The historian Jean Jaurès pointed out the “sad irony” that the fortunes created in Nantes and Bordeaux during the eighteenth century were a crucial part of the struggle for “human emancipation” that erupted in the French Revolution. Many among the bourgeoisie who were frustrated with the limits placed on them by the Old Regime system were wealthy thanks to the sugar and coffee produced by slaves in the Caribbean. In 1789, 15 percent of the 1,000 members of the National Assembly owned colonial property, and many others were probably tied to colonial commerce. The slaves of Saint- Domingue who had helped lay the foundation for the French Revolution would ultimately make it their own, and even surpass it, in their own struggle for liberty.

Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ …, loc. 45