The history of liberty in France and of slave emancipation in San Domingo is one and indivisible (P61). Effect of the French Revolution on Haiti:
In 1789, San Domingo (Haiti) was France's most profitable colony, perhaps the most profitable colony any where, at any time. It was the world's largest producer of coffee and it supplied half of Europe with sugar, coffee and cotton. However, its wealth was produced by slaves, and as it was the world's most prosperous colony, it was the most brutal colony. As Eric Williams noted, by 1789 this ‘pearl of the Caribbean’ had become, for the vast majority of its inhabitants, ‘the worst hell on earth’.
News of the fall of the Bastille reached San Domingo in September 1789. The planters (rich slave owners) most heavily indebted to the maritime bourgeoisie were the first to join. The Exclusive was particularly burdensome for the planters and caused many to go into deep debt. The Exclusive set prices, dictated that the colonists could trade only with France, and even chose the shipping company. The planters knew they could make significantly more by selling to England. They resented The Exclusive and hated Royalty's oppressive representatives, the bureaucracy, who ruled the colony.
With the French Revolution came talk of liberty and equality. The French bourgeoisie understood that slavery was abhorrent and a betrayal of all they claimed to stand for. But in 1789, France was in desperate need of money and dependent on the revenues from its small colony, Haiti, that produced more than all its other colonies combined. Parliament tried to forget the colony’s sadistic system of slavery that produced this wealth. Aware that the colony could not exist without slavery, the French decided it best to ignore the colonial issue. But the betrayal of principles would take the air out of the revolution: The colonial question again and again split the bourgeoisie, made it ashamed of itself, destroyed its morale and weakened its capacity to deal with the great home problems which faced it. ...the colonists wanted to get colonial questions removed from general discussion... (The Black Jacobins P70).
The colonists tried to emulate the French Revolutionaries, excluding of course, any talk of principles. Lofty principles had no place on San Domingo. While in France there was talk of liberation and equality, in San Domingo there was no such talk because liberation and equality would be the end of the French rule of Haiti. For the colonist, prosperity justified their brutality.
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