The Saint-Domingue Plantation; or, The Insurrection: A Drama in Five Acts

Introduction

INTRODUCTION DORIS Y. KADISH Time has nearly obliterated the memory of one of the most notable literary and political figures of the first half of the nineteenth century , Charles François Marie, comte de Rémusat (1797–1875). That is not to say that his name does not appear in the historical record under a number of different guises: as a leading force in the opposition to the Restoration government in the 1820s and, again, to the Second Empire in 1851; as an elected member of the Chambre des députés from 1830 to 1848; as an inductee into the Académie française in 1846; as minister of foreign affairs in 1871 and deputy again in 1873. Indeed, Rémusat stands center stage for many of the most important events of French nineteenth-century political life: “Chief editor of the Globe, he joined Thiers in writing the famous manifesto of liberal newspapers against the ordonnances of Charles X. Minister of the interior, he had Louis Bonaparte arrested in Boulogne pretending to restore the Empire . . . He was at the Tuileries, behind Louis-Philippe . . . when the king signed his abdication” (Arlet xxii–xxiv). Although clearly all the phases of Rémusat’s life merit consideration , it is the period of the 1820s that has the greatest literary importance and perhaps the greatest historical importance as well. xii Introduction As Darío Roldán writes, during this period, “everything was being rethought: the concepts of sovereignty, representation, the role of the chambers, the principles of legitimate monarchy, the foundations of obedience, etc.” (Roldán 38). During this decade Rémusat played a crucial oppositional role vis-à-vis the forces of reaction in society and came to personify his generation’s views on constitutional monarchy, electoral reforms, freedom of the press, and other liberal political issues. It was also in the 1820s, after a hiatus of more than two decades following the revolutions in Haiti, that the French antislavery movement was reborn. Through his published writings in Le Globe, his dramatic readings in French salons, and his participation in the creation of the Société de la morale chrétienne, Rémusat contributed to that rebirth. Moreover, the 1820s saw the birth of Romanticism in France, following the earlier incarnations of that movement in Germany and Britain. Although Rémusat was not a major Romantic writer, he was one of the first and the most influential to articulate the principles of the new movement and the cultural transformation it represented. And although not published at the time, his small body of theatrical works from the 1820s—Jean de Montciel, ou Le Fief; La SaintBarth élemy; L’Habitation de Saint-Domingue, ou L’Insurrection— represents the style and the spirit of the new movement. The period of the 1820s also has considerable importance with respect to colonial history. After several years of negotiations, it was finally in 1825 that Charles X recognized the independence of Haiti, an act that opened the door for recognition by other countries loath to incur the displeasure of France. Although the price that Haiti paid for the acknowledgment of its legitimacy as a nation was exorbitant reparations earmarked to repay former colonists for their lost property, French moderates and even most former colonists saw Charles X’s act as a humanitarian gesture that would make Haiti a symbol of hope for oppressed people worldwide and a first step in bringing about the end of the illegal slave trade and the inhuman treatment of slaves in the remaining French colonies. Introduction xiii In contrast, conservatives saw the act as a betrayal of the former colonists, a recognition of the black insurrection, and an abandonment of part of the French kingdom. On a variety of levels, then, Rémusat’s role in the 1820s merits reconsideration today. It provides a window onto his contribution to literary history as well as, more generally, onto the development of French social and political ideas in the nineteenth century. The many sides of his literary, political, and historical thought are especially evident in his antislavery play L’Habitation de SaintDomingue . Never performed, the play was first read in the salon of Paul Dubois, the editor of Le Globe, on February 22, 1825; subsequent readings occurred in the salons of Mme de Broglie and Mme de Catelan (Riegert 127). To understand the play and its signi ficance, it is necessary to consider...