Bernard GAINOT
Bernard Gainot is honorary Associate Professor HDR in early modern history at l’université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. A specialist on the colonial wars of the eighteenth century, the circulation of republican doctrines and practices in the European and Atlantic space during the revolutionary period, and the transformations of military institutions during the early modern period, he has notably published La révolution des esclaves. Haïti, 1763-1803 (Paris, Vendémiaire, 2017).
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“The Revolt of Blacks in Saint-Domingue, August 22, 1791,” color engraving. Source : Musée Carnavalet
This engraving is one of the rare contemporary representations of the event. It includes the usual scenes from a slave revolt, namely fires and massacres. The foreground shows whites dressed in blue—and generally disarmed (we deduce they are the masters)—and blacks on the offensive dressed in red. One of them is holding a rifle and wearing a Phrygian cap, the headdress of revolting slaves. This detail connects the revolt with the striking episodes of the French Revolution, thereby transposing for a metropolitan public an interpretive key for tropical revolutions.
This engraving is one of the rare contemporary representations of the event. It includes the usual scenes from a slave revolt, namely fires and massacres. The foreground shows whites dressed in blue—and generally disarmed (we deduce they are the masters)—and blacks on the offensive dressed in red. One of them is holding a rifle and wearing a Phrygian cap, the headdress of revolting slaves. This detail connects the revolt with the striking episodes of the French Revolution, thereby transposing for a metropolitan public an interpretive key for tropical revolutions.