Why go
This chapter helps explain why 1848, rather than the Revolution alone, is central to Martinique's emancipation history. It also adds meaning to colonial forts and estates: military control, commercial interests and the rights of free people of color and enslaved people were contested together.
The full story
Revolutionary laws from France challenged the colonial order, including restrictions on the rights of free people of color. On Martinique, plantation interests resisted those changes. Britain took control of the island in 1794, the same year the French Convention decreed the abolition of slavery. The decree was not put into effect in Martinique under British occupation, and slavery continued. The Revolution was therefore experienced very differently on the island than a simple timeline of decisions in Paris might suggest. Competing colonial authorities, war and the plantation economy shaped which laws could be enforced. Enslaved people and free people of color were subjects of those struggles, and their own resistance formed part of the history. When later accounts describe Martinique's emancipation in 1848, this earlier failed opening helps explain both the long delay and the force of local action at the end of slavery.