The Créole Patriote: the journalism of Claude Milscent

Abstract

This article assesses the journalistic career of Claude Milscent (1740–1794), who started life as a Saint-Domingue planter and was guillotined a committed Parisian abolitionist and Jacobin. In particular, it will describe the radicalization of his position regarding colonial politics and how he maintained a dialog with his paper's readership: first in Le Creuset, published exclusively in Angers in 1791, and then in his Parisian newspaper, Le Créole Patriote, published from 1792 to early 1794. The main sources for this article include these newspapers along with two of Milscent's published pamphlets: Justification de M. Milscent, Créole, à L'Assemblée Coloniale de S. Domingue (a speech he gave before a colonial assembly toward the end of 1791), and Notes et Remarques sur le Régime des Colonies, et Particulièrement sur celle de Saint Domingue. Milscent's article on the colonies, published in Jacques-Pierre Brissot's newspaper Le Patriote Français and entitled “Sur les troubles de Saint-Domingue,” is also important to this study. Archival sources consulted (Archives Nationales, Paris) included colonies: administration, correspondence, personal accounts and reports: BB³ 81A and AF IV 1190, and the records of Milscent's trial in DXXV 56. A critical reading of Milscent's speeches and writings shed light on the intimate personal relationships and colonial developments that informed the revolutionary politics of his day, in both metropole and colony. Milscent initially argued that, as a planter, he had a personal stake in maintaining slavery. His papers, which include his personal testimony and reproduced exchanges with people of color, show how he ultimately interpreted his intellectual and personal relationships both before and during the French Revolution as compelling evidence that he must abandon any personal privilege he enjoyed as a white colon.

Keywords:

• creole identity
• Black Atlantic
• Saint-Domingue
• slavery
• people of color
• French Revolution

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Kathleen Wilson, Olufemi Vaughan, Yvonne Fabella, Mette Herder, Spencer Segalla, and Sean Kelley for reading earlier versions of this article. All translations from the French are mine unless otherwise noted. In addition, I would like to credit the work of Laurent Dubois, in particular his article, “An enslaved Enlightenment: rethinking the intellectual history of the French Atlantic,” for having provided inspiration to re-examine the importance of the reciprocity of ideas between colony and metropole.

Notes on contributor

Alexandra Tolin Schultz is a Lecturer of History at State University of New York, Oneonta, NY, USA.

Notes

1. From Le Créole Patriote 28 Pluviôse An II (February 16, 1794). In contrast to Milscent, the most prominent works published by creoles (white settlers) unabashedly argued for the perpetuation of racial discrimination in the colonies as a way to preserve the rationale for slavery. See, for instance, d'Auberteuil, Considérations; Malouet, Mémoire; and Saint-Méry, Description Topographique. Saint-Méry and Malouet in particular were very prominent in Paris during the Revolution when arguments involving the colonies reached the National Assembly and the National Convention; they were members of the notorious Massiac Club, which represented organized planter interest in France. In the writings of many of the revolutionaries who took up the cause of people of color, their names came to be widely associated with colon intransigence in the face of the Revolutionary promotion of universal equality.

2. King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig, xv–xxiv.

3. Geggus, Racial Equality, 1302, refers very briefly to Milscent in his article, calling him a “maverick liberal planter.”

4. See Bénot, La Révolution Française, which is, as I have mentioned, the most significant treatment of Milscent. Bénot also analyzes imperialism and slavery under Napoleonic rule in Bénot, La Démence Coloniale sous Napoléon.

5. Bénot, L'Affaire Milscent, 311–27.

6. Piollet, Piquionne, and Roux, “Milscent créole historien,” 23–42.

7. Garrigus “Color, Class, and Identity”; Geggus, “Racial Equality, Slavery,” 1290–1308, and Geggus, Marronage, “Voodoo.” Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, also touches on Milscent and his journalism.

8. Piquet, L'emancipation des Noirs. See also: Popkin, You Are All Free. Also important for an understanding of how journalism informed civil society and political action during the Revolution of special importance is Popkin, “Citizenship and the Press.”

9. Popkin, You Are All Free.

10. See Le Créole Patriote, February 8, 1793, Soir.

11. Dubois, A Colony of Citizens, 175–76, shows this to be one of the most serious problems in Toussaint L'Ouverture's political program.

12. For more on the naturalization of the social order, see Colwill, “Sex, Savagery, and Slavery.”

13. King shows the ways in which the militia was an avenue for advancement for many families of color, as well as a way to combat white stereotypes; King emphasizes that members of the military leadership tended to have no active family or personal relationships with whites. King convincingly argues, based on detailed notarial records, that the militia offered people of color, a level of mobility that was not directly dependent upon patronage from individual whites. King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig, xxiii, xxvi. Milscent's close contact with the free people of color who served the militia clearly imbued him with strong confidence in the leadership abilities of the hommes de couleur.

14. King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig, xxii–xxiii.

15. Grégoire, De La Littérature des Nègres. For Grégoire's reference to Michel Mina, see the acknowledgments at the beginning, where Grégoire gives tribute to “negroes” and “mixed bloods” who have adopted the “cause of the unfortunate blacks and mixed-bloods,” and writes “Milscent, writing under the name of Michel Mina.” Michel Mina was actually the pseudonym that Milscent used early in his career when circulating a pamphlet denouncing white treatment of people of color in the colonies. Piquet, L'emancipation des Noirs, 132. Piquet notes that historians have not been able to locate the pamphlet.

16. Bénot, La Démence Coloniale.

17. Piquet, L'emancipation des Noirs, 65.

18. Geggus, “Racial Equality, Slavery and Colonial Secession,” 1302.

19. Milscent, Le Creuset. No. 1, July 1, 1791 and Milscent, Le Creuset. No. 24, September 21, 1791.

20. Kates, The Cercle Social, 217.

21. Kates, The Cercle Social, 248.

22. Milscent, Le Creuset, No. 16, August 24, 1791.

23. Milscent, Le Creuset, No. 4, July 13, 1791.

24. Milscent, Le Creuset, No. 7, July 20, 1791.

25. Milscent, Le Creuset, No. 12, August 10, 1791.

26. Milscent, Le Creuset, No. 14, August 17, 1791.

27. Milscent, Le Creuset, No. 8, July 27, 1791.

28. Milscent, Le Creuset, No. 23, September 18, 1791.

29. Milscent, Le Creuset, No. 8, 27 July 1791. Although technically miscegenation or “métissage” was not strictly illegal in the colonies, as Doris Garraway has, the products of such unions, people of color, were legally and socially penalized. If relationships between people of color and whites preserved the power balance of the colonies, Garraway convincingly argues, the “transgression” of miscegenation was displaced onto the stigmatized bodies of people of color; however, if a white man or woman wished to legally marry a person of color, they would become socially black or mésaillé “a word denoting the principle in French marital law barring the union of persons from different social classes,” Garraway, The Libertine Colony, 207. The planter class found this to be a particularly dangerous and subversive act. Although legitimate marriage between people of color and whites was never prohibited by royal law, discrimination against those who had entered into such marriages increased throughout the eighteenth century. For more on the social and legal discrimination against free people of color in the colonies at this time Garrigus, “Colour, Class and Identity, 1996, and Garrigus, “Sons of the Same Father.” See also Debbasch, Couleur et liberté.

30. Milscent, Le Creuset, p. 90. Emphasis in original.

31. Milscent, Le Creuset, No. 15, August 21, 1791. Emphasis in original.

32. Milscent, Le Creuset, No. 12, August 10, 1791.

33. Milscent, Le Creuset, No. 21, September 11, 1791.

34. Milscent, Le Creuset, No. 8, July 27, 1791.

35. Milscent, Le Creuset, No. 21, September 11, 1791.

36. Dubois, A Colony of Citizens, and King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig.

37. Claude Milscent, “Sur les Troubles de Saint-Domingue” in Jacques-Pierre Brissot's Le Patriote Français, October 31, 1791.

38. Claude Milscent, “Sur les Troubles de Saint-Domingue” in Jacques-Pierre Brissot's Le Patriote Français, October 31, 1791.

39. Claude Milscent, Justification de M. Milscent, Créole, à L'Assemblée Coloniale de S. Domingue. Paris: de l'Imprimerie du Cercle Social, 1791. p. 1.

40. Claude Milscent, Justification de M. Milscent, Créole, à L'Assemblée Coloniale de S. Domingue. Paris: de l'Imprimerie du Cercle Social, 1791. p. 3–4.

41. Claude Milscent, Justification de M. Milscent, Créole, à L'Assemblée Coloniale de S. Domingue. Paris: de l'Imprimerie du Cercle Social, 1791. p. 3–4.

42. Claude Milscent, Justification de M. Milscent, Créole, à L'Assemblée Coloniale de S. Domingue. Paris: de l'Imprimerie du Cercle Social, 1791. p. 13.

43. Claude Milscent, Justification de M. Milscent, Créole, à L'Assemblée Coloniale de S. Domingue. Paris: de l'Imprimerie du Cercle Social, 1791. p. 7–9, 11.

44. Claude Milscent, Justification de M. Milscent, Créole, à L'Assemblée Coloniale de S. Domingue. Paris: de l'Imprimerie du Cercle Social, 1791. p. 7–9.

45. Claude Milscent, Justification de M. Milscent, Créole, à L'Assemblée Coloniale de S. Domingue. Paris: de l'Imprimerie du Cercle Social, 1791. p. 13–14.

46. Claude Milscent, Justification de M. Milscent, Créole, à L'Assemblée Coloniale de S. Domingue. Paris: de l'Imprimerie du Cercle Social, 1791. p. 14.

47. Popkin, Facing Racial Revolution, 158–63.

48. Trouillot, “An Unthinkable History,” 70–107.

49. Milscent, Notes, 21. Emphasis in original.

50. Bonneville, Nicolas. La Chronique du Mois.

51. Milscent, Chronique du Mois, February 1792.

52. For the correspondence between Milscent and the unnamed woman of color, see Piollet, Piquionne, and Roux, “Milscent créole historien.”

53. Yves Bénot suggests that Milscent was the first to openly demand abolition in a Parisian newspaper, Bénot, La Révolution Française. I have not yet found an earlier instance to contradict this.

54. Milscent, La Revue du Patriote, June 16, 1792.

55. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, June 20, 1792. Emphasis in original.

56. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, June 20, 1792. Emphasis in original.

57. Milscent, Notes et Remarques, 26–27.

58. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, June 23, 1792. Emphasis in original.

59. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, June 26, 1792.

60. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, June 26, 1792.

61. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, February 7, 1793, Matin.

62. Milscent, Le Creole Patriote, February 11, 1793, Matin. The basic biographical details of Milscent's life emerged as he revealed them himself in his writings and speeches; I try to follow the chronology of revelation he himself provides.

63. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, February 8, 1793, Soir.

64. Sonenscher, Sans-Culottes.

65. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, February 9, 1793.

66. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, February 9, 1793. Emphasis in original.

67. Thornton, “I am the Subject,” 181–214.

68. Popkin, You are all free.

69. Piquet, L'emancipation des Noirs, 295.

70. Bénot, “Un antiesclavagist kleptomane,” 295–300, and Piquet, L'emancipation des Noirs, 253.

71. Piquet, L'emancipation des Noirs, 295–96.

72. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, August 29, 1793.

73. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, February 9, 1793.

74. For the passage on the Jews (who Milscent referred to as “the children of Israel” and the “descendants of Abraham”) see Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, December 9, 1792.

75. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, September 3, 1793. Emphasis in original.

76. Archives Nationales. BB³ 81A

77. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote, October 6, 1793.

78. Bénot, “L'Affaire Milscent,” 200.

79. Gauthier, “La Révolution française.”

80. Desmoulins, Jean-Pierre Brissot démasqué.

81. Piquet, L'emancipation des Noirs, 307.

82. The details of the trial, and of Milscent's subsequent execution, are taken from, Bénot, “L'Affaire Milscent,” 311–27.

83. Brulley, Précis des Manœuvers contre-révolutionnaires.

84. Piquet, L'emancipation des Noirs, and Bénot, L'Affaire Milscent, 1989.

85. Milscent, Le Créole Patriote 28, Pluviôse, An II, February 16, 1794.

86. Piquet, L'emancipation des Noirs, 430–33. Two others who had joined Milscent in providing this testimony on March 14, 1794, Messieurs Claudin and Vautrin, were not persecuted and the judges of the Revolutionary tribunal (Fonquier-Tinville and Coffinhal) did not ask about them, probably because they were less politically important than Milscent and therefore less threatening to white supremacy in the Caribbean.

87. For a full inventory of the history of charges and accusations against Milscent, including details of the final accusations brought on 29 Floréal, An II (May 18, 1794) and the order that he received the death penalty (signed by Coffinhal), see DXXV 56.

88. Piquet, L'emancipation des Noirs, 430–33.

89. Bénot, La Révolution Française and Bénot, La Démence Coloniale.