Etre Patriote sous les tropiques: La Guadeloupe, la colonization et la revolution

This book offers an account of the French Revolution in Guadeloupe from its outbreak in 1789 until the colony’s capitulation to the British in 1794. The revolution in Guadeloupe is analyzed as a struggle for freedom of commerce that has its origins inscribed in the structure of the French colonial system. The first third of the book provides a useful summary of the evolution of French colonial trade and policy during the ancien régime, and delineates the conflicts and rivalries between the various groups in Guadeloupe against this background. In the remainder of the book, the author carefully traces the initiatives emanating from France during the course of the revolution and the formation of the First Republic, and examines the local interests and conditions that modified them. The course of the struggle in Guadeloupe of the prorevolutionary local merchant class supported by the lower-status white and free colored populations against the royalist planters allied with Great Britain is examined in detail.