a tale two bothers revolutions haiti# vmongey

7/17/2019 A Tale Two Bothers Revolutions Haiti# VMongey

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/a-tale-two-bothers-revolutions-haiti-vmongey 1/25

A Tale of Two Brothers: Haiti’s Other Revolutions

Vanessa Mongey

The Americas, Volume 69, Number 1, July 2012, pp. 37-60 (Article)

Published by The Academy of American Franciscan History

DOI: 10.1353/tam.2012.0062

For additional information about this article

Access provided by Illinois @ Chicago, Univ Of (3 Jun 2013 11:20 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tam/summary/v069/69.1.mongey.html





A T ALE OF T WO BROTHERS:Haiti’s Other Revolutions

Sévère Courtois’s modest ambition was to revolutionize the world. “It isman’s holy cause and duty to protect and aid the defense and to establish

Independence in all the Universe,” he instructed his brother Joseph inOctober 1821.1 At the time, the Courtois brothers were a mere hundred milesapart; Sévère had set up an independent government on Providencia Island, inthe western Caribbean, and Joseph was embarking on a political career of hisown in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Though the two brothers were born in theFrench colony of St. Domingue, the tumults of the Age of Revolutions hadswept them away from their native island. At the time Sévère penned the letterurging his brother to support his universal liberation enterprise, Joseph had justcome back from fighting in the Napoleonic wars in Europe. Sévère had partic-ipated in multiple revolutionary coups and moved from New Orleans to Carta-

gena, and from there to Texas and then Florida.

This article not only portrays the lives of two outstanding men of the time butalso adopts a transatlantic and trans-Caribbean approach to investigate the dif-ferent strategies developed by elite men of color after the Haitian revolution tosecure their status in the Atlantic World. Considered as “the first truly moderninternational crisis of exiles,” the uprisings in St. Domingue sent some 15,000to 20,000 refugees to the shores of Cuba, Louisiana, Guatemala, Florida, andFrance between 1789 and 1809. 2 Much remains to be known about the St.

T H E A M E R I C A S 6 9 : 1 / J u l y 2 0 1 2 / 3 7 – 6 0

COPYRIGHT BY THE ACADEMY OF

AMERICAN FRANCISCAN HISTORY

37

I would like to thank Kathleen Brown, Daniel Richter, and Katie Paugh, the members and participants in theMcNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culturescolloquium, and the Association for Caribbean Historians, as well as the reviewers and editors of The Ameri- cas for their comments, criticism, and advice on this piece.

1. Sévère Courtois to Joseph Courtois, October 15, 1821, Secretaria de Guerra y Marina [hereafterSGM], tom. 343, f. 1032, Archivo General de la Nación, Colombia [hereafter AGNC].

2. Expression is found in R. Darrell Meadows, “Engineering Exile: Social Networks and the French Atlantic Community, 1789–1809,” French Historical Studies 23:1 (2000), p. 647. Most of the scholarship hasfocused on the St. Dominguan diaspora in the United States. See Paul Lachance, “Politics of Fear: FrenchLaws and Slave Trade, 1786–1809,” Plantation Society 1 (1979), pp. 162–197; Alfred N. Hunt, Haiti’s Influ- ence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988); Ashli White, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic (Baltimore:



Dominguan diaspora in France and in the circum-Caribbean states, especially

about the transatlantic networks that wove the exiles of African descent, the gens de couleur , together across the Atlantic. Exploring the careers of Josephand Sévère Courtois provides a window into St. Domingue’s mixed-race elitediaspora and how its members transitioned to the postrevolutionary era andresponded to ideologies of natural rights and self-determination.

The careers of the Courtois brothers illustrate the multiple avenues by whichideas of racial and national affiliations crisscrossed the Atlantic. These two menembodied the contradictions of privilege and marginality defined by their iden-tities as military officers, as French, as Haitian, as Colombian, as republicans, as

politicians, and as persons of mixed ancestry. They reconfigured their affiliationsmultiple times, adapting to constantly changing circumstances. In that sense,the brothers resembled other “Black Atlantic Creoles” whose lives have beenrecently brought to light.3 But the Courtois brothers differed from these

Atlantic creoles in at least two important aspects: they were politically activesupporters of various imperial and national projects, and they also had greaterambitions. The Courtois brothers were wealthy freeborn men who lost some of their privileges during the Haitian Revolution but were able to regain anddefend their status at the price of tireless effort. As members of the diaspora’s

freeborn elite, they fought to increase their wealth and power and to secure aplace for people of mixed ancestry like themselves. Emancipation was not ontheir political and social agenda. Sévère worked to overthrow the Spanish crownin different locales around the Caribbean basin and establish a government in

which he would be in power. Joseph, on the other hand, worked to reform theexisting governments of France and Haiti from the inside.

The biographies of these two brothers provide a new angle for looking at theFrench, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions. In postrevolutionary Franceand Haiti, Joseph continued to fight for recognition, identity, and citizenship.

38 A T ALE OF T WO BROTHERS

Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); David Geggus, “The Slave Leaders in Exile: Spain’s Resettlement of Its Black Auxiliary Troops,” Haitian Revolutionary Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002),pp. 179–203; and Carl A. Brasseaux and Glenn R. Conrad, eds., The Road to Louisiana: the Saint-Domingue Refugees, 1792–1809 (Lafayette: University of Southwestern Louisiana/Center for Louisiana Studies, 1992).Three essays by Susan Branson and Leslie Patrick, Paul Lachance, and David Geggus appear in The Impact of the Haitian Revolution on the Atlantic World , David Geggus, ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina,2001).

3. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: BeaconPress, 1995); Jane Landers, Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Har-

vard University Press, 2010); and Rebecca J. Scott and Jean M. Hébrard, “Rosalie of the Poulard Nation:Freedom, Law, and Dignity in the Era of the Haitian Revolution,” in Assumed Identities: The Meaning of Race in the Atlantic World , John D. Garrigus and Christopher Morris, eds. (College Station: Texas A&M Univer-sity Press, 2010), pp. 19–45.



Sévère’s military and political activities in various circum-Caribbean regions

highlight the complex role played by Haitians in the Spanish American inde-pendence movements. Several revolutionary expeditions (most famously, that of Simon Bolívar in 1815) passed through Haiti to recruit personnel, sell theirprizes, or purchase provisions. In addition to providing material aid, many Haitians participated as soldiers, sailors, and officers. With the notable excep-tion of Paul Verna in the 1970s, historians have often recognized the Haitianparticipation in these anticolonial struggles, but rarely studied it.4 Their partic-ipation in Mexico’s independence movement is often ignored altogether.

The careers of the Courtois brothers therefore suggest new ways to think about

the place of Haitians in Atlantic history. If the Haitian revolution has been a hottopic in recent scholarship, the quasi-majority of these studies end with amoment of triumph—that is, the declaration of independence in 1804 and the

victory of the slaves who revolted against the French empire.5 In the early nine-teenth century, Haiti may have been considered an isolated state, incapable of having its independence recognized by France until 1825 or by the United Statesuntil 1862, but this isolation was artificial.6 During its early years as a nation,Haiti remained connected to France and to other American states, including theUnited States, Colombia, and Mexico, and the country was an important point

of transit for smuggling, migration, and revolutionary activities.

V ANESSA MONGEY 39

4. Paul Verna, Pétion y Bolívar: una etapa decisiva en la emancipación de Hispanoamérica (1790–1830)(Caracas: Oficina Central de Información, 1969) and Tres franceses en la independencia de Venezuela (Caracas:Monte Ávila, 1973). More recent works have focused largely on the relationship between the two leaders:Leslie Manigat, “Haïti dans les luttes d’indépendance du Vénézuela (Pétion et Bolívar, naissance du panaméri-canisme)”; and Juan Pablo Ramírez, “Bolívar et Saint-Domingue: le sens de l’appel au Libertador,” both inBolívar et les peuples de Nuestra América: des sans-culottes noirs au libertador , Alain Yacou, ed. (Bordeaux:Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 1990), pp. 29–42 and 121–130, respectively.

5. See C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, 2nded. (New York: Vintage Books, 1963). The literature on the Haitian Revolution has grown exponentially inthe last two decades; see John Garrigus, Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue

(London: Palgrave, 2006); Caroline Finck, The Making of Haiti: The Saint-Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990); David Geggus, ed., The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002); and Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004).

6. France informally recognized Haiti in 1825, but the new nation would have to wait until 1838 forthe definitive and unconditional recognition of its independence. The United States followed suit in 1862. Alyssa Sepinwall, “Les Etats-Unis et Haïti: étude historiographique,” in 1802, rétablissement de l’esclavage dans les colonies françaises. Aux origines d’Haïti , Yves Bénot and Marcel Dorigny, eds. (Paris: Maisonneuve etLarose, 2003), pp. 387–401; Charles H. Wesley, “The Struggle for the Recognition of Haiti and Liberia asIndependent Republics,” Journal of Negro History 2 (1917), pp. 369–383; and Donald R. Hickey, “America’sResponse to the Slave Revolt in Haiti, 1791–1806,” Journal of the Early Republi c 2:4 (Winter 1982), pp.361–379. On French-Haitian relations, see Jean-François Brière, Haïti et la France, 1804–1848: le rêve brisé (Paris: Karthala, 2008); and Robert Stein, “From Saint-Domingue to Haïti,” Journal of Caribbean Histor y 19(November 1984), pp. 189–226.



Since Joseph and Sévère Courtois belonged to this military diaspora, their biog-

raphies illustrate how masculinity, patriotism, and citizenship became intrinsi-cally tied to the process of state-formation. In the Age of Revolutions, military service became crucial for the construction of republican citizenship.7 Althoughthey adopted different strategies, both brothers’ military careers became tied totheir political aspirations: while Joseph capitalized on his service in France tobuild his reputation as a politician in Haiti, Sévère relied on sundry networks of Latin American revolutionaries and European expatriates in the Gulf of Mexico,particularly on French mercenaries. The tale of the Courtois brothers demon-strates how men of color gambled on the opportunities created by the tumultsof the revolutionary Atlantic.

A M AN OF TWO COUNTRIES: JOSEPH COURTOIS

Joseph Courtois was born in 1785, in the town of Ouanaminthe (also knownas Ciudad Méndez) in northeastern St. Domingue, just across from the borderof the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo. He was born into a family whoseprominence and political connections crossed the Atlantic. The family ownedlands in St. Domingue, and his grandfather had received the royal and military order of Saint Louis in Paris.8 The prominence of the Courtois family mightexplain why Joseph, not yet 15 years old, was selected as one of a group to study in Paris with the financial support of the French government. Before Joseph wasshipped eastward in 1799, Toussaint L’Ouverture, then governor of the colony,organized a small reception during which he instructed the departing youththat “France was their patrie , that St. Domingue had brought them into the

world, and it was to St. Domingue that they should return to transmit theknowledge that the motherland would give them.”9 Mere teenagers, Josephand his companions, nicknamed the “élèves de la patrie ,” carried on their shoul-ders the hopes, dreams, and ambitions of the French republican empire.

At the time of Joseph’s Atlantic crossing in 1799, the uprisings in the FrenchCaribbean had dramatically strained the relationships between the metropolisand its colonies. The Institution nationale des colonies, the boarding school in


7. The study of the importance of military service for the construction of citizenship and male politicalparticipation, for whites and blacks alike, remains underdeveloped for the postrevolutionary periods. Excep-tions are Mimi Sheller, “Sword-Bearing Citizens: Militarism and Manhood in Nineteenth-Century Haiti,”Plantation Society in the America s 4 (1997), pp. 233–278; and Jennifer Heuer, The Family and the Nation: Gender and Citizenship in Revolutionary France, 1789 –1830 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005).

8. Information regarding Joseph is drawn from his file in the Service historique de la defense, Archivesde l’armée de terre [hereafter SHD], “Joseph Courtois, sous-lieutenant,” series 2YE, file 943, and from the Archives nationales, F2C13. See also Dantès Bellegarde, Histoire du peuple haïtien (Port-au-Prince: Collectiondu Tricinquantenaire de l’Independance d’Haïti, 1953), pp. 155–156.

9. Thomas Madiou, Histoire d’Haïti (Port-au-Prince: Courtois, 1847), vol. 3, p. 331.



Paris where young Joseph received his education, was the brainchild of pro-

gressive-minded men like Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, Julien Raimond, and Tou-ssaint L’Ouverture. Designed as a symbol of republican integration, the school was, as French scholar Bernard Gainot characterized it, “a search for a shareddestiny” between colonial and metropolitan elites.10 A few handpicked children,often from prominent local families, were educated at the state’s expense.Joseph Courtois rubbed shoulders with the sons of wealthy black planters andarmy officers, including the progeny of Toussaint L’Ouverture, André Rigaud,and Henri Christophe. During his three-year stay, the “mulâtre” Joseph wasreported to be a “very quiet” pupil, ambitious, studious, and excelling inancient languages and mathematics.11

Once the symbols of a republican integration, these “élèves de la patrie” becameswept up in yet another national and imperial project following Napoléon Bona-parte’s coup d’état in 1799. Napoléon put an end to the advances men of colorhad gained during the First Republic—notably full political and civil rights.12 In1802, Bonaparte sent an expedition under Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc toSt. Domingue to reestablish absolute colonial rule. The same year, he orderedthe demilitarization and deportation of nearly 1,000 soldiers and officers of color from the republican armies in the West Indies.13 Six hundred blacks andmulattoes from the colonies were placed under the leadership of white officersin the newly minted Bataillon des Pionniers Noirs. The French Revolution hadheightened the political significance of militia service in the French empire, andthe place of men of color in the military was thus tied to the broader questionof their place in the French polity.

Napoléon’s desire to control the place of free men of color was not limited tothe public, military, and political spheres but also extended into the private realm.In 1802, he reissued a ban on nonwhite immigration to metropolitan France andresurrected another on interracial marriages.14 For 16 years, Napoleonic policies

V ANESSA MONGEY 41

10. Bernard Gainot, Les officiers de couleur dans les armées de la République et de l’Empire (1792–1815)(Paris: Karthala, 2007), p. 155.

11. Michel Roussier, “L’éducation des enfants de Toussaint Louverture et l’Institution nationale descolonies,” in Toussaint Louverture et l’indépendance d’Haïti , Jacques Causa, ed. (Paris: Karthala, 2004), p. 235.

12. Sue Peabody, There Are No Slaves in France: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancient Regime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Florence Gaultier, L’aristocratie de l’épiderme. Le combat de la Société des Citoyens de Couleur, 1789–1791 (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 2007). Onthe limits of the assimiliationist project of the revolutionary period, see Miranda Spieler, “The Legal Structureof Colonial Rule During the French Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. series, 66:2 (April2009), pp. 365–408.

13. According to Leo Elisabeth, 1,071 were deported from Guadeloupe and St. Domingue: “Déportésdes petites Antilles françaises: 1801–1803,” in Bénot and Dorigny, 1802: rétablissement , pp. 6–94.

14. “Arrêté portant défense aux Noirs, mulâtres et autres gens de couleur d’entrer sans autorisation sur leterritoire continental de la République,” July 1802, reprinted in Bénot and Dorigny, 1802: rétablissement , p. 564.



curtailed the rights free men of color had gained during the Revolution. Unsur-

prisingly, in 1802, the Institution nationale des colonies became another casualty of Napoléon’s program. The words of the Minister of the Navy and Colonies when he came to close the school were clear: “The government no longer wantsto provide for [your] education: it has already done too much for creatures like[you].”15

From one of the rising stars of the French patrie, Joseph was turned into one of these “creatures.” The élèves —eight blacks and seven mulattoes (includingJoseph)—were scattered among different regiments. However, the Napoleonic

wars in Europe provided Joseph with an opportunity to follow his grandfather’s

footsteps. Despite the restrictions placed on men of color, Joseph joined theimperial guard, an elite fighting force directly under Napoléon. He rosethrough the ranks and became sous-lieutenant of infantry in Napoléon’s Grand

Army, serving during the Prussian campaign and the Spanish peninsular war.16

He was captured and held prisoner in England until 1814, when a peace treaty was signed. The Bourbon regime then refused to let Joseph join the Frencharmy, or collect the Legion of Honor he had been promised. This left Joseph,age 30, isolated and unemployed and set the stage for a dramatic realignmentof his national loyalties.

He was not alone. The upheavals in St. Domingue scattered more than 30,000exiles after 1793. Shortly after his release from the British jail, Joseph marriedanother native of St. Domingue, Juliette Bussière-Laforest, who had beenbrought from the colony at the age of three in 1795, when her father, a freeman of color and a wealthy planter, was elected a deputy to the Council of theFive Hundred, the lower house of the legislature in Paris.17 Juliette later workedas a reader (“lectrice ”) for Napoléon’s sister, Pauline.18 The marriage of Josephand Juliette joined the grandson of a recipient of the military Order of St. Louisand the daughter of a landowning planter and political representative, both

uprooted members of St. Domingue’s wealthy landowning class.19

The conduct of the Courtois household hints at the persistence of an elite com-munity among the St. Dominguan diaspora. Joseph and Juliette considered


15. These words were reported by one of the pensionnaires, Blaise Lechat, to Placide and Isaac L’Ou- verture, July 10, 1814, and reproduced by G. Le Gorgeu, Étude sur Jean-Baptiste Coisnon (Vire: A. Guérin,1881), p. 67.

16. “Certificate of captain commandant Moreau,” n.d., SHD.17. Laforest, citoyen de couleur, député de Saint-Domingue, à son collègue Gouly, député de l’Isle de France

(Paris: De l’imprimerie de l’Union, an IIIe de la République [1795]).18. Dantès Bellegarde, Ecrivains haïtiens (Port-au-Prince: Société d’éditions et de librairie, 1947), p. 53.19. Stewart King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig: Free People of Color in Pre-Revolutionary Saint Domingue

(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001).



Paris their home and never left the city except for Joseph’s European campaigns.

Since Juliette’s father had passed away in Paris, neither she nor her husbandhad close family in France, except for an aunt. There is evidence however thatthe couple reconstituted ties with other members of the St. Dominguan dias-pora. Lacking a birth certificate, Joseph obtained the certified testimony of twoother St. Domingue exiles of color: Joseph-Michel Colom, a worker in the lot-tery office, and Thomas Michel Poitevien, an apprenticed jeweler.20

The formation of these social networks demonstrates a fragile yet persistentsense of identity and solidarity among St. Domingue exiles of color in Paris.

Although they had left the former French colony at a young age and probably

had very little memory of it, St. Dominguans in Paris recreated a small but rel-atively close-knit and homogenous community along color and socioeconomiclines. They formed a minor segment among the people of African descent inmetropolitan France, whose numbers during the first half of the nineteenth cen-tury probably never exceeded 2,000.21

The ambiguous legacy of the French Revolution for free men of color can befound in the letters and petitions Joseph sent to the Ministry of War. He repeat-edly petitioned the ministry to reintegrate him into the army after he wasreleased from jail. The absence of memoirs and biographical accounts produced

by St. Dominguans of color, as opposed to the number produced by whiterefugees, turns Joseph’s petitions into one of the rare glimpses at how theFrench Revolution transformed the lives of free people of color.22 AfterNapoléon’s demise and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, Joseph foundhimself in a straitened situation. He had only a modest pension and could notobtain a residence permit to remain in Paris. As he explained:

I am a landowning colonist from St. Domingue who came to France to receive agood education, I had barely started when the fatal disasters erupted in my patriein 1802 and deprived me of any help—although sheltered in the mother country,

yet I found myself as in a foreign country. Young, without parents, without acquain-tance, I have been left at my own devices since the age of fifteen, I embraced thenoble career of arms, a career that had bestowed its honors to my fathers; my goodconduct and bravery as a good Military [man] have served as my Protector.23

V ANESSA MONGEY 43

20. Acte notarié, June 14, 1817, SHD.21. A census in 1807 recorded 821 men and 461 women who were “noirs ou de couleur” in metropol-

itan France. Michael Sibalis, “Les Noirs en France sous Napoléon: l’enquête de 1807,” in Dorigny, 1802: rétablissement , pp. 95–106. The census is in the Archives nationales, Paris, F7-8705 and F7-8444, and did notinclude Paris, where the majority of nonwhites lived.

22. For an analysis of the memoirs written by white St. Dominguan exiles, see Meadows, “EngineeringExiles,” pp. 92–96; and Laurent Dubois, “An Atlantic Revolution,” French Historical Studies 32 (2009), pp.655–661.

23. Joseph Courtois to Ministre de la Guerre, October 10, 1815, SHD.



Like white exiles from St. Domingue, Joseph cast himself as the victim of the

events that simultaneously tore the colony from its metropolis and the colonistsfrom their native land. But unlike many of the accounts written by white St.Dominguans, Joseph chose not to conjure up any image of black savagery andbloodshed. His choice of the year of 1802 as a traumatic turning point in hislife is notable: it is unclear if the “fatal disasters” he mentions refer to theLeClerc expedition or to Napoléon’s decision to close the Institution nationaledes colonies, where he was schooled. His emphasis on 1802 shows how he dis-tinguished between the troubles that started in 1790-1791 and eventually resulted in full civil and political rights for men of color like him, and the very different situation in 1802, when the metropolis decided to reaffirm its author-

ity over its colonies and its mixed-race populations.

While many white exiles foregrounded the emotional trauma of being uprootedfrom their native land of St. Domingue, the situation was different for Joseph.His trauma stemmed not from being uprooted but from being unable to returnto his native land. Joseph’s articulation of his status, as “sheltered in the mothercountry, yet I found myself as in a foreign country,” blurs the distinctionbetween foreign and domestic: Joseph had become homeless. This mothercountry was also a foreign country. Likewise, as Haiti proclaimed its independ-ence and severed ties with France, Joseph’s native land also became foreign. St.Domingue—and by extension, St. Dominguans—were no more. Away whenindependence was proclaimed, Joseph was not a Haitian citizen. On the otherside of the Atlantic, following on the legal changes implemented by Napoléonagainst people of color, he no longer enjoyed the rights attached to French cit-izenship. Joseph’s liminality expressed itself in the ways he used “patrie” equiv-ocally, to refer to both St. Domingue and France. In other letters, however, heexpressed his identity in potent patriotic and Franco-centric terms: “To shed my blood until the last drop, for [the patrie’s] independence and its Integrity: Thisis the duty of any good Frenchman.” He boasted, “I consider myself a good

Frenchman and I dare say one of the Best.”24

Joseph’s desire to preserve the legacy of the French Revolution can be easily understood: Joseph and Juliette’s presence in France was the direct conse-quence of the universalist principles of the Revolution. Joseph was destined fora position of power in the French republican empire, while Juliette’s father wasone of the first French citizens of color to be elected at the National Conven-tion. At the ages of 15 and three respectively, neither Joseph nor Juliette hadmade the decisions that moved them to Paris, France’s political and culturalcenter. They were privileged initially but still pawns in a wider geopolitical chess


24. Joseph Courtois to Ministre de la Guerre, June 23, 1815, SHD.



game. Joseph’s experiences shaped what it meant for him to be “French” in a

period of social and political upheaval and in a country where he had no family,few rights, and few career opportunities. Liminality characterized Joseph’s expe-rience: if his patrie was twofold—St. Domingue and France—his identity wasequally twofold. “I am a man of the Military” paralleled “I am a colonistréfugié ,” emphasizing both his belonging to the French nation through hisstatus as a military man, and his tenuous connection to it as a refugee. Whateducation was supposed to accomplish with the Institution nationale descolonies, the military was to accomplish in a political sense by attaching Joseph,reluctantly, to his “motherland.” The military was also an instrument of subju-gation of other groups. Joseph used to belong to an army that was subjugating

populations in Russia, Prussia, and Spain, yet that same army was an institutionthat allowed for social promotion. Despite the restrictions placed on soldiersand officers of color, Joseph rose through the ranks until his ascension was cutshort by the downfall of the Napoleonic Empire. As his two patries and his affil-iations intertwined and overlapped, so did his identities: he was both a military man and a colonial, both an imperial and a subject.

The petitions to the Ministry of War reveal how adroitly Joseph attempted toshape his identity and his past to appeal to royal authorities for reinstatement.

Joseph emphasized his loyalty to the French patrie above other existing politicalattachments and fashioned himself as even more French than the French. In anod to the Bourbon government, he sometimes added an aristocratic-soundingparticle to his name, signing his letters “Joseph de Courtois.” In a memoir, hementioned that his father had received the military order of St. Louis, a roy-alist order abolished in 1791 and resurrected by the Bourbons in 1814.25 Noneof these arguments convinced the Bourbon regime. Rejected by France and look-ing for a way to earn a living, Joseph turned his attention to his native island.

Although the volume of trade had significantly declined following independence,Haiti remained a Caribbean hub for commerce, smuggling, and migration, and a

point of transit for travelers, exiles, and migrants of different races and nationali-ties, thanks to its location at the heart of the Greater Antilles. The return of theBourbons with their more liberal racial policies simultaneously forced and facili-tated the Courtois’ return to Haiti. In 1818, the Minister of Justice quietly liftedthe Napoleonic ban on travel by free people of color; they could now freely travelin and out of France.26 If the Bourbon reign had put an end to Joseph’s military

V ANESSA MONGEY 45

25. Mémoire à Mrs “les Membres de la commission chargée d’examiner la conduite plus ou moinsactive des officiers depuis le 20 mars 1815 au mois de juillet suivant,” November 16, 1815, SHD.

26. Jennifer Heuer, “The One-Drop Rule in Reverse? Interracial Marriages in Napoleonic and Restora-tion France,” Law and History Review 27:3 (2009), p. 29. The same year, the Minister of Justice lifted theNapoleonic ban on interracial marriages.



career in France, it also allowed him to travel more freely.27 The Courtois broth-

ers resettled in Haiti and Joseph reinvented himself once again. When they returned to Port-au-Prince, Joseph and Juliette Courtois had notseen their native land for almost 20 years and much had changed in the inter-

val. Joseph collaborated with President Alexandre Pétion in the south to encour-age the return of the exiles who had settled in France. With the lifting of thetravel ban, Pétion also received the tacit support of the Bourbon government. In

August 1816, 27 people of color were allowed to leave Bordeaux for Haiti. InNovember of the same year, 183 others received passports for St. Thomas. A few

weeks later, 93 travelers, including a few whites, embarked for the same destina-

tion. From the then-Danish island, some 500 miles from Haiti, the migrants, likethe Courtois, passed to Haiti.28 The networks of family and friendship that St.Dominguans had recreated in Paris extended across the Atlantic. While Joseph

was organizing the repatriation of the St. Domingue diaspora to Haiti, he suc-ceeded in recruiting his friends. Thomas Michel Poitevien, for example, left Parisand became a judge in Port-au-Prince. Joseph and Juliette, as well as the othermigrants who were raised or had lived in metropolitan France, had been“metropolized.” They brought their skills and their knowledge with them butalso carried a very Franco-centric vision of what Haiti should be.

Joseph probably remembered the injunction of Toussaint L’Ouverture, utteredas he had boarded the ship for France as a 15-year old: it was to St. Dominguethat the young students should return to transmit the knowledge that themotherland would give them. As a former élève de la patrie, Joseph believed inthe importance of education to change the future of a nation. Private institu-tions played an important role in Haitian education at a time when the govern-ment could not provide educational opportunities. The couple embraced a new career and opened a coed school, the Maison d’Éducation. Since Juliette was abrilliant musician and piano player, she was in charge of teaching girls music and

literature. Public secondary schooling for women was extremely rare at thetime.29 How Joseph and Juliette financed their reinvention in Haiti is not clear:


27. Serge Daget, La répression de la traite des Noirs au XIXe siècle: l’action des croisières françaises sur les côtes occidentales de l’Afrique, 1817–1850 (Paris: Karthala, 1997), pp. 34–38, 51–53; Robert Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,1980), p. 198; and David Geggus, “Haiti and the Abolitionists: Opinion, Propaganda, and International Pol-itics in Britain and France, 1804–1836,” in Abolition and Its Aftermath: The Historical Context, 1790–1836,David Richardson, ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1985), p. 117.

28. Thomas Madiou, Histoire d’Haïti (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de Joseph Courtois, 1847), tom. 4,p. 351 and tom. 5, p. 214

29. Joe B. Clement, “History of Education in Haiti: 1804–1915,” Revista de Historia de América 88(July-December 1979), pp. 1–74; Madeleine Bouchereau, Education des femmes en Haïti (Port-au-Prince:Imprimerie de l’ état, 1944).



Joseph was apparently successful in convincing the French government to pay

him a military pension, although not at the rank he demanded. He might alsohave regained claims to lands his family lost during the revolution.

In France and in Haiti, Joseph and Juliette used education and military serviceto fashion a transatlantic respectability. The couple operated as business andintellectual partners, working together to regain the elite status both their fam-ilies had occupied at the time of the Haitian revolution. After the school closed,Joseph became committed to political life in his rediscovered patrie. Hefounded the newspaper La Feuille du Commerce on a printing press hisbrother Sévère had sent him from Colombia. The newspaper often criticized

the government, and Joseph was repeatedly accused of several “délits de presse ,” or acts of defamation. Just as Juliette had been instrumental in gettingthe school going in 1818, she worked closely with Joseph on the La Feuille du Commerce, taking control of the paper when Joseph was briefly sentenced to jailfor defaming the president, Jean-Pierre Boyer. She is often considered as thefirst Haitian female journalist. It is also very likely that Juliette managed all of the couple’s mercantile and business activities while Joseph was imprisoned.

After a coup d’état deposed Boyer in 1843, Joseph embarked on a political

career that took him from the state assembly to the senate. As Napoleonicarmy officer, promoter of immigration, educator, journalist, and politician,Joseph embodied the ideals and dedication of the eighteenth-century Frenchphilosophers. He added yet another feather to his cap when he edited and pub-lishedThomas Madiou’s Histoire d’Haïti in the 1840s. This ambitious histor-ical narrative aimed at repairing the image of Haiti, or as Madiou explained,“The genius of Haiti is that we have the pride of raising us to the height of mostcivilized nations.”30 Madiou notably presented the Haitian revolution as a jus-tified rebellion against the terrible oppression of slavery. Joseph constantly strove to reform his patrie, whether through education, the press, politics, or

writing historical accounts.

Joseph’s political ambitions were cut short in 1847 when the black generalFaustin Soulouque assumed the presidency and purged mulattoes from the gov-ernment. Joseph was sent to prison until the French consul intervened andcommuted his sentence to exile. He remained outside of Haiti for 11 years.Once again, Juliette replaced him as the head of La Feuille du Commerce. Shedied a few years later at the age of 64, and the couple’s son Joseph AlcibiadeCourtois took the reins of the paper. After a coup d’état against Soulouque in

V ANESSA MONGEY 47

30. Madiou, Histoire d’ Haïti , vol. 1, p. 6.



1859, Joseph finally returned to Haiti. When he died at the age of 92, he had

spent half of his life outside the island of his birth.

31

Joseph’s presence in France was not the direct result of subjugation and perse-cution; he was sent to Paris as one of the rising stars of the French patrie. As helost his rights and status, he joined an army that was striving to subjugatediverse populations in the name of the French nation. Stripped of his military career, Joseph built his life around Haiti’s continuing cultural orientationtoward France, as an educator, journalist, and publisher. After moving to Haiti,he used education, print, and politics to diffuse his ideas and principles. Josephspent most of his life carefully negotiating issues of political and national loyal-

ties. As he kept being sent away from his native land, first by the French, thenby Haitians, he kept coming back.

A M AN W ITHOUT A COUNTRY : SÉVÈRE COURTOIS

As Joseph’s testimony informs us, the Courtois brothers came from a family who had used military experience to acquire a certain social prestige during thecolonial era. As many scholars have noted, the participation of free men of color in the military was a crucial factor in shaping their identities as active cit-

izens and proved important to their claims for expanded rights.32

More thanany other respectable profession available to them, the army provided men of color with the possibility of social mobility that came with promotion throughthe ranks.33 Both brothers used armed service as an avenue for their ambitions,but unlike Joseph who thought his duty was to fight for French national glory,Sévère believed his duty was to fight for the republican cause wherever he could.

As they did to Joseph, the 1790s uprisings in St. Domingue sent his youngerbrother away from his native Ouanaminthe and marked the start of his peri-


31. In France, an ordinance of April 1833 gave political and civil rights to free blacks (a reinstatementof the April 4, 1792, decree that had granted full citizenship to free blacks, but was reversed by Napoleon).

32. Notable among contributors to the literature are Peter Blanchard, “The Language of Liberation:Slave Voices in the Wars of Independence,” Hispanic American Historical Review 82:3 (2002), pp. 499–523;Theodore G. Vincent, “The Blacks Who Freed Mexico,” The Journal of Negro Histor y LXXIX:3 (1994), pp.257–276; Aline Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886–1912 (Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press, 1995); and Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution,1868–187 8 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). See also Ben Vinson III and Stewart R.King, “Introducing the ‘New’ African Diasporic Military History in Latin America,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 5:2 (2004), pp. 1-22.

33. For strategies adopted by free blacks to gain political recognition in the United States, see CarynCosse Bell. Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718–1868 (BatonRouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997); and Rebecca Scott, “The Atlantic World and the Road toPlessy v. Ferguson ,” Journal of American History 94:3 (2007), pp. 726–733.



patetic career. Sévère Courtois settled in Louisiana, probably after passing

through Cuba. A lthough Louisiana prohibited the entrance of free blacks,many nonetheless eluded immigration authorities by slipping into the terri-tory through Barataria, a coastal black-market settlement just west of the Mis-sissippi River, where the governor of Louisiana noted the presence of “St.Domingo’s negros of the most desperate characters.”34 Among those who man-aged to find their way to the Gulf Coast were about 200 veterans, including Lt.Col. Joseph Savary, a former republican officer who had opposed ToussaintL’Ouverture and fled to Cuba in 1799.35 Savary became involved with inde-pendence movements and joined the Gutiérrez expedition, filibusters whofought against the Spanish in Texas in 1812-1813 and set up a short-lived repub-

lic in San Antonio.36 Sévère Courtois later claimed that he had been working forthe “just cause of America” since 1812; it is therefore very likely that he arrivedin Louisiana with Savary and participated in the failed Republic of Texas.37

While Savary, Courtois, and others were supporting the emancipation of Texas,the United States was waging an anti-European war of its own. In 1812, theUnited States declared war against Great Britain. The return of the St. Dominguerefugees to Louisiana coincided with the British attempt to capture New Orleansin December 1814. Most of them still remembered the blockade of the coasts of

St. Domingue by the British fleet and the aid given to slave insurgents in 1792and 1793. The lingering rancor of the refugees against the English explained why most of them answered Andrew Jackson’s call to arms to protect the CrescentCity. Savary organized the Second Battalion of Free Men of Color, composed of

volunteers from St. Domingue. Sévère Courtois enlisted as a sergeant major inSavary’s battalion and played a key role in the Battle of New Orleans.38

Soon, many of these foreign soldiers, including Sévère, grew dissatisfied withU.S. authorities. Savary, Courtois, and other officers from the Second Battalion

V ANESSA MONGEY 49

34. Cited in Bell, Revolution , p. 56.35. Ibid., p. 42. Roland McConnell asserts that Colonel Savary raised a battalion of 256 free men of

color, mostly veterans of the French republican army . Negro Troops of Antebellum Louisiana, A History of the Battalion of Free Men of Color (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968), p. 70.

36. David Narrett, “José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara: Caudillo of the Mexican Republic in Texas,”Southwestern Historical Quarterly 105 (October 2002), pp. 194–228; Julia Garrett, “The First Constitutionof Texas, April 17, 1813,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly , 40 (1937), pp. 290–308. The presence of armedblack men in the expedition made some U.S. Americans uncomfortable and a campaign was launched throughpapers and pamphlets in the Louisiana/Texas region to undermine Gutiérrez’s legitimacy, overplaying theinfluence of foreigners, “Napoleonic agents,” and his association with men of color like Savary.

37. Sévère Courtois to General Santander, May 30, 1823, cited in Verna, Pétion , p. 295.38. War of 1812 service records, 2 Batt’n [D’Aquin’s] Militia, National Archives, Service records of vol-

unteer soldiers who served during the War of 1812 in the state of Louisiana, Washington, D.C., roll boxes 47and 87.



sent a petition to Andrew Jackson asking him to intercede in their favor with

the state of Louisiana and to grant them “a protection which will put thembeyond a prejudice which allways excised in this country towards them.”39 Thestate legislators had passed laws designed to control the free black and coloredpopulation; these measures included the prohibition of interracial marriage as

well as the obligation to treat white people with deference.40 Andrew Jacksonnever answered the officers’ petition. Offended at being treated like second-class citizens, many soldiers of color abandoned their posts and redirected theirefforts to support the independence movements in the Spanish colonies.Often considered as the United States’ second war of independence, the War of 1812 might more accurately be considered another Atlantic war for independ-

ence. The activities of many participants before and after the Battle of New Orleans make it clear that this war represented only one moment in their event-filled, transnational revolutionary careers. Their attachment to the UnitedStates was provisional—when U.S. authorities failed to grant militiamen of colorthe rights they desired, they exported their valuable military skills elsewhere.

Napoléon’s rise to power had cut Joseph Courtois’s career short, and it also hadcrucial repercussions for Sévère. The Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808 setin motion the process that shattered the ties between the metropolis and its

American colonies. The replacement of the Spanish monarch by Napoléon’sbrother precipitated the collapse of metropolitan power and increased discon-tent in Spanish America. The juntas of Venezuela, New Granada, and Mexicoeventually proclaimed their independence in 1810.41 Over 7,000 foreign vol-unteers from Europe, North America, and the Caribbean joined the efforts tofree Spanish America of monarchical rule.42 Sévère Courtois was one of them.He left New Orleans and crossed the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea toput his military expertise to the service of the Republic of Cartagena in Colom-bia. In desperate need of funds and support, the government transformedCartagena into a haven for French and Haitian sailors. The Republic of Carta-


39. Joseph Savary et al. to Andrew Jackson, New Orleans, March 16, 1815, in The Papers of Andrew Jackson , Harold Moser, David Hoth, Sharon MacPherson, and John Reinbold, eds. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), vol. 3, p. 315.

40. The prohibition of interracial marriages can be found in the Louisiana Civil Code (1808), title IV,section 8, and the law regulating black-white interactions in Acts Passed at the First Session of the First Legisla- ture of the Territory of Orleans (New Orleans: Bradford & Anderson, 1807), sec. 40, pp. 188–190.

41. The best overview of the Spanish American wars of independence is Jaime Rodríguez, The Inde- pendence of Spanish America (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

42. E. T. D. Lambert, Voluntarios británicos e irlandeses en la gesta bolivariana, 3 vols. (Caracas: Min-isterio de Defensa, 1983); Matthew Brown, Adventuring through Spanish Colonies: Simón Bolívar, Foreign Mercenaries, and the Birth of New Nations (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006); and Moisés EnriqueRodríguez, Freedom’s Mercenaries: British Volunteers in the Wars of Independence of Latin America , 2 vols.(Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).



gena eliminated color distinctions and guaranteed suffrage rights to all free men

with independent means of support. As French and Haitian sailors and officersbecame a common sight in the city, men of African descent became members of the constitutional assembly, war council, and parliament.43

Sévère did not have time to take advantage of this legal breakdown of racial bar-riers and fulfill his political ambitions in Cartagena. When the royalists put anend to the republic in December 1815, the independence leaders, defeated, leftthe port city in privateering ships and found refuge in Pétion’s Haiti. Sévère andother revolutionaries gathered in the port of Aux Cayes, in the south of Haiti.It is apparently in Cayes that Sévère met Louis-Michel Aury, another traveling

republican whose ambitions were a perfect match for his. Born in a Parisiansuburb, Aury joined the French navy around the age of 15 and deserted in the West Indies. As soon as the Latin American movements broke out, Aury set upexpeditions to support Colombia in its fight for independence, often recruitingSt. Dominguans and Haitians.44 Having escaped the royalists in Cartagena,

Aury clashed with Simon Bolívar, opposing the Liberator’s autocratic leadershipand advocating a joint commanding committee instead.45 It is therefore no sur-prise that when Aury received an invitation from Joseph Savary, Courtois’sfellow St. Domingue exile and former commanding officer in the War of 1812,to join Mexican republicans, his friend Sévère was ready to go. In early 1816,

just a few months after finding shelter in Haiti, Aury, Courtois, and Savary leftthe island with 400 soldiers, about 50 foreign officers, and eight ships and took control of Galveston Island, off the Texas coast.46

Sévère apparently felt that he had more opportunities in Louisiana, Colombia,or Texas than in his native land. His attachment to Haiti was more ambivalentthan that of his brother. Despite maintaining family and political ties with theisland, Sévère preferred to try his luck in various circum-Caribbean regions,even after his brother and his wife relocated to Port-au-Prince. While Joseph

thought along national lines, first in France and later in Haiti, Sévère continu-ously crossed national boundaries and thought of himself as a “patriot” regard-less of the country he was serving. Failing to liberate the rest of Mexico, Aury

V ANESSA MONGEY 51

43. On the First Republic of Cartagena, see Marixa Lasso, Myths of Harmony, chapt. 4; and AdelaidaSourdis de la Vega, Cartagena de Indias durante la Primera República, 1810–1815 (Bogota: Banco de laRepública, 1988).

44. In 1810, for example, Aury engaged Louis Crispin, a “subject of the Empire of Hayti,” to help cap-ture a Spanish slaver off the coast of Cuba and sell the slaves in Louisiana. Case 376, Records of U.S. DistrictCourt for Eastern District of Louisiana, 1806–1814, New Orleans Public Library, Reel 9.

45. William Lewis, “Simon Bolívar and Xavier Mina: A Rendezvous in Haiti,” Journal of Inter-Ameri- can Studies , 11:3 (1969), pp. 458–465.

46. H. L. V. Ducoudray Holstein, Histoire de Bolívar, par le Gén. Ducoudray Holstein; continuée jusqu’a sa mort par Alphonse Viollet (Paris: Imprimerie de Auguste Auffray, 1831), vol. 1, pp. 279–281.



and his collaborators left Galveston and sailed to Amelia Island, off the Florida

coast, proclaiming the Republic of the Floridas in September 1817. The motley republican constitutional government approved a constitution that made noreference to race and allowed every free inhabitant to vote after swearing to“truly and faithfully . . . support the cause of the Republic of Las Floridas.”47

The constitution also called for a free press and freedom of religion. After theUnited States invaded Amelia Island, Aury and Sévère looked for anotherregion to revolutionize and eventually directed their campaign to ProvidenciaIsland, off the coast of Nicaragua.

A former Puritan colony, Providencia had become part of the Spanish empire in

the late seventeenth century. Spain had recently assigned the archipelago of Providencia and San Andrès to the viceroyalty of New Grenada, whose center was about 480 miles south of the islands.48 Like Galveston and Amelia, Provi-dencia was located at the edge of the crumbling Spanish empire and had expe-rienced various waves of migration, making its attachment to the Spanish crownmore than slightly tenuous. In July 1818, Aury, Courtois, and their followerscaptured the island with very little resistance from the English-speaking whitepopulation and their 350 slaves. They turned the island into their revolutionary headquarters, attacking Spanish ships, selling goods in Jamaica, and launchingseveral unsuccessful liberation campaigns against the continent. Sévère Cour-tois was in charge of the naval forces in an attack against the Spanish in theGulf of Honduras in 1820. After Aury ’s death in August 1821, Sévère Cour-tois was named his successor and became the commandant of the army andnavy on Providencia.

A controversy soon erupted when Aury ’s French secretary Louis Peru deLacroix accused Sévère of illegally arming his sailors and the people of coloron Providencia and planning an attack against Cuba.49 According to Lacroix,Sévère had formed a fraudulent government at Providencia that was “neither

dependent [on], nor protected by any government,” and had proclaimed him-self “the head of a political and criminal party of armed men . . . devised with-out any respect for the rules of civil society and of the Law of Nations.”50 Moreimportantly, Lacroix argued, Courtois never had any intention to recognize theauthority of the Colombian government.


47. Proclamation, November 16, 1817, miscellaneous manuscripts, 281, Georges A. Smathers Library,University of Florida.

48. James Parsons, San Andrés and Providencia: English-Speaking Islands in the Western Caribbean (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956).

49. SGM, tom. 343, fol. 1019-1032, AGNC.50. “Relación reservada del Coronel L. Peru de Lacroix,” January 20, 1822, SGM, tom. 343, fol. 1020,

AGNC.



The controversy accelerated the implosion of the government at Providencia. In

a proclamation in the Gaceta de Cartagena , Courtois invited any foreigner whodesired to “defend that Patria that has admitted us with sweet hospitality” tosettle in Providencia.51 In a letter to the vice president of Colombia, Courtoisexplained that he had always been animated by “patriotic feelings . . . since thepolitical transformation of Colombia, my neighbor, as hijo del Guárico francés [son of French St. Domingue].”52 Courtois defined himself as Colombian andSt. Dominguan (but not, interestingly, as Haitian) at the same time—his patri-otism was multinational. Sensing that the winds were turning, Sévère publicly stressed his affiliation with the Republic of Colombia and proclaimed the Con-stitution of Cúcuta on Providencia in June 1822.

Indeed, the line between fighting alongside independents and fighting forindependence could be a bit blurry. In a letter written to his “comère ” (lady friend in Creole) in Haiti, Sévère invited her to join him wherever he would “setup [his] Government.”53 In a sense, both Joseph and Sévère continued the kindof revolution members of the elite free colored community such as AndréRigaud, Julien Raimond, and Vincent Ogé jeune had imagined in the 1790s.54

They fought for the rights of creoles of mixed ancestry and their place in thenew postcolonial order in the Americas.

The controversy set off by Lacroix’s accusations did not stop Sévère in his effortsto export revolution and promote political and social equality for free people of color. The dream of setting up his own independent regime led him to travelaround the Caribbean Basin. In 1823, he participated in the Soles y Rayos deBolívar conspiracy in Cuba. With the help of local freemasons, Sévère collaborated

with white Colombian officials and free men of color to create the Republic of Cubanacán. Leaflets were distributed among free blacks to convince them to jointhe movement. The Republic of Cubanacán had planned to allow them a place inthe government of Cuba: “We do not recognize any other distinction than that

owned to true merit,” one pamphlet claimed.55

Spanish authorities squashed theconspiracy but these “false doctrines” had seduced, according to the captain-gen-

V ANESSA MONGEY 53

51. Sévère Courtois “Proclama a los estranjeros,” Gaceta de Cartagena 21 (December 1822).52. Italics are mine. “Guárico” was often used to refer to St. Domingue/Haiti at the time. Courtois to

Santander, n.d., Providencia, Correspondencia dirigida al General Francesco de Santander, Roberto Cortázar,ed. (Bogota: Editorial Voluntad, 1964–1970), vol. 5, p. 211.

53. Courtois to Mademoiselle Mimi Florette, October 19, 1821, SGM, tom. 343, fol. 1038, AGNC.54. For biographies on these three figures, see John D. Garrigus, “Opportunist or Patriot? Julien Rai-

mond (1774–1801) and the Haitian Revolution,” Slavery and Abolition 28:1 (2007), pp. 1–21; and “‘Thy Coming Fame, Ogé! Is Sure’: New Evidence on Ogé’s 1790 Revolt and the Beginning of the Haitian Revo-lution,” in Garrigus and Morris, Assumed Identities , pp. 19–45.

55. Clement Lanier, “Cuba et la conspiration d’Apunte en 1812,” Revue de la Société Haïtienne d’His- toire, de Géographie et de Géologie 23 (1952), p. 29.



eral of Cuba, “a lot of the youth, hombres de campo , and some negroes on which

[foreign adventurers] rely to spread the word of independence.”

56

After the failure of this revolutionary conspiracy in Cuba, Sévère put his ships atthe service of Colombia and asked vice-president Santander for official recogni-tion of his rank as commandant and for a carta de naturaleza. Sévère’s politicalambitions as leader of a semi-independent government in Providencia mighthave failed, but he knew how valuable his military and naval skills were for thestruggling Colombian republic. Courtois possessed three valuable ships that heused as bargaining chips. He offered to put his fleet at the service of Colombiain exchange for military ranks and Colombian citizenship for his collaborators.57

Always an ambitious man, Courtois took advantage of the situation to recom-mend the creation of a special tax to assemble a national navy. “The navy,” heexplained to the vice president, “is the pride of any government.”58

Sévère’s career illustrates his commitment to spread revolutionary fervor aroundthe Caribbean Basin, regardless of national boundaries. Scholars have observedthat the revolutions of England and North America and the postrevolution-ary states that followed, for all their internationalis t intentions, did little topromote revolutions abroad, unlike the French Revolution.59 Much has been

written on the Haitian revolution as an object of fear and inspiration across theregion, but less is known about the exact role of Haitians in the decolonizationprocess in the Americas. When they declared independence, Haitian leaderspronounced themselves neutral in the fight for independence and emancipa-tion elsewhere in the New World. Yet, the Republic of the South under

Alexandre Pétion became, in fact, a haven for liberals and revolutionaries.Pétion supported Simon Bolívar in 1815 and 1816; his aid came with a prom-ise to abolish slavery.60


56. Vives to Ministro de la Gobernación de Ultramar, September 28, 1823, in José Franco, Documen-

tos para la historia de Venezuela existentes en el Archivo Nacional de Cuba (Havana: Archivo Nacional de Cuba,1960), p. xcv.57. Sévère Courtois to Santander, November 15 and November 30, 1823. Request accepted by San-

tander, December 29, 1823, Correspondencia a Santander , vol. 5.58. Sévère Courtois to Santander, May 30, 1823, Cartagena, in Correspondencia a Santander , vol. 5,

p. 214.59. See Fred Halliday, Revolution and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power

(London: Macmillan Press, 1999).60. That is, until the Congress of Colombia reestablished slavery in 1821 under the cover of the “free

womb” (libertad de vientre) principle. Bolívar’s decision was as ideological as it was practical: both independ-ents and royalists offered freedom to the slaves who joined their side. The free womb measure vientre freedthe unborn but conferred only a conditional freedom on the freed slaves, who could be pressured to performfurther service for the master or the state; they were often forced into military service. Slavery was not defin-itively abolished until 1852 in Colombia and 1854 in Venezuela. See Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colo- nial Slavery, 1776–1848 (London and New York: Verso, 1988), p. 348.



However, Sévère’s case reveals that Haitians did not fight for the same prin-

ciples defended by the Haitian state. If emancipation was one of the corner-stones upon which Haiti was built, it never prevented Sévère from smugglingslaves. He made his fortune seizing slaves as well as significant amounts of sugar, coffee, and tobacco from Spanish ships. For example, when the slaverCathalina was captured and brought to Providencia, Courtois received nearly $2,000 (US) as one of the ship-owners.61 Joseph also appears in the list of Sévère’s collaborators. As Joseph was growing rich in Haiti, rumors started tofly. The editor of a rival newspaper, Le Télégraphe, accused Joseph of acquiringand selling goods “seized [from] some poor souls whose throats were slicedout at sea.” Smuggling coffee, indigo, and other goods in and out of Haiti,

Joseph often used his own newspaper to advertise his merchandise.62 Sévèreapparently transported the Spanish merchandise to Haiti, where Joseph was incharge of selling it. The clandestine trade in which the two brothers partici-pated was an illicit but vital part of the Atlantic economies. In addition tomaintaining strong ties with his family in Haiti (especially with his brother andone of his cousins), Sévère had a lover in Aquin, in the south of the island.63

Although the brothers came from Ouanaminthe in the North, they gravitatedto Pétion’s Republic of the South rather than Christophe’s kingdom. Joseph’sFrancophile leanings and mixed-race status would have hindered his political

and economic ambitions in the north. For Sévère, Pétion’s republic was moreclosely connected to the circum-Caribbean world, through trading routes as well as revolutionary alliances.

If Haitian leaders attempted to present Haiti as an asylum for those oppressedby the colonial system, Sévère remained unable, or unwilling, to think in strictly racial terms. He lived in an interracial and international environment and insome ways remained more St. Dominguan than Haitian: as a descendant of arather elite family of color, he had little in common with the African slaves hesold to the highest bidders. Sévère stood at a crossroads between the early

modern and modern worlds. The colonial system had ingrained in him asense of superiority and deep prejudice against slaves; at the same time, his par-ticipation in various wars of independence had taught him to challenge racialhierarchies and aspire to complete political and social equality for himself andhis social class.

V ANESSA MONGEY 55

61. Louis-Michel Aury, “Settlement of Estate,” September 1, 1821, Luis Aury Papers, box 1, folder 9,U.S. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

62. Télégraph e, October 12, 1828, in Henock Trouillot, Les origines sociales de la littérature haïtienne (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie N. A. Theodore, 1962), pp. 102–103.

63. Sévére Courtois to Mademoiselle Mimi Florette (sic), October 15 and October 19, 1821, SGM,tom. 343, fol. 1036-1038, AGNC.



Nowhere is the central contradiction of the Age of Revolutions between desire for

universal freedom and reliance on human oppression better embodied than inSévère’s lack of interest in emancipation. Sévère’s slave smuggling reveals the ten-sions between the rhetoric of universal revolution and the centrality of slavery tosponsor the liberation enterprises that might bring that about. When Lacroixaccused Sévère of planning an expedition against Cuba, he claimed that Sévère

wanted to grant slaves their freedom, and was therefore looking for help fromHaiti. But Sévère’s letters to President Boyer and to Joseph did not supportthat point. He emphasized that no cause was more sacred than “that of Lib-erty and Independence” and portrayed his goal as “giving their liberty to thepopulations who are now under Spanish yoke.” Sévère’s rhetoric was broad and

vague enough to appeal to the Haitian government while offering no formalcommitment to emancipation, and it is very unlikely that it was one of his con-cerns. Multinational expeditions like those in which Sévère participated, cultivatedcontacts in Haiti; their crews, with a high proportion of blacks and mulattoes,embraced a spirit of egalitarianism that did not always include African slaves.

Sévère’s revolutionary and egalitarian rhetoric also teems with ideas drawn fromfreemasonry.64 Sévère’s signature, with its distinctive three dots forming a tri-angle, identifies him as a Freemason. His use of this mark in both public andprivate records was a way to publicly assert his belonging to the craft and to pri-

vately create ties with others of its members. Courtois was surrounded by Freemasons: among the 11 other men who witnessed Aury’s will in August1820, six signed with a clearly distinguishable Masonic symbol.65 In 1823,Sévère worked with Cuban Freemasons to orchestrate the independence move-ment Soles y Rayos de Bolívar; his rhetoric reflected concepts of Masonic teach-ings on internationalism, peaceful coexistence, and social and philanthropicresponsibility and the conviction that the world was the “ patria of humankind.”66 Joseph also belonged to the craft.67 The rhetoric of equality and


64. On freemasonry and free people of color in St. Domingue, see John D. Garrigus, Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 291–297; and Jacquesde Cauna, “Quelques aperçus sur l’histoire de la franc- maçonnerie en Haïti,” Revue de la Société Haïtienne d’Histoire, de Géographie et de Géologie 52 (September-December 1996), pp. 189–190. By 1843, Haiti had 23lodges. For freemasonry in antebellum New Orleans, see Cosse Bell, Revolution , pp. 145–185.

65. Giorgio Antei, Los héroes errantes: historia de Agustín Codazzi, 1793-1822 (Bogota: Planeta Colom-biana Editorial, 1993), p. 196.

66. Giuseppe Giarrizzo, Massoneria e illuminismo nell’ Europa del Settecento (Venice: Marsilio, 1994);Nancy Vogeley, “Spanish-Language Masonic Books Printed in the Early United States,” Early American Lit- erature 43:2 (2008), pp. 337–360.

67. Steve Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); R. William Weisberger, Wal-lace McLeod, and S. Brent Morris, eds., Freemasonry on Both Sides of the Atlantic: Essays Concerning the Craft in the British Isles, Europe, the United States, and Mexico (Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs; New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press, 2002).



international fraternity found a particular resonance with men like the Courtois

brothers who aspired to positions of political power. The values articulated by this military and Masonic culture also shaped Sévère’s presentation of himself ina series of articles he sent to the Gaceta de Cartagena . The volatility of the

Atlantic revolutions created the need for strong and charismatic leaders. Inasserting his place on the world stage, Sévère drew on widely accepted ideas of masculinity and military authority. While Joseph emphasized his loyalty to theFrench army, Sévère wished to fulfill the role of a paterfamilias for the troopsand the population of Providencia. His love for “humanity,” as well as his lead-ership abilities, he wrote, made him “a man able to order, and to preserve thesubordination of corsairs.”68

Then and during the Battle of New Orleans, Sévère knew that his legitimacy rested on being perceived as an honorable man. He also knew that as a man of color his status was precarious. At any time that he perceived his honor to beunder attack, or suspected he was experiencing some form of legal or extralegalracism—whether it was Andrew Jackson sending him to fortify an outpost in theLouisiana swamps, or a subordinate calling him by a racial epithet—Sévère care-fully manipulated racial expectations and fears to protect his reputation. In hisconfrontation with Lacroix, Sévère was the one with connections and wealth.69

Using his patron/client relationships in Cartagena, he sued Lacroix for defama-tion of character and won his trial.70 However, the rift between Lacroix andCourtois did not follow strict color lines. Marcelin Guillot, for example, anothermember of the St. Dominguan diaspora who had fought with Sévère in theBattle of New Orleans and worked alongside him and Aury in Texas, Florida,Guatemala, and Providencia, sided with the white officer.71 Sévère’s ambivalentrelationships with other members of the Haitian diaspora reveal the shifting roleof the color line in this postrevolutionary world. It also found an echo inJoseph’s frequent clashes with Jean-Pierre Boyer, Haiti’s acutely color-con-

V ANESSA MONGEY 57

68. Gaceta de Cartagena , January 4, 1823.69. Sévère Courtois accused one of Lacroix’s followers of calling him a mulatto. Deposition of Jean-

Louis Dutrieu aboard the Amazon , August 9, 1822, SGM, fol. 1041, AGNC.70. “Acusación documentada que hizo al tribunal de censura el día 26 abril de 1823, Severo Courtois

del artículo firmado ‘El Censor’” (Cartagena: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1823), Archivo Histórico Restrepo,fondo II, vol. 51, fol. 106-107.

71. República, Hoja de Servicios, tom. 19, fol. 1019, AGNC. Jealousy might have played a role, sinceGuillot started his military career at a higher rank: he was a captain in the War of 1812 while Sévère was a ser-geant major. At the time of the petition to Jackson, Guillot is listed as “Capt. Gers,” Courtois as “Ensign 2ndBon.” Courtois’s career took a turn after meeting Aury. He became commandant and owned three ships.Guillot also rose through the ranks but was “merely” a colonel on Providencia. Aury’s settlement of estate, August 30, 1820, Luis Aury Papers, folder 9, U.S. Library of Congress. Marcelin Guillot signed the petitionsent by the officers of the St. Domingue battalion requesting Andrew Jackson’s protection from Louisiana dis-criminatory legislation: “From Savary et al.,” Papers of Andrew Jackson , p. 315.



scious mulatto president.72 Like Joseph in metropolitan France, Sévère

expected that his military service would protect him against racist discrimina-tion and clinch his claims to equal rights within and beyond national affiliations.

Many white American leaders were unsure of the place o f influential peopleof color in the new republics.73 Although white patriots had gained blacks’decisive military support with promises of equality, they resented the military prestige of black and mulatto officers and feared that an independence warcould escalate into a race war as had happened in Haiti.74 Bolívar, in particu-lar, feared the anarchical, violent forces triggered by the independence struggle.He was obsessed with preventing pardocracia —a government that might result

from a successful revolution by pardos (colored) and blacks against the whiteelites who continued to rule after independence. Bolívar’s obsession with pre-

venting pardocracia became a driving force in his military and political decisions,including the execution of former lieutenants such as Manuel Piar.

The ambitions displayed by military men of color like Sévère Courtois werethreats to the social and racial order. In his correspondence with Colombianauthorities, Lacroix repeatedly played on the specter of a race war.75 Revolu-tionary expeditions like Aury’s relied on men of color not only in military and

naval matters but also to provide legal expertise. Observers often commentedon this inclusion of men of color among the états-majors of these expeditions; when a Spanish passenger was captured near Havana aboard a U.S. merchantship and taken to Galveston, he noted that the legality of the capture wasappraised by Aury and a committee composed of “various negroes in military uniforms,” who eventually declared the capture illegal and had the ship and thecrew released.76 A U.S. newspaper, commenting on the Republic of las Floridasat Amelia, reported that Aury’s collaborators of color “insist[ed] upon equalrights and privileges with the whites, and otherwise [were] very insolent; indeed[even] so as to assume equal command.”77 Another article published in the


72. David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour and National Independence in Haiti (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1979)

73. Marixa Lasso, Myths of Harmony: Race and Republicanism during the Age of Revolution, Colombia 1795–1831 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), chapt. 3.

74. Blackburn, Overthrow , pp. 340–60; Marixa Lasso, “Threatening Pardos: Pardo Republicanism inColombia, 1811–1830,” in Transatlantic Rebels: Agrarian Radicalism in Comparative Contex t, ThomasSummerhill and James C. Scott, eds. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004), pp. 117–135; Aline Helg, “Simón Bolívar and the Specter of Pardocracia: José Padilla in Post-Independence Cartagena,” Journal of Latin American Studies 35:3 (2003), pp. 447–471.

75. Lacroix, Relación.76. Copia de la declaración de Tiburcio López, June 6, 1817, New Orleans, in Cuba 1900, Archivo

General de las Indias.77. The Weekly Recorder , November 12, 1817.



Alexandria Gazette in 1819 described how a captain “Courtwan” (certainly

Sévère Courtois), a native of Haiti, and his “all black crew” had captured a U.S.merchant ship from Vermont, accusing the ship’s officers of transporting Span-ish goods and then taking the vessel to Providencia.78 These scenes were par-ticularly striking for observers who were not used to seeing men of color in posi-tions of authority and decision-making. The observers’ testimonies werereprinted in newspapers across the Americas and fueled the perception that suchexpeditions subverted the existing social and racial order. Captain “Courtwan”and his interracial crew of followers embodied a dangerous alternative world forthe Americas. Their ambitions had to be controlled and curtailed.

CONCLUSION

Joseph Courtois’s double exile and Sévère Courtois’s perpetual revolutionary quest provide an important counterpoint to existing studies on racial andnational affiliations: the Courtois brothers were both ready to die for thepatrie— whether it was Hait i, France, the United States, or Colombia. They

were looking for a patrie and a career at the same time, pursuing any opportu-nity to advance their own wealth and power. Both brothers were able to shifttheir national allegiances with the political winds of the revolutionaryAtlantic

world.While Joseph switched from a fervent French nationalism to a newfoundreverence for the Haitian state, Sévère became a revolutionary mercenary andengaged in transnational struggles against monarchical regimes. While Josephopted to fight for freedom at home, in France and then in Haiti, Sévère choseto battle for freedom wherever he could, regardless of national boundaries.Their stories reveal the importance of military institutions as ladders of advance-ment and military experience as an opportunity to associate with new ideas.Their trajectories and their experiences along the way were influenced by polit-ical and national boundaries, but not determined by them. Their overlappingbusiness, personal, and political networks crossed the Atlantic Ocean. While the

instability of the revolutionary Atlantic offered possibilities of liberation, itcould just as likely bring about vulnerability and invite danger.

The military world of the militia and the naval world of the corsair fleet provided crucial opportunities for the social advancement of free men of color.Most itinerant patriots of color came from one or the other, and for clear rea-sons. First, these institutions had already created a leadership structure. Second,they laid the groundwork for networks of friendship and trust with white offi-cers through common military service or shared values. Finally, they elevated

V ANESSA MONGEY 59

78. Alexandria Gazette , December 28, 1819.



the social and economic position of their members within their own community

and within the society at large. Men like Sévère Courtois, Marcelin Guillot, andJoseph Savary seized the opportunities offered by multinational revolutionary expeditions to hone their leadership skills. The intersecting stories of the Cour-tois brothers also show a variety of other strategies deployed by free men of color to secure their place in Atlantic geopolitics. Although both brothers usedmilitary and militia service to fulfill their ambitions, they also turned to educa-tion and patron/client relationships to attain social and economic status. Thelives of the Courtois brothers underscore the complexity and expressions of racial and national identities in the revolutionary Atlantic. Both Joseph andSévère successfully preserved their family’s elite prerevolutionary status into a

new era while fighting for the right of people of mixed ancestry to play leadingroles in postcolonial America.

Rhodes College V ANESSA MONGEY

Memphis, Tennessee


a tale two bothers revolutions haiti# vmongey

Documents