French 825 Douglas S.

Roberts Professor Racevskis Autumn, 2011 THE DARK SIDE OF THE LIGHT: SLAVERY AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT The Age of Enlightenment (or Age of Reason) was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe which sought to use reason to reform society, promote happiness, and advance human knowledge. Using reason, science, and the empirical method, they

questioned everything, including Aristotelian metaphysics, superstition, innate or revealed truths, the church, the clergy, the government, social mores, and religious dogma. They challenged ignorance, intolerance, aristocratic privilege, absolutism, prejudices, fanaticism, the use of torture, and religious prosecution. They praised the virtues of Nature, universalism, exoticism, secularism, and democracy. Such intellectuals included Rousseau, Montesquieu, Olympe de Gouge, Voltaire, Diderot, and dAlembert, and, while they held a diverse array of ideas and opinions, they displayed great faith that human reason, rationality, and knowledge were key facts in human progress. The writers of the Enlightenment promoted democracy, racial and sexual equality, a political separation of powers, justice, individual liberty, scientific progress, and freedom of press. They

disseminated their ideas through the cafes, the salons, the libraries, their writings, the various academies, the press, and the Masonic lodges. In a 1

fashion, they were revolutionary and extremely influential in affecting the history of western civilization. The political ideals of the Enlightenment can be seen in the American Declaration of Independence, the United States Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, as well as the Polish Constitution. (Palmer 58) While the goals (and results) of such a project are admirable, there are those who interpret the Enlightenment much more critically. In The Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment, for instance, Louis Sala-Molins argues that in evaluating the Enlightenment, the crucial test was the position that it took on the slave trade and slavery. He contends that when one examines the Enlightenment in light of the Code Noir (the slave code) at the time, one sees that the Enlightenment was not all light and radiance as traditionally presented, but also night and darkness, not all insight but also blindness. (Sala-Molins xi) Ultimately, he claims that the Enlightenment thinkers were hypocritical, preaching the equality of man while excluding slaves as inferior beings. [Sala-Molins] argues that the reforming prescriptions of Montesquieu, Condorcet, Diderot, Buffon, and others applied only to white citizens, not to the black slaves who provided their coffee and sugar. He contends that because the French intellectuals were unwilling to forgo their luxuries at once, figures such as Condorcet advocated the gradual emancipation of slaves, and displayed a concern for the rights of 2

their master which assorted ill with their professed humanitarian goals. (Adams 512) He interprets such an abandonment of the Enlightenment ideals as the ultimate treachery. Is such an attack, however, justified? In this paper I will answer this question. By way of background, I will first discuss some of the principles of the Enlightenment and the reality of the French 18th century slave trade. I will then summarize and critique Sala-Molins arguments, giving some of my own thoughts on the subject. THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT The Enlightenment was a sprawling intellectual, philosophical, cultural and social movement that spread throughout Europe, including France, England, and Germany throughout the 1700s. As a consequence of the Scientific Revolution in the prior century, the Enlightenment gave birth to a new way to thinking about the world. In the Middle Ages, society was highly hierarchical, with serfdom as a widespread practice. Monarchs ruled by divine right, and the Church exercised tremendous power over all aspects of life. However, probably

as a consequence of the thirty years war, which lasted from 1618-1648, writers began to criticize the ideas of nationalism and warfare. Moreover, the religious wars of the 17th century (156298), pitting the Catholics against the Protestant Huguenots, almost bankrupted France.

However, things were beginning to change. The inventions of the earlier century bore fruit in the 18th century, resulting in the discovery of the telescope, slide rule, submarine, steam turbine, micrometer, the adding machine, barometer, air pump, pendulum clock, pressure cooker, and steam pump. In more general terms, Descartes prepared the way for 18th century thinkers by making universal doubt the basis of philosophy and by insisting on clear and cogent reasoning. (Crocker 37) Using the scientific method, scientists continued to advance human knowledge in the fields of mathematics, physics, politics, economics, philosophy and medicine. With the expansion of commerce and trade, the middle class grew, bringing with it increased education, skill, and literacy. Under the Enlightenment, the bourgeois class perceived the world as improving, and that progress was a part of human history. Through increased trade with the Orient and the Americas, people also gained an appreciation of the different civilizations and a different way of living, a fact which encouraged an attitude of tolerance and relativism. As a general rule, the writers of the Enlightenment were hostile to religious dogma, the belief that some knowledge was innate (as opposed to a product of experience), superstition, and blind faith. (Jean-Jacque Rousseau 3) In Diderot: The Embattled Philosopher, Crocker describes the moral vision of the Enlightenment as follows:

The development of moral thinking in France, during the early eighteenth century, can best be explained as a multiple reaction against the intellectual and social atmosphere that prevailed during the long reign of Louis XIV. Revulsion against the religious absolutism and moral severity of the Court led to the dissoluteness and corruption that prevailed during the regency of the duke of Orleans (1715-1723). The Church itself, and the prestige of religion along with it, dipped low in public esteem, as a result of the better wrangling between Jesuits and Jansenists, the hysterical public miracles of a mystical Jansenist group, and the excessive flagellations of fanatical penitents. Religious dogma was no longer sacred, or even respectable. One basis for the new orientation was found in libertinism, a persistent current of free thought in the seventeenth century that maintained a link with the naturalistic humanism of such Renaissance skeptics as Montaigne and, beyond him, with the school of Epicurus. Most called for was the separation of the morality from religion, and the establishment of ethics on a rational, secular basis. (6061) In France, the major writers of the Enlightenment, or philosophes, were convinced that reason could identify those natural laws that not only explained the world, but also governed human society. In his Esprit des Lois, for instance, Montesquieu (1689-1755) proposed a government with executive, judicial and legislative branches, with each limiting and balancing the powers exercised by each branch. Voltaire (1694-1778) took a more caustic approach in challenging much of what he found appalling in the 18th century, including censorship, intolerance, superstition, social and legal injustice, and religious prosecution. The salons of Paris also encouraged discussions of morality,

science, liberty, nature, virtue, equality, justice, happiness, and progress. In his Historical and Critical Dictionary, Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) even applied the new philosophical reasoning to the Bible in which he challenged many orthodox Christian beliefs. With the increasing availability of books, ideas were exchanged and shared everywhere, with Diderot attempting to collect all of human knowledge in his mammoth Encyclopedia, which ultimately weighed in at 35 volumes. Leaving the introspective writings of the earlier century, the writers of the Enlightenment openly discussed concepts of reason, justice, tolerance, liberty, and equality. Science encouraged observation, experimentation, and the empirical method. During this period of time, Deism, a form of religion based on Reason, became more prominent, especially in Britain, France, Ireland and North America. While Deists believed in the existence of God, they generally rejected any belief in supernatural miracles, the inerrancy of scriptures, or the Trinity. They claimed that God did not intervene in human affairs or suspend the natural laws of the universe. Rather, Deists viewed the universe as a huge clock, with God as the clockmaker. (Deism 1) During the 18th century, Reason was on the march. THE FRENCH SLAVE TRADE At the time of the 18th century, France had several colonies in the Caribbean which relied upon slavery to support an economy that 6

produced sugar, coffee, and cotton. Of all of the colonies, Haiti was the most important, which had 500,000 slaves, 32,000 whites, and 28,000 free blacks. Many of the free blacks also owned slaves as well as a significant amount of plantation property. (Slavery 1) There was a huge and profitable economy based on the slave trade, and France was anxious to protect it.

The Slave trade triangle The slave system was regulated by a series of royal edicts, the most important was called the Code Noir, promulgated by Louis XIV in 1685. This code prescribed a harsh regime of penalties for those slaves who resisted or reacted contrary to the will of their masters. Described as one of the most extensive official documents on race, slavery, and freedom ever drawn up in Europe, the Code Noir defined the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire, restricted the activities of free Negroes, forbade the exercise of any religion other than Roman Catholicism, and ordered all

Jews out of France's colonies. (Code Noir 1). As a general rule, it condemned the black American slave to legal and political nonexistence in which such slaves has the same status as a piece of furniture. (Sala-Molins x) In promulgating the Code Noir, Louis XIV wanted to consolidate his control of the colonies. Drafted by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the Code was intended to protect the property of the French as well as preserve the Catholic faith in the New World. At that time in the Caribbean, Jews were active in the Dutch colonies and their presence was accordingly seen as a

Dutch influence. (Code, 2)

Some of the provisions of the Code included the following: -No Jews could reside in the French colonies (art. 1) -All slaves baptized in the Roman Catholic Church (art. 2) -Catholicism was the only permitted religion (art. 3) -All slave masters must be Roman Catholic (art. 4) -All colonial subjects and slaves must observe Catholic holidays regardless of their own faith, and no one must work on Sundays and on holidays (art. 6) -No slave markets were allowed on Catholic holidays (art. 7)

-If a white man had sex with a slave who was owned by another man, such man would be fined. If a white man had sex with a slave whom he owned, then such slave (and any resulting children)would be taken from him. (art. 9) -To be married, slaves needed the consent of their masters. (art. 11) -If a married slave had children, such children were also slaves who belonged to the same master. (art. 12) -Any children between a female slave and a free man were slaves. (art. 13) -Slaves could not carry weapons without the consent of their masters. (art. 15) -No slaves could gather at any time if they belonged to different masters. (art. 16) -No slaves could sell sugar cane or any other commodity without the permission of their masters. (art. 18-21) -Any slave who struck his master or his wife, mistress, or children would be put to death. (art. 33) -If a fugitive slave was absent for a month, his ears would be cut off and he would be branded. If he were absent for two months, then his hamstrings would be cut and he would be branded again. If he were absent for three months, he would be executed. (art. 38) -Slaves were considered community property and could be used as payment in case of debt or bankruptcy, and otherwise sold (art. 44 46, 48 - 54) (Code Noir 1). Repealed in 1848, the Code Noir remained in force for more than 163 years. (Sala-Molins x) It survived and outlasted the Ancient Regime, the Enlightenment, and the Restoration, and the reign of Louis Philippe. THE INDICTMENT OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 10

In his condemnation of the French Enlightenment, Sala-Molins argues that the crucial test case for the Enlightenment is how the writers of the Enlightenment dealt with the slave trade and slavery. Regarding this test, he concludes that the philosophes and the French revolutionaries simply failed. His argument can be summarized as follows: By not calling for and taking moves to implement immediate general emancipation before 1794, the Enlightenment failed to live up to the universal pretensions of their principles of justice, reason, and equality. As such the Enlightenmentdabbles in the non-negotiable, cheapens what it adores, displays for auction on the steps of the temple that against which it anathema should be directed, upholds slavery even as it condemns itextols submissiveness and yet glorifies revolt, crushes liberty at the same time it celebrates it. (Ogle 281-82) Generally speaking, Sala-Molins contends that there were two reasons for this failure: First, the philosophes and revolutionaries sacrificed their principles for economic concerns, namely the prosperity of the plantation complex in Frances Caribbean and Indian Ocean colonies. He [makes] particular mention of Montesquieu who had invested in slavery and plantationbased trades. Second, he argues that the Enlightenments linking of universal rights to being human was itself compromised by a flawed theory of man that was, in essence, ethnocentric and even racist. For the author, to some extent the philosophes rooted their exclusion of Negro slaves from the universal rights appropriate to accomplished humanity in the violence and brutalizing relationship of slavery itself. (Ogle 283) To emphasize his point, he compares two documents, the Code Noir and the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen 11

which provided, in its first article, that Men are born and remain free and equal in right. (Sala-Molins xviii). Such a broad statement rings with the truths of the enlightened Age of Reason. But how can one render this declaration of freedom consistent with the Code Noir? Sala-Molins

contends that the authors of the Enlightenment did so by redefining certain words (not without a good bit of mental gymnastics) mentioned in Preamble of the Declaration: The representatives of the French people, constituted as a National Assemblyhave resolved to set fort in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable rights of man: so that by being constantly present to all members of the social body, this declaration may always remind them of their rights and duties. (Sala-Molins xix)(emphasis added) In the introduction to the Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment, John Conteh-Morgan summarizes the argument as follows: Now, argues Sala-Molins (1992a, chapter 2), to the extent that the Code Noirthe regulating document on slavery categorically excluded the slave from the legal status of subject of the king (the only group to be so excluded on the grounds of a supposed incomplete humanity or originary ontological lack), he could not possibly be part of the social body constituted as a National Assembly referred to in the citizenship. Citizenship presupposed subjecthood, the legal status of subject, which in turn along authorized membership of the social body. It is precisely this state of legal nonexistence that also makes Article 2on the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man [to] liberty, property, security and resistance to oppressiontheoretically inapplicable to the slave. How can he enjoy any rights to property when he is himself ontologically and legally property, as the Dark Side of the Light, pointing to Articles 12

44-54 of the Code, puts it (19921a, chapter 2), and how can he enjoy any right to resistance to oppression when all such resistance is forbidden by law and punishable by death (see Articles 33, 34, 38 of the Code)? Clearly then, its later inspirational value to slaves and other oppressed groups in the French realm and beyond notwithstanding, the universal subject, man of the Declaration, referred to just that: the Frenchman. (Sala-Molins xix) In short, under the banner of reason, Sala-Molins continues, the Enlightenment writers simply perceived slaves as less than human and outside the social body of European society. He contends that this perception of the slave can be traced to an interpretation of the Curse of Ham in the Bible. This story, it will be recalled, narrates Noahs condemnation in Genesis 9 and 10 of his son Ham (and the latters descendants, the Canaanites) into the servitude of his brothers Shem and Japheth for having seen him naked. A long tradition of biblical interpretation (coincident with the massive emergence of Africa in European Letters, SalaMolins ruefully observes [1987, 22]) misguidedly identified Ham and his progeny with blackness, the peoples of black Africa (Sala-Molins 1992a, chapter 2, n. 29; see also Sollars 1997, 79-111, on the uses and abuses of the Curse of Ham). Sala-Molins explains the theoretically link made by theologians between the curse and slavery as follows: Because the Canaanite (read the inhabitant of sub-Saharan Africa) is a descendant of Noah, he is a human being and therefore cannot be exclude from the possibility of divine grace and salvation. But because of his original course/sin, he is a lesser human; he is lesser because with the curse comes a loss of the faculties of rationality, memory, intelligence, and volition, which inhere in the condition of being fully human and are, as Condorcet as later to argue, a sine qua non for the exercise of political sovereignty, of 13

rights. However, not all is lost. Although a lesser human being, the Canaanite can through time, Christian teaching, and conversion to Catholicism (in the eighteenth century both usually provided in slavery) recover his lost faculties and thus his full humanity. The link between this religious interpretation of the curse of Ham and the politics of slavery is clear. It is precisely this doctrine, Sala-Molins argues, that the Enlightenment secularizes. (Sala-Molins xxi) Searching for an example of how the proponents of the Enlightenment simply used Reason to legitimize racism, Sala-Molins points to Montesquieu, one of the earlier writers of the Enlightenment. In his Esprit des Lois, Montesquieu argues that climate affects human behavior. Cold air constringes the extremities of the external fibres of the body; this increases their elasticity, and favours the return of the blood from the extreme parts to the heart. It contracts those very fibres; consequently it increases also their force. On the contrary, warm air relaxes and lengthens the extremes of the fibres; of course it diminishes their force and elasticity. People are therefore more vigorous in cold climates. Here the action of the heart and the reaction of the extremities of the fibres are better performed, the temperature of the humours is greater, the blood moves more freely towards the heart, and reciprocally the heart has more power. This superiority of strength must produce various effects; for instance, a greater boldness, that is, more courage; a greater sense of superiority, that is, less desire of revenge; a greater opinion of security, that is, more frankness, less suspicion, policy, and cunning. In short, this must be productive of very different tempers. Put a man into a close, warm place, and for the reasons above given he will feel a great faintness. If under this circumstance you propose a bold enterprise to him, I believe you will find him very little disposed towards it; his present weakness will throw him into despondency; he will be afraid of everything, being in a state of total incapacity. (Spirit of Laws, Book XIV) 14

Advancing this argument, Montesquieu entertains the possibility that slavery may be necessary in certain tropical parts of the world where heat enervates the body and so forcefully weakens courage that men are brought to perform painful duty only by the fear of chastisement. (Spirit of Law, V3, Chapter 15, Article 7). According to Sala-Molins, such a suggestion gave the slave owners a rationale that they needed to protect their economic interests in slaves and the slave trade. ANALYSIS AND CRITIQUE So what to make of the arguments that the Enlightenment was an exercise in hypocrisy at least in its treatment of the issue of slavery? Sala-Molins concludes that the ideals of the Enlightenment only shine as much as they do because its proponents simply closed their eyes to the world around them. He finds it damning that Montesquieu, for instance,

never once mentions the Code Noir in his multi-volume treatise on law. As explained below, Sala-Molins makes some good points, although not without some weaknesses. In evaluating his position, the first question is to ask what he wants to accomplish. Generally speaking, he spends a good bit of time challenging the credibility (or even integrity) of the Enlightenment writers by cross examining them, if you will, with examples of inconsistent statements in their written works or inconsistent conduct in their lives. For example, he mentions that Montesquieu

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invested heavily in shipping lines that were engaged in the commerce of slaves. He also cites portions of Chapter 15 of Esprit des Lois in which Montesquieu describes certain slaveries as a product of natural law. But what does such cross-examination really accomplish? Such an attack does not challenge the ideals of the Enlightenment, including those of equality and justice. Rather, it simply challenges that credibility of the speaker or author. It is the equivalent of my challenging Montesquieus ideas of balance of power by saying that he stole something as child. Such an attack simply does not advance any critical analysis of Montesquieus ideas. Sala-Molins has a good point when he contends that the Enlightenment should own up to the fact that while it did not cause slavery, it did give slave owners a theoretical justification for it. Such an argument allowed some writers to advance the idea that the French colonizing effort was simply a fashion of improving the lot of the colonized and of bringing them into the light of a great civilizing nation. Such an argument highlights, I believe, one of its basic weaknesses of the Enlightenment: the adulation of Reason. Reason has no conscience or

ethical compass and can accordingly be used to rationalize or justify whatever emotions or values to we are most committed. Accordingly, under the name or Reason, one can justify almost any crime against humanity, including endless wars, torture, cruelty, slavery, and genocide. 16

When the French or Spanish Grand Inquisitor is burning some alleged heretic at the stake because he or she refuses to disavow his Protestant faith, I am sure the Inquisitor thought he was behaving perfectly rationally. After all, such an execution was necessary to save the soul of the heretic. If the Enlightenment failed, Sala-Molins writes, it is precisely because it sacrificed the mystery of the human, as it was called in the past, to a concern with scientific transparency. (Sala-Molins xxvii) As Conteh-Morgan mentions in his introduction to The Dark Side of the Enlightenment, perhaps Sala-Molins is simply saying that by not confronting directly the issue of slavery, the Enlightenment betrayed its promise and thus remained an incomplete project. Sala-Molins clearly does not reject the French Enlightenment even if he is aware of its limitations. On the contrary, he is strongly committed to what he sees as its emancipatory values: reason, justice, universalism, and equality. His critique, in other words, is not directed at those core values per se.but rather at the Enlightenments failure to extend these values to apply to all human being at all times, in other words, to be true to itself by being truly and fully universal. (Sala-Molins xv) To interpret the Enlightenment without considering its position on slavery, he argues, is tantamount to limiting universal philanthropy to ones little neighborhood, reason to the domain of the biblico-whistism sovereignty to the boundaries of the 17

parish, and the accomplished individual to the achievements of our local landowner. (Sala-Molins 8) However, such a comment strikes me as something of a straw man. Were the authors of the Enlightenment claiming that their principles should be applied to all men, at all times, and in all civilizations? I do not think so. I believe that any of the writings have to be understood within the context of the times in which they were written. Otherwise, using this logic, one tosses out the principles contained in the American Declaration of Independence, for instance, because Jefferson and Washington owned slaves. Perhaps the best that can be said here is that whether or not the Enlightenment succeeded or not depended upon who is answering the question. The slaves? or the Enlightenment writers? Sala-Molins makes it clear that he evaluates the Enlightenment from the position of the slaves, from the side of darkness, a darkness that the Enlightenment did not create but that it did not dissipate either because it did not throw light on it. (Sala-Molins 9) It goes without saying that the Enlightenment writers may have appeared very differently in Haiti than they did in France or elsewhere in Europe. Keep in mind, also, that the

slaves in Haiti revolted against the French in 1791, which eventually lead to the independence of Haiti in 1804. At that time, it was the second independent state in the western hemisphere and the first free black republic in the world. Perhaps they took the principles of the 18

Enlightenment more to heart than some of their European contemporaries. One might also add here as well that Sala-Molins critique of the Enlightenment appears to be based on only a fairly small selection of authors and/or their works. There were certainly an abundance of 18th century Enlightenment writers (including abolitionists) who condemned slavery, including Jaucourt in the Encyclopedia and Rouill dOrfeuille in the Alambic moral (1774) (Adams 513) Rousseau also believed men to be equal, and he condemned both slavery and the social class system. Diderot and Olympe de Gouge agreed.1 (Olympe de Gouges) Voltaire likewise was acerbic in his criticism of those, who, on the pretext of their difference, claimed the right to subjugate others on the pretext of their inferiority. (Sala-Molins 49) Is important to mention here that French revolutionaries were not blind to the issue of slavery. In fact, in February of 1790, the Society of the Friends of Blacks presented a petition to the National Assembly to abolish the slave trade. They rested their case on the Declaration of the

Rights of Man and Citizen cited above.2 (Hunt 106-109) To give Sala"Why are Black people enslaved? The color of people's skin only suggests a slight difference. There is no discord between day and night, the sun and the moon and between the stars and dark sky. All is varied; it is the beauty of nature. Why destroy nature's work?" Olympe de Gouges, Reflections on Black People, 1788
1 2

The Society of the Friends of Blacks presented their petition as follows: The humanity, justice, and magnanimity that have guided you in the reform of the most profoundly rooted abuses gives hope to the Society

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Molins his due, however, the Society did not advocate that all slaves be freed, simply because there were those who feared that abolition would bring a loss of French colonial wealth and power. Notwithstanding this, however, Sala-Molins arguments lose some of their moral outrage when one acknowledges the presence of other writers critical of slavery at the
of the Friends of Blacks that you will receive with benevolence its demand in favor of that numerous portion of humankind, so cruelly oppressed for two centuries. This Society, slandered in such cowardly and unjust fashion, only derives its mission from the humanity that induced it to defend the blacks even under the past despotism. Oh! Can there be a more respectable title in the eyes of this august Assembly which has so often avenged the rights of man in its decrees? You have declared them, these rights; you have engraved on an immortal monument that all men are born and remain free and equal in rights; you have restored to the French people these rights that despotism had for so long despoiled; . . . you have broken the chains of feudalism that still degraded a good number of our fellow citizens; you have announced the destruction of all the stigmatizing distinctions that religious or political prejudices introduced into the great family of humankind. . . . We are not asking you to restore to French blacks those political rights which alone, nevertheless, attest to and maintain the dignity of man; we are not even asking for their liberty. No; slander, bought no doubt with the greed of the ship-owners, ascribes that scheme to us and spreads it everywhere; they want to stir up everyone against us, provoke the planters and their numerous creditors, who take alarm even at gradual emancipation. They want to alarm all the French, to whom they depict the prosperity of the colonies as inseparable from the slave trade and the perpetuity of slavery. No, never has such an idea entered into our minds; we have said it, printed it since the beginning of our Society, and we repeat it in order to reduce to nothing this grounds of argument, blindly adopted by all the coastal cities, the grounds on which rest almost all their addresses [to the National Assembly]. The immediate emancipation of the blacks would not only be a fatal operation for the colonies; it would even be a deadly gift for the blacks, in the state of abjection and incompetence to which cupidity has reduced them. It would be to abandon to themselves and without assistance children in the cradle or mutilated and impotent

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time. The topic of slavery may have been downplayed by some, but it was certainly not ignored. Perhaps all this meant was that the writers of the Enlightenment were simply choosing which battle to fight at which time. The slavery battle was obviously a big one.

beings. It is therefore not yet time to demand that liberty; we ask only that one cease butchering thousands of blacks regularly every year in order to take hundreds of captives; we ask that henceforth cease the prostitution, the profaning of the French name, used to authorize these thefts, these atrocious murders; we demand in a word the abolition of the slave trade. . . . In regard to the colonists, we will demonstrate to you that if they need to recruit blacks in Africa to sustain the population of the colonies at the same level, it is because they wear out the blacks with work, whippings, and starvation; that, if they treated them with kindness and as good fathers of families, these blacks would multiply and that this population, always growing, would increase cultivation and prosperity. . . . Have no doubt, the time when this commerce will be abolished, even in England, is not far off. It is condemned there in public opinion, even in the opinion of the ministers. . . . If some motive might on the contrary push them [the blacks] to insurrection, might it not be the indifference of the National Assembly about their lot? Might it not be the insistence on weighing them down with chains, when one consecrates everywhere this eternal axiom: that all men are born free and equal in rights. So then therefore there would only be fetters and gallows for the blacks while good fortune glimmers only for the whites? Have no doubt, our happy revolution must reelectrify the blacks whom vengeance and resentment have electrified for so long, and it is not with punishments that the effect of this upheaval will be repressed. From one insurrection badly pacified will twenty others be born, of which one alone can ruin the colonists forever. It is worthy of the first free Assembly of France to consecrate the principle of philanthropy which makes of humankind only one single family, to declare that it is horrified by this annual carnage which takes place on the coasts of Africa, that it has the intention of abolishing it one day, of mitigating the slavery that is the result, of looking for and preparing, from this moment, the means. The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Lynn Hunt

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Sala-Molins criticism of Montesquieu is also a little slanted. In The Esprit des Lois, Montesquieu makes it quite clear that he believed that slavery was not only unjust, but contrary to, the interests of masters and slaves alike. In his discussion of slavery, he summarizes some of

the reasons that others give to justify the practice. These creatures are all over black, and with such a flat nose that they can scarcely be pitied. It is hardly to be believed that God, who is a wise Being, should place a soul, especially a good soul, in such a black ugly body. The Negroes prefer a glass necklace to that gold which polite nations so highly value. Can there be a greater proof of their wanting common sense? It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men, because, allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians. Esprit de lois, Section 15, article 6 In so writing this, Montesquieu is clearly mocking those persons who support slavery, contrary to what Sala-Molins might suggest. Quoting Montesquieu in full on the subject is instructive. In Book 15, Articles 6 and 7 of Les Esprit des lois, he makes the following remarks about slavery: 1. Of civil Slavery. Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune. The state of slavery is in its own nature bad. It is
(Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1996), 106109.

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neither useful to the master nor to the slave; not to the slave, because he can do nothing through a motive of virtue; nor to the master, because by having an unlimited authority over his slaves he insensibly accustoms himself to the want of all moral virtues, and thence becomes fierce, hasty, severe, choleric, voluptuous, and cruel. In despotic countries, where they are already in a state of political servitude, civil slavery is more tolerable than in other governments. Every one ought to be satisfied in those countries with necessaries and life. Hence the condition of a slave is hardly more burdensome than that of a subject. But in a monarchical government, where it is of the utmost importance that human nature should not be debased or dispirited, there ought to be no slavery. In democracies, where they are all upon equality; and in aristocracies, where the laws ought to use their utmost endeavors to procure as great an equality as the nature of the government will permit, slavery is contrary to the spirit of the constitution: it only contributes to give a power and luxury to the citizens which they ought not to have. *** 7. Another Origin of the Right of Slavery. There is another origin of the right of slavery, and even of the most cruel slavery which is to be seen among men. There are countries where the excess of heat enervates the body, and renders men so slothful and dispirited that nothing but the fear of chastisement can oblige them to perform any laborious duty: slavery is there more reconcilable to reason; and the master being as lazy with respect to his sovereign as his slave is with regard to him, this adds a political to a civil slavery. Aristotle endeavors to prove that there are natural slaves; but what he says is far from proving it. If there be any such, I believe they are those of whom I have been speaking. But as all men are born equal, slavery must be accounted unnatural, though in some countries it be founded on natural reason; and a wide difference ought to be made between such 23

countries, and those in which even natural reason rejects it, as in Europe, where it has been so happily abolished. Plutarch, in the Life of Numa, says that in Saturn's time there was neither slave nor master. Christianity has restored that age in our climates. 8. Inutility of Slavery among us. Natural slavery, then, is to be limited to some particular parts of the world. In all other countries, even the most servile drudgeries may be performed by freemen. Experience verifies my assertion. Before Christianity had abolished civil slavery in Europe, working in the mines was judged too toilsome for any but slaves or malefactors: at present there are men employed in them who are known to live comfortably. The magistrates have, by some small privileges, encouraged this profession: to an increase of labor they have joined an increase of gain; and have gone so far as to make those people better pleased with their condition than with any other which they could have embraced. I know not whether this article be dictated by my understanding or by my heart. Possibly there is not that climate upon earth where the most laborious services might not with proper encouragement be performed by freemen. Bad laws having made lazy men, they have been reduced to slavery because of their laziness. (Spirit of Laws, Book XV, articles 7 and 8)(Emphasis added) Montesquieu is obviously uncomfortable with the subject of slavery. In Book XV, he explores the proposition that perhaps all work can be accomplished by free labor, no matter what the climate. He also makes this argument with some feeling. Je ne sais si cest lesprit o le cur qui me dicte ce article-ci. Il n ya peut-tre pas de climat sur la terre ou lon ne put engager au travail des homes libres. In fact, he

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seems to be following his heart more than his reason, agreeing perhaps with Pascal that the heart has its reasons that reason does not know. (Monticone 23) In light of the above, however, it is clear that Sala-

Molins critique of Montesquieu is neither accurate nor fair. It bears mentioning that Sala-Molins wrote The Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment during the 1989 Bicentennial of the French Revolution. With this thought in mind,

perhaps one should best interpret his work not so much as a critique of the Enlightenment, but as a critique of the overly self-congratulatory, simplistic, and frequently misleading celebrations of the liberatory essence of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. (Ogle 218) As such, Sala-Molins warns us that history is never quite as simple as it might appear using 20/20 hindsight. Ultimately, Sala-Molins critique

may have less to do with the Enlightenment than with debates surrounding French public history. Within the last twenty years, the

French have come to terms with the certain dark portions of their history, not only with the slave trade, but more recently with their role in the Holocaust as well as the state sponsored atrocities in the Algerian war. Perhaps as a result of the efforts of Sala-Molins, the French National Assembly in May of 2001, after two years of debate, passed the following resolution:

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The French Republic acknowledges that the Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trade on the one hand, and slavery on the other, perpetrated from the fifteenth century in the Americas, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and in Europe, against African, Amerindian, Malagasy and Indian peoples constitute a crime against humanity. (Loi Taubira-Delannon No. 2001434, in Le Journal Officiel, May 21, 2001, 8175). In the final account, perhaps Sala-Molins simply cautions us to interpret the Enlightenment without vanity or arrogance. In this regard, he is like Montaigne who was always quick to remind us that we must never confuse the pedestal with the statute. Si [aussi] avons nous beau [pouvons-nous bien] monter sur des chasses, car sur des chasses encore faut-il marcher de nos jambes. Et au plus lve trne du monde, si [encore] ne sommes-nous assis que sur notre cul. (Montaigne, ed. Vasserire 290) I also believe that Sala-Molins is correct to encourage

us to examine the universalism of the Enlightenment with a critical eye. The human situation (and society) are complicated, and sometimes universal principles cause as much as harm as they do good. Under such circumstances, sunshine and shadows often go together, and it bears repeating----as Sala-Molins reminds us----that we should not let the Enlightenments adulation of Reason and progress blind us to the less than praiseworthy practical deeds rationalized in its name.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, D. "Louis Sala-Molins, Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment." MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW 102 (2007): 512-513 "Code Noir." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 27 Aug. 2011. Web. 14 Oct. 2011 at p 1-3. Crocker, Lester G. Diderot, the Embattled Philosopher. New York: Free Press, 1966 (1-389) "Deism." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 14 Oct. 2011. Web. 15 Oct. 2011 at 1-2. Gouges, Olympe de, Sylvie Chalaye, and Jacqueline Razgonnikoff. L'esclavage Des Ngres, Ou, L'heureux Naufrage. Paris: Harmattan, 2006. Hunt, Lynn. The French Revolution and Human Rights : A Brief Documentary History. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1996. 106-109. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (17121778). SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2005. Web. 23 Sept. 2011 at page 3. Montaigne, ed. Vasserire, Jacques, Des notes explicatives, des outils de lecture, avec un notice biographique, Essais. By Montaigne, M. Paris, France, Ed. Les Petits Classiques, Larousse 2008, pp. 24-30, 55-59, 102123, 135-175, 226-290 Montesquieu, Baron, The Spirit of Laws (1751) http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/montesquieu/index.html (Books 1-31) October 15, 2011 Monticone, Diane Kollar, Montesquieu and His Reader : A Study of the Esprit Des Lois / Diane Kollar Monticone. Lanham, MD :: University Press of America, 1989 (1-137). Ogle, Gene Edwin. "Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment (Review)." Caribbean Studies 37.1 (2009): 281-84.

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Palmer, R. R. The Age of the Democratic Revolution : A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959-64. Rahe, Paul Anthony. Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty : War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic / Paul A. Rahe. New Haven, Conn.; London : Yale University Press, 2009. Sala-Molins, Louis. Le Code Noir, Ou, Le Calvaire De Canaan. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003. 221-237 Sala-Molins, Louis, Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment. Translated by John Conteh-Morgan. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1-165 (2006) Slavery and the Haitian Revolution, http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/chap8a.html at page 1 (October 10, 2011)

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