Colonial Enlightenment and the French Revolution: Julien Raymond and Milscent Créole

Abstract

While most colonial plantation owners defended slavery and racial hierarchy during the French Revolution, Julien Raymond, a free man of color from the French colony of Saint-Domingue, and Claude Milscent, a white plantation owner, became important critics of these two institutions. In their writings from 1789 to 1794, they combined Enlightenment ideas and a first-hand knowledge of colonial conditions to generate original programs for the elimination of racial distinctions. In response to the black slave uprising of 1791 in Saint-Domingue, both men were also forced to contemplate the abolition of slavery, despite their own earlier investment in it.