so much about the European struggles for freedom and liberty in the New World but very little about those whose very life hinged on them winning their struggle for liberation. This book is a must read for the anyone interested in the history of the Caribbean or the struggles against slavery in the New World

This book is a brilliant corrective to those who might look solely to Europe to understand the formation and implication of the French Revolution. Dubois demonstrates that the Caribbean, far from being simply the colonial "periphery," was the central staging ground which lent the ideals of the French Revolution their most radical content, and where the limits of French republicanism were realized. He develops useful concepts like "Republican racism," uniquely assesses documents to reach new conclusions, and unfixes the often static definitions of citizenship. Highly recommended, even if your not a student of the Caribbean (which I am not).

The end of slavery in the French Caribbean is a story that has many facets. This book looks at one of the smaller islands (Guadalupe) and tracks its progress as it tries to free itself from the grips of slavery. Dubios tells a very good story and it is well written. The book focuses on Guadalupe but also gives a sense of what is happening in the entire British and French Caribbean. Dubios in his other books really provides a complete picture of what is occurring in the Caribbean and they are all recommended.

Fascinating.