The Impossible Ancien Régime colonial: Postcolonial Haiti and the Perils of the French Restoration

Abstract

The Impossible Ancien Régime colonial: Postcolonial Haiti and the Perils of the French Restoration

This article discusses the consequences of Napoleon's downfall for the world's first modern post-slavery state, Haiti. It focuses on the interplay between the French colonial office's diplomatic missions that were lobbied by dispossessed planters to recover the lost colony and the Haitian propaganda to guarantee national independence. These relations ultimately contributed to a shift in French colonial politics towards Haiti, from military conquest and re-enslavement to financial indemnification. Taking the rhetoric of pacification beyond Europe, French diplomacy presented racial hierarchies as an extension of the 1814 compromise between old and new elites in metropolitan France. The Haitian side, however, insisted on the sharp contradiction between the supposed reconciliation in France and a quasi-restoration of the Ancien Régime colonial. Drawing on Haitian, French and British source material, this article analyses how Haitian propaganda attacked the precarious political legitimacy of Restoration France from an extra-European viewpoint to exert pressure on European colonial politics. Relying on Haiti as a model for slave emancipation, British abolitionists significantly contributed to excluding the option of the Ancien Régime colonial. The debate on Haiti's future forced Louis XVIII's government to ponder the political risks of colonial restoration. In the outcome, financial indemnification became France's primary condition for recognising Haitian independence in 1825.