Extreme executions and violence on fugitive slaves, duels and homicides between rarely condemned settlers, banishment of individuals who disturb the colonial order, experimentation of the convicts … A century of judicial practices is examined with meticulousness in the specific framework of the French colonial empire.
An ambitious project
Marie Houllemare, professor of modern history at the University of Geneva, specialist in state and violence, publishes impressive work on colonial justice. This work fits into a double historiographical perspective: the history of justice and research on colonial empires. If the author largely borrows from the rich history of justice in the kingdom of France, from Michel Foucault to Benoît Garnot, his writings above all make it possible to fill the gaps of his colonial counterpart. In particular, by choosing an extended geographical framework, the book contributes to the research effort favoring a comparative approach to colonial societies on an imperial scale, like the collective publications of François-Joseph Ruggiu and Cécile Vidal, even more recently those on the worlds of slavery or gardens.
Study the actors and means of the colonial empire’s judicial system in XVIIIe century is not an easy task. It is necessary to compose with geographic immensity: from North America-New France (Canada) and Louisiana, to the Indian Ocean-Pondicherry and the Mascareignes (Mauritius and Reunion Island), passing through the Caribbean-Saint-Domingue (Haiti), Martinique and Guadeloupe, for the main islands. Then, overcome the diversity of justice actors and regulations within this set. Justice which employs a quantity of agents, but also which implies a number of justicated or victims among the colonial populations. From the elites of planters to free or servile black men and women, each develops a specific relationship to the judicial system. It is also necessary to triumph over the quantity and dispersion of sources, then succeed in articulating the hundreds of cases collected through the Empire in order to achieve this historical sum.
Properly colonial justice
The chapters, after a general presentation of the judicial system and of the main actors, the magistrates and their places of exercise, chore, pain after pain – capital executions, prison, ironing, bags, banishments, treatment of madness -, the specificities of colonial justice. One of the objectives is to demonstrate how coloniality, in particular in slave societies, forges justice of empire.
The historian defends the thesis of a racialization of colonial justice, in particular of criminal justice. If it is expressed differently depending on the spaces, the strict distinction of treatment appears throughout the Empire between the colonists and the other populations, specifically those in a situation of slavery. The violence exerted on slaves within the framework of the house does not stop at the limit of the land of the colonists. Mr. Houllemare shows how the judicial system is the “ Relais in the coercion of masters on their slaves (P. 101). The slaves who flee their masters, but also those suspected of poisoning, theft, are subject to an arsenal of extreme punishment, going as far as the death penalty. The executioner’s position is specific in the colonial empire, this post is even exclusively reserved for the execution of slaves on Bourbon Island (p. 127). In all the colonies, other representatives of authority, such as militiamen, are also empowered to kill them during hunts against browning. Thus, justice is at the service of the colonial order.
This demonstration highlights the difference in treatment of colonial populations in the face of justice, attesting in this way of the double objective of racializing justice which protects the colonist and criminalizes the slave. To the former are preferred to avoiding sentences, even for homicide, in favor of banishment, even simple administrative references – without confiscation or infamy and therefore without questioning their social and economic rank. In the latter, the servile population, is intended for a device aimed at instilling fear and controlling the mass of slaves: death penalty, whip, chain, prison. A distinction which is part of the prisons – separated between whites and slaves – or in the possibilities of appeal, prohibited to the latter in 1787 (p. 91). Between the two there is an uncertain, but reduced status, that of the free of color. This work contributes to completing dynamic historiography on the status of colored free, black men and women from emancipation or free, in slave societies. This racialization does not stop at the slave colonies. Justice to Pondicherry separates the Europeans from the Indians (p. 113). Its exercise promotes colonial work by protecting trade, or even by establishing a slavery of criminals deported to mascareignes (p. 114).
These works also portray certain marginal populations, often not very visible, such as vagabonds. If they benefit from a more abundant historiography on the metropolis, Mr. Houllemare demonstrates that their condition has a particular interest in colonial situations. Indeed, the question of unproductivity appears to be essential, with the fear that these white men without activity be bad examples for slaves in the countryside. The historian also explores the agency of the populations undergreed, however difficult to detect in official sources. This concept from British historiography offers a reflection on the capacities of slaves to express action, a power in the restrictive framework of the colonial system. The author wonders if slaves have legal capacities. Some cases, in particular at the end of the old regime, reveal the conditions granting rare slaves the possibility of triggering legal proceedings, especially in the cases of extreme violence.
Connect territories and their judicial practices
Marie Houllemare succeeds in connecting concrete examples – the Book is swarming in judgment in the courts of the whole Empire – while articulating them with the general concepts and historiographies of colonial and French justice. This game of ladders makes it possible to reconstruct the diversity of colonial situations and jurisdictions in a set in formation. A difficult issue when we know that the sources of first instance are not preserved for the Caribbean, unlike New France. The sources, numerous, dispersed and unequal according to the territories, drawn from the judicial and administrative field, in particular the funds of higher councils or the laws and regulations of each colony, authorize only to present trends, and not statistical facts on the imperial scale. However, the historian is based on a precise analysis of a very rich corpus of criminal cases which tries to cover a large part of the colonies. Thus, a series of 165 banishments (p. 241) from the whole Empire (above all from Canada, India and Louisiana) allows the author to draw up a typology of forms of eviction (p. 242), to categorize the proscribed (p. 252) as well as to establish the scales of the exclusions, from the local community to the Empire (p. 271). The brutal acts of one of the richest inhabitants of Santo Domingo at the start of the Revolution, nicknamed Caraudeux Le Cruel, are widely reported in Haitian historiography. They serve Marie Houllemare de Rouge to reconstruct the institutionalization of madness in the colonial context at the end of XVIIIe century. The historian is not limited to this famous affair. She puts it in perspective with forty cases of madness that have come to the knowledge of the Marine Secretariat (p. 294). We can note that a large part of the criminal files studied is concentrated in the second part, or even the end of XVIIIe century. An evolution which is to be linked to the dynamics of the control of the population within the Empire which is expressed in particular by the production of central archive deposits (p. 399).
This book opens exciting fields of research on colonial justice. In addition to the themes already explored by colonial historiography, such as the irons, new ones are inaugurated. The construction of the prisons which are added in the judicial arsenal reveals the growing monarchical grip in the Empire. Similarly, the emphasis is on mobility, especially through the rather little studied example of forms of exclusion. The banishments are frequent and intended only for settlers revealing the “ fragility of the colonial political order (P. 270). Justice reserves violence to slaves while it prefers to exclude whites, wanting to prevent them from disturbing the functioning and hierarchies of representations within colonial society. The interest of the author is not limited to the classic actors of justice. The expected presentation of the training of magistrates is accompanied by the detailed description of several profiles of these large residents members of the higher councils. An index of the names would have been a very useful addition for researchers and curious who want to follow the trajectories of these men. But the work does not stop at the latter and other less known actors – jalpers, prison jets, archers of marshals, executioners – appear over the pages. So many intermediaries whose actions in the judicial chain are revealed, offering new lines of research still to deepen.
In an unprecedented way, this work highlights the contributions of the colonies to the French judicial system. In these experimentation lands, practices are born, like the prison (p. 204). Mr. Houllemare also establishes how the Empire constitutes, through justice, a connected space. The demonstration of a “ punitive solidarity Between the colonies, in particular to manage recurrences and banishments, responds to this logic (p. 277). The territories of the Empire, by the channels of justice, appear as worlds which communicate, and not only in the sense of the metropolis which imposes its authority on the colonies. Complex interactions that lead the historian to conclude that the exercise of justice “ empire (P. 289).
Avoiding drawing up a gallery of examples or conversely an above -ground study, the author finds a balance between the individual and the general. The theses are always based on a concise and clear reminder of the origin of manipulated concepts. The history of madness, of “ fury “And their legal treatment (p. 305) or that of” bad subjects (P. 253) are thus traced. This approach also exceeds the context of the colonies and can interest a large audience, curious about legal practices in modern times. If the thematic entry of the work sometimes limits a reading of general developments within the century, the work makes it possible to think about the mechanisms of the affirmation of royal power in XVIIIe century, subject transcending the only colonial framework.
