Inscribing Equality: Caribbean Voices in the Age of Revolution

The onset of the French, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions fostered spaces for Afro-Atlantic expression that publicly opposed European assertions of inferiority and inhumanity aimed at people with African heritage. Using examples from a 1795 speech by Jean-Baptist Belley, an African-born former slave elected as the Saint Domingue representative the French National Assembly; a petition by free blacks in Jamaica to the colonial Assembly in 1816; and a manifesto by militia officers of African descent in Cuba to slanderous newspaper allegations in 1823, this paper compares how such commentaries challenging prevailing hierarchies resonated across the British, French, and Spanish Caribbean empires. The rhetoric that emerged in the age of revolution denounced the deprivations of European enslavers, disputed the inaccuracies of colonial detractors, and contested racist legislation. Moreover, their counter-discourses illuminated instances of individual and group lived experiences of enslavement and circumscribed freedom as they crafted language that envisioned a more equitable reality.