Ste Vincent Oge Research Paper

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THE SAINT-DOMINGUE SLAVE REVOLT OF THE LATE 18TH CENTURY When the French Revolution broke out a young Haitian mulatto named Vincent Oge was on business in France. His extended family of free Creoles owned a coffee plantation and a commercial business with slaves on Saint-Domingue. Caught up in the excitement of the French revolution, he embraced its principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity with great enthusiasm and became a supporter of French constitutional nationalism. As a part of the general atmosphere of emancipation prevalent during the revolution, he joined the antislavery Society of the Friends of Blacks in Paris and demanded that French constitutionalism be extended to Saint-Domingue. In a short time, the society’s efforts appeared to bear fruit. The National Assembly then granted self-administration of the colonies, and Oge …show more content…

They eliminated their competitors (white Creoles) and pushed the process to its ultimate conclusion, independence, and constitutionalism for what was now a nation of blacks. The Carribean island of Hispaniola was one of the earliest and richest European colonies based on plantations that produced vast sums of sugar, coffee, and cotton for export to the Old World. At the time of the French Revolution, the French part of the island produced half of the world’s sugar and coffee. The entire island had originally been a Spanish colony. But as Spain’s power dwindled, France took advantage of the situation and assumed control of the western end of the island in 1697. Settlers in the following century enjoyed mercantilist protection for splendid profits from their slave plantation. By 1789, 30 000 white settlers, 28 000 mulattoes and 500 000 black plantation and household slaves formed an unequal colonial society in which fear and violence reigned

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