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afranchie - Haiti Observer Blog
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September 24, 1791, Concordat De Damiens Granting Political Rights to the Affranchis, signed
It was on this date, September 24, 1791, that the Concordat De Damiens was signed, Granting Political Rights to the Affranchis.
The word "Affranchi" means a liberated slave who is free from legal, social, or political restrictions, but it was used to refer pejoratively to mulattoes. In 1789, Saint-Domingue had an estimated population of 556,000, including roughly 500,000 African slaves and 24,000 affranchis. The affranchis were mostly free mulattoes (people of mixed African and European descent) or black. The affranchis were sometimes slave owners themselves and roughly half of the affranchis were freed people of mixed race. They wanted to be rich like Europeans, but were afraid of the slave majority. Haitian society was deeply fragmented by skin color, class, and gender. In the late 18th century, knowing the weight of Haiti in the French economy, the royalists attempted to exploit the slave revolution to weaken the French Girondins. On August 22, 1791, the first alliance between blacks and mulattos (including Petion and Beauvais) defying the racist ideology of whites was formed and that ended in the victory of the freedmen and the signing of the Concordat de Damiens on September 24, 1791, granting political or voting rights to the affranchis.
Francois Makandal or "Macandal" a Maroon Leader
In 1750s, free mulattoes and blacks starts to amass power and wealth. Many secure plantations, particularly coffee plantations in the South and the West. In 1759, there is Makandal Conspiracy. Francois Macandal, a maroon leader, conspires a plot that is to spread to all corners of the colony of poisoning the whites in the North. It all begins in the North, with the vast network of Makandal collaborators, particularly trusted domestic workers, starting to poison the households of their masters, including those slaves who cannot be trusted. There is a frantic search by the whites on the nature and cause of the illnesses and death. A female slave is interrogated, and she betrays the rebel leader. A massive manhunt is launched by the planters.
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