"A nation born to slavery": Missionaries and racial discourse in seventeenth-century French Antilles

Journal of Social History

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 2004, Pages

  Peabody, Sue ^a,b  

^a WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Department of History ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 6344284321     PISSN: 00224529     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jsh.2004.0099     Document Type: Review

References (83)

1. The historiography of race-thinking and racism is too vast to capture in a single citation. Two recent and valuable summations are George Fredrickson's Racism: A Short History (Princeton, 2002) and David Brion Davis, "Constructing Race: A Reflection" in In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery (New Haven, 2001), 307-322, orig. pub. in The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 54:1 (1997): 7-18.
2. The historiography of race-thinking and racism is too vast to capture in a single citation. Two recent and valuable summations are George Fredrickson's Racism: A Short History (Princeton, 2002) and David Brion Davis, "Constructing Race: A Reflection" in In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery (New Haven, 2001), 307-322, orig. pub. in The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 54:1 (1997): 7-18.
3. The historiography of race-thinking and racism is too vast to capture in a single citation. Two recent and valuable summations are George Fredrickson's Racism: A Short History (Princeton, 2002) and David Brion Davis, "Constructing Race: A Reflection" in In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery (New Haven, 2001), 307-322, orig. pub. in The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 54:1 (1997): 7-18.
4. A lucid, if partisan, overview of North American historiography vis-à-vis Virginia can be found in Alden Vaughan's "'The Origins Debate': Slavery and Racism in Seventeenth-Century Virginia," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 97:3 (July 1989): 311-54.
5. Winthrop Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill, 1968); William B. Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks, 1530-1880 (Bloomington, IN and London, 1980).
6. Winthrop Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill, 1968); William B. Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks, 1530-1880 (Bloomington, IN and London, 1980).
7. David Brion Davis, Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery (Cambridge, MA, 2003) chapter 1; Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East (New York and Oxford, 1990); James H. Sweet, "The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 54:1 (1997): 143-166.
8. David Brion Davis, Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery (Cambridge, MA, 2003) chapter 1; Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East (New York and Oxford, 1990); James H. Sweet, "The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 54:1 (1997): 143-166.
9. David Brion Davis, Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery (Cambridge, MA, 2003) chapter 1; Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East (New York and Oxford, 1990); James H. Sweet, "The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 54:1 (1997): 143-166.
10. Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, 1982); R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720 (Madison, WI, 1994); Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY, 1995); Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, MA, 2001).
11. Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, 1982); R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720 (Madison, WI, 1994); Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY, 1995); Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, MA, 2001).
12. Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, 1982); R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720 (Madison, WI, 1994); Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY, 1995); Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, MA, 2001).
13. Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge, 1982); R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660-1720 (Madison, WI, 1994); Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY, 1995); Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, MA, 2001).
14. Fredrickson, Racism, 40-47.
15. Cohen's important pioneering work covers the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, but in rather broad strokes, with comparatively little attention to the immediate social contexts of racial discourse. See also, Sue Peabody, "There Are No Slaves in France": The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (Oxford, 1996); and most recently, The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France, edited by Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall (Durham, NC, 2003).
16. Cohen's important pioneering work covers the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, but in rather broad strokes, with comparatively little attention to the immediate social contexts of racial discourse. See also, Sue Peabody, "There Are No Slaves in France": The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (Oxford, 1996); and most recently, The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France, edited by Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall (Durham, NC, 2003).
17. For a fuller discussion of Old Regime French missions in the Antilles, see: Sue Peabody, "'A Dangerous Zeal': Catholic Missions to Slaves in the French Caribbean, 1635-1800," French Historical Studies 25:1 (January 2002): 58-76.
18. Louis XIII issued contracts to the Atlantic ports of Rouen and St. Malo to trade along the African coast in 1633 and 1634 (Guillaume de Vaumas, L'éveil missionnaire de la France au XVIIe siècle, [Paris, 1976], 222, 227).
19. Jacques Bouton, Relation d'un établissement de françois depuis l'an 1635 en l'isle de Martinique, l'une des Antilles de l'Amerique (Paris, 1640), 98-102. Bouton makes an explicitly economic comparison, noting that blacks can be dressed and fed more cheaply than the French indentured servants and that they owe their lifetime service to their master, as contrasted with the indentured servants who serve for only three years.
20. Maurile de St. Michel, Voyage des Isles Camercanes en l'Amérique qui font partie des indes occidentales (Mans, 1652), 80. Portions of this text are reprinted in Revue d'histoire des missions (Dec. 1936): 587-614.
21. Maurile de St. Michel, Voyage des Isles Camercanes en l'Amérique qui font partie des indes occidentales (Mans, 1652), 80. Portions of this text are reprinted in Revue d'histoire des missions (Dec. 1936): 587-614.
22. Bernard David, Dictionnaire biographique de la Martinique (1635-1848): le clergé, 3 vols., (Fort-de-France, 1984), 1:79-82.
23. Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre, Histoire générale des Isles de S. Christophe, de la Guadeloupe, de la Martinique et autres dans l'Amérique (Paris, 1654), 480.
24. Ibid., 473.
25. Ibid., 475.
26. Ibid., 477-78.
27. Ibid., 475.
28. Pierre Pelleprat, "Relations des missions des pères de la compagnie de Jésus dans les iles et dans la terre ferme de l'Amérique Méridionale" (Paris, 1655), rpr. in Mission de Cayenne et de la Guyane française avec une carte géographique, (Paris, 1857), 49.
29. Pierre Pelleprat, "Relations des missions des pères de la compagnie de Jésus dans les iles et dans la terre ferme de l'Amérique Méridionale" (Paris, 1655), rpr. in Mission de Cayenne et de la Guyane française avec une carte géographique, (Paris, 1857), 49.
30. André Chevillard, Les desseins de son Eminence le cardinal de Richelieu pour l'Amérique ce qui s'est passé de plus remarquable depuis l'établissement des colonies (Rouen, 1659), 192.
31. Pacifique de Provins, Le voyage de Perse et Brève relation du voyage des îles de l'Amérique, ed. Godefroy de Paris and Hilaire de Wingene (Assisi, 1939), pp. 27, 40-41. The Brève relation was originally published in 1646.
32. Pelleprat, 50.
33. While I do not find James Sweet's evidence sufficient to trace a significant tradition of black inferiority among Spanish Christians back through the Middle Ages, there is no doubt that from the mid-1400s, Spanish and Portuguese Catholics accepted the enslavement of Africans while the morality of enslaving Amerindians was more controversial (Sweet, "Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought,"); see also: Cope, 17-18 and Pagden, 31-35. For the Portuguese, see Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540-1750 (Palo Alto, CA, 1996), 502-27. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 169-70.
34. While I do not find James Sweet's evidence sufficient to trace a significant tradition of black inferiority among Spanish Christians back through the Middle Ages, there is no doubt that from the mid-1400s, Spanish and Portuguese Catholics accepted the enslavement of Africans while the morality of enslaving Amerindians was more controversial (Sweet, "Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought,"); see also: Cope, 17-18 and Pagden, 31-35. For the Portuguese, see Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540-1750 (Palo Alto, CA, 1996), 502-27. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 169-70.
35. While I do not find James Sweet's evidence sufficient to trace a significant tradition of black inferiority among Spanish Christians back through the Middle Ages, there is no doubt that from the mid-1400s, Spanish and Portuguese Catholics accepted the enslavement of Africans while the morality of enslaving Amerindians was more controversial (Sweet, "Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought,"); see also: Cope, 17-18 and Pagden, 31-35. For the Portuguese, see Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540-1750 (Palo Alto, CA, 1996), 502-27. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 169-70.
36. While I do not find James Sweet's evidence sufficient to trace a significant tradition of black inferiority among Spanish Christians back through the Middle Ages, there is no doubt that from the mid-1400s, Spanish and Portuguese Catholics accepted the enslavement of Africans while the morality of enslaving Amerindians was more controversial (Sweet, "Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought,"); see also: Cope, 17-18 and Pagden, 31-35. For the Portuguese, see Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540-1750 (Palo Alto, CA, 1996), 502-27. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 169-70.
37. "What is more, the punishments in America are brutal for the captives or indentured servants, and there is no more cruelty among the barbarian Africans or cruel Turks who employ the greatest harshness than in these isles, if the Lord Governors don't bring order there; because the naked body is attached to a post and beaten in such a manner that the blood flows from all parts and then, to prevent the mosquitoes from causing playess [sores?], they are rubbed with water containing salt and pimento or Guinea pepper. It is these [masters] who put in horror the name of Christian among these Negroes by the cruelties formerly exercised by the Spaniards toward the Indians of Peru, whom Bartholomew de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapas ... wrote in his letter to the King of Spain, in which he said that [he] was obliged to ask his Catholic Majesty an exemplary justice of eighteen Leaders of the Spanish Colony, who by their actions had so put in horror the name of Christian that by this single word the Indians believed that JESUS CHRIST was a Mahobia [Demon], [the] author and abettor of their strange tyranny." Chevillard, 194-95. The "letter" that Chevillard cites is probably one of those written to Charles V between 1544 and 1550, when Las Casas was Bishop of Chiapas. Thanks to Scott Sessions for his assistance in identifying Chevillard's probable reference.
38. Maurile de Saint Michel, 81-94; Pelleprat, 45-46. Maurile de Saint Michel is primarily concerned with establishing that children should be obedient to their fathers; he makes it clear however, that he considers Africans the descendents of Ham and thus owing their servitude to the sons of Japhet, here implied to be the Europeans.
39. Maurile de Saint Michel, 81-94; Pelleprat, 45-46. Maurile de Saint Michel is primarily concerned with establishing that children should be obedient to their fathers; he makes it clear however, that he considers Africans the descendents of Ham and thus owing their servitude to the sons of Japhet, here implied to be the Europeans.
40. Debra Gene Blumenthal, "Implements of Labor, Instruments of Honor: Muslim, Eastern and Black African Slaves in Fifteenth-Century Valencia," Ph.D. diss., U. of Toronto, 2000; A.C. de C. M. Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, 1441-1555 (Cambridge, 1982); A.J.R. Russell-Wood, "Before Columbus: Portugal's African Prelude to the Middle Passage and Contribution to Discourse on Race and Slavery," in Race, Discourse and the Origins of the Americas, ed. Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex Nettleford (Washington, D.C., 1995), 134-168).
41. Debra Gene Blumenthal, "Implements of Labor, Instruments of Honor: Muslim, Eastern and Black African Slaves in Fifteenth-Century Valencia," Ph.D. diss., U. of Toronto, 2000; A.C. de C. M. Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, 1441-1555 (Cambridge, 1982); A.J.R. Russell-Wood, "Before Columbus: Portugal's African Prelude to the Middle Passage and Contribution to Discourse on Race and Slavery," in Race, Discourse and the Origins of the Americas, ed. Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex Nettleford (Washington, D.C., 1995), 134-168).
42. Debra Gene Blumenthal, "Implements of Labor, Instruments of Honor: Muslim, Eastern and Black African Slaves in Fifteenth-Century Valencia," Ph.D. diss., U. of Toronto, 2000; A.C. de C. M. Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, 1441-1555 (Cambridge, 1982); A.J.R. Russell-Wood, "Before Columbus: Portugal's African Prelude to the Middle Passage and Contribution to Discourse on Race and Slavery," in Race, Discourse and the Origins of the Americas, ed. Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex Nettleford (Washington, D.C., 1995), 134-168).
43. Pagden, Fall of Natural Man, esp., 31-35.
44. Peabody, No Slaves, 23-37, 67-69.
45. Philip Boucher, Cannibal Encounters: Europeans and Islam Caribs, 1492-1763 (Baltimore, 1992), 49-51.
46. In 1674, the French governor-general De Baas asserted the necessity of returning the Jesuits to Martinique to minister to the Christians and the Negroes as they "still haven't made any progress" among the Caribs (Jean-Charles de Baas to Minister, Letter of 8 June 1674, Archives Nationales Colonies C8 A1, fols. 281v-284). Interestingly, de Baas was a Protestant. His successor, the Comte de Blénac, was somewhat more supportive of continuing a missionary presence in the Carib islands of St. Vincent and Dominica (Boucher, Cannibal Encounters, 89-90).
47. Adrien Dessalles, Histoire générale des Antilles, 5 vols., (Paris, 1847-48), 1:559-661. A similar trend occurred in the French Antillean colonies of Saint-Christophe and Guadeloupe (where slave populations surpassed those of whites by 1687), and Saint-Domingue (between 1687 and 1700) (Peabody, "A Dangerous Zeal," 75).
48. Peabody, "A Dangerous Zeal," 63.
49. Du Tertre had also returned to the Antilles in 1656-57, during the intervening period between the publication of the 1654 Histoire générale and the new 1667-71 edition (Jacques Petit Jean Roget, La Société d'habitation à la Martinique: Un demi-siècle de formation: 1635-1685. 2 vols. Thesis, Université de Paris VII, 1978. Lille: Atelier Réproduction des Thèses, Université de Lille III, 1980, II: 853-856).
50. The remaining pages were devoted to Amerindian slaves from the Antilles (Arawaks) and the South American mainland (Brazil). These page counts are based on the 1978 reprint edition, Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre, Histoire générale des Antilles habitées par les françois, 4 vols. (Paris, 1667-1671; rpr. 1978), which is not an exact facsimile of the original, but the proportions of the pages are roughly the same.
51. Ibid., 2:503.
52. Ibid., 2:511.
53. Ibid., 2:506-07
54. Ibid., 2:508.
55. Ibid., 2:497-98.
56. Ibid., 2:504.
57. I b i d.
58. Ibid., 2:487.
59. Ibid., 2:499.
60. Ibid., 2:529.
61. Ibid., 2:525.
62. Jean Mongin, "Copie de la lettre du P. Jean Mongin, missionnaire de l'Amérique à une personne de condition du Languedoc écrite de l'ile de Saint-Christophe au mois de mai, 1682," Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon, (Fonds Brottier, MS 185, fols. 40 ff.) reprinted in Bulletin de la société d'histoire de la Guadeloupes 60-62 (1984): 73-125.
63. Jean Mongin, "Copie de la lettre du P. Jean Mongin, missionnaire de l'Amérique à une personne de condition du Languedoc écrite de l'ile de Saint-Christophe au mois de mai, 1682," Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon, (Fonds Brottier, MS 185, fols. 40 ff.) reprinted in Bulletin de la société d'histoire de la Guadeloupes 60-62 (1984): 73-125.
64. Mongin, 89. Mongin makes numerous references to this alleged vice, as "the predilection that produces their concubinage" (92).
65. Ibid., 98.
66. Ibid., 102 and 103.
67. Mongin, 104.
68. I b i d.
69. Ibid., 95-96.
70. Chevillard, 144.
71. Ibid., 2:511.
72. Of 2,522 slaves in his charge, "971 know well the principles of the faith and 626 ... besides that know the prayers" (Mongin, "Lettre," 118).
73. Pierre Boulle, "François Bernier (1620-88) and the Origins of the Modern Concept of Race" in The Color of Liberty, 2.
74. Chevillard, 192-193.
75. Du Tertre, Histoire générale des isles, 2:498-99.
76. "Those who come from the northernmost part of Africa have a very light touch of Islam, because of their proximity to Morocco and Barbary. They wear at their throat little notes written in Arabic, which are preventatives against illness, so they say. When I ask them at first, upon their arrival, they give them to me and let me burn them without any resistance (except once, with three of them from Cap Blanc, which is a place further north than all the others from which we bring Negroes). For those who are more southern, they have let me know that they believe there is a being who made everything and who sends, so they say, the rain to make the crops grow. Those from Angola have told me that they call him Zamby; those who are less distant from the famous Sénéga river call this God Reboucou. They have told me that he is hidden and made like us. Those from Ardres or Aradas call him Boudou and they have told me that they bury their dead in the house, make a great banquet on the grave, and throw in half for the dead. But when I ask them where the dead go after this life, they reply candidly, 'that is something which we do not know in our land.' Ordinarily, when they want to guarantee something, they lift their eyes and their hand on high, with a very affecting and very respectful air, and say, 'God on high.'" (Mongin, 85).
77. Chaplin, Subject Matter, 9, 175-80, 193. Chaplin's assertions about English characterizations of Africans' bodies in the British West Indies are more inferential and less rooted in seventeenth-century texts than her more grounded discussions of English North America.
78. Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes, 2nd ed. (London and Portland, Ore., 1998 [orig. pub. 1673]), 54. Ligon, apparently Anglican in his religious orientation, frequently distinguishes between "Negroes" and "Christians" in his account (e.g., "Negroes, being more than double the number of Christians" [46]). He offers an eloquent argument on behalf of the capacity of blacks to become Christians but, upon presenting the notion to a planter, learns that the planters fear that this would require the converted slaves to be freed (49-50). A similar debate was taking place in French missionary circles at about the same time (Peabody, "Dangerous Zeal," 69).
79. Pelleprat, 49.
80. Bouton, Relation, 134.
81. Most of the research on the French racial legal infrastructure posits colonial origins for institutional racism in France and its colonies (Yvan Debbasch, Couleur et liberté: Le jeu du critère ethnique dans un ordre juridique esclavagiste [Paris, 1967]); Pierre Boulle, "In Defense of Slavery: Eighteenth-Century Opposition to Abolition and the Origins of Racist Ideology in France," in History from Below, ed. Frederick Krantz (Oxford, 1988), 219-46. The truth may be somewhat more complicated and warrants further study.
82. Most of the research on the French racial legal infrastructure posits colonial origins for institutional racism in France and its colonies (Yvan Debbasch, Couleur et liberté: Le jeu du critère ethnique dans un ordre juridique esclavagiste [Paris, 1967]); Pierre Boulle, "In Defense of Slavery: Eighteenth-Century Opposition to Abolition and the Origins of Racist Ideology in France," in History from Below, ed. Frederick Krantz (Oxford, 1988), 219-46. The truth may be somewhat more complicated and warrants further study.
83. Peabody, "Dangerous Zeal," 73-75, 84-86.