Free people of color
Free people of color were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent in the Americas who were not enslaved. However, the term also applied to people born free who were primarily of black African descent with little mixture.
There were distinct groups of free people of color in the French colonies, including Louisiana and in settlements on Caribbean islands, such as Saint-Domingue, St. Lucia, Dominica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. In these territories and major cities, particularly New Orleans, and those cities held by the Spanish, a substantial third class of primarily mixed-race, free people developed.
These colonial societies classified mixed-race people in a variety of ways, generally related to visible features and to the proportion of African ancestry. Racial classifications were numerous in Latin America.
A freed African slave was known as affranchi. The term was sometimes meant to include the free people of color, but they considered the term pejorative since they had been born free.
The term gens de couleur libres was commonly used in France's West Indian colonies prior to the abolition of slavery. It frequently referred to free people of mixed African and European ancestry.
In British North America, the term free Negro was often used to cover the same class of people—those who were legally free and visibly of African descent.
Saint-Domingue
By the late 18th century prior to the Haitian Revolution, Saint-Domingue was legally divided into three distinct groups: free whites ; freedmen, and slaves. More than half of the affranchis were gens de couleur libres; others were considered freed black slaves. In addition, maroons were sometimes able to establish independent small communities and a kind of freedom in the mountains, along with remnants of Haiti's original Taino people. A large group of surviving Native Tainos also supported the Haitian Revolution; they were known as "indiens esclaves" which numbered about 5,000. In a 1780 census, there was also a group listed as "indiens sauvages", which Haitian historians believe were the native Arawak and Taino that were known to live in tiny reclusive mountain communities at this point.Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first ruler of independent Haiti and a leader of the Revolution, talked about people whom he called "Rouges", or sometimes "Incas" in his letters. When they were spoken about in context of the war, he makes mention of cooperation between Africans and Natives in maroon communities that plotted against colonists on the southern peninsula. He also discusses "Incas among his men" showing him secret burial quarters in the Artibonite valley that could be used by rebels as shelter and storage. There were 3,000 known Native peoples living in Haiti in the years before independence, according to a 1802 colonial census.
Dessalines did not forget these people and their sacrifices against Spain and now, France. He named the Haitian army "the Incas", "the Army of the Sun" and eventually "the Indigenous Army" in honor of them. He also renamed the island "Haiti", its pre-Columbian name.
When slavery was ended in the colony in 1793, by action of the French government following the French Revolution, there were approximately 28,000 anciens libres in Saint-Domingue. The term was used to distinguish those who were already free, compared to those liberated by the general emancipation of 1793. About 16,000 of these anciens libres were gens de couleur libres. Another 12,000 were affranchis, black former slaves who had either purchased their freedom or had been given it by their masters for various reasons.
Rights
Regardless of their ethnicity, in Saint-Domingue freedmen had been able to own land. Some acquired plantations and owned large numbers of slaves themselves. The slaves were generally not friendly with the freedmen, who sometimes portrayed themselves to whites as bulwarks against a slave uprising. As property owners, freedmen tended to support distinct lines set between their own class and that of slaves. Also often working as artisans, shopkeepers or landowners, the gens de couleur frequently became quite prosperous, and many prided themselves on their European culture and descent. They were often well-educated in the French language, and they tended to scorn the Haitian Creole language used by slaves. Most gens de couleur libres were reared as Roman Catholic, also part of French culture, and many denounced the Vodoun religion brought with slaves from Africa.Under the ancien régime, despite the provisions of equality nominally established in the Code Noir, the gens de couleur were limited in their freedoms. They did not possess the same rights as Frenchmen, specifically the right to vote. Most supported slavery on the island, at least up to the time of the French Revolution. But they sought equal rights for free people of color, which became an early central issue of the unfolding Haitian Revolution.
The primary adversary of the gens de couleur before and into the Haitian Revolution were the working-class white people such as farmers and tradesmen of the colony, known as the petits blancs. Because of the freedmen's relative economic success in the region, sometimes related to blood ties to influential whites people, the petits blancs farmers often resented their social standing and worked to keep them shut out of government. Beyond financial incentives, the free coloreds caused the working-class whites further problems in finding women to start a family. The successful mulattos often won the hands of the small number of eligible women on the island. With growing resentment, the working-class whites monopolized assembly participation and caused the free people of color to look to France for legislative assistance.
Race and class had a unique relationship to one another in Saint-Domingue; class differences meant that there was no singular “free colored class.” The statuses varied among gens de couleur and varied by region. In the South Province, unusually high mortality rates and a low number of slaves caused slave owners to prohibit slaves from buying their freedom. Out of 256 manumissions in Cayes, St Louis, and Nippes in the 1760s, “only two were cases in which slaves were described as purchasing themselves.” In the North, Stewart King describes “ a significant source of income for slave owners during bad years.” This elaborates on why the southern region's free population of colour was significantly less than that of the North, specifically as little as three percent of all people of African descent in Saint-Domingue. This also led to economic disparities between regions within free colored communities. Wealthy gens de couleur enjoyed the same rights as white farmers, except for the right to vote. This granted them the ability to own land and become landlords and even purchase and brand their own slaves. Their wealth and status also often shielded them from various forms of discrimination due to their connection with the white farmers in Saint-Domingue, though some discrimination still existed. Wealthy gens de couleur are a particularly important group in the context of the Haitian Revolution, as they were the most powerful group of people to fight for independence when the French began stripping away power from the gens of couleur, which served as one of the many catalysts for the Revolution.
Free people of color also had unique methods of achieving upward mobility, usually with a tangible skill or business. Contraband trade with Santo Domingo allowed planters to avoid raising their own meat; on both sides, men of mixed race were prominent in the trade. Free people of color were able to take livestock and keep them for independent butcheries or resell at a profit. This practice was incredibly prominent, and most free people of color raised their own livestock. Free colored people would also find opportunities for growth in other fields. For example, in 1761, the blockades from the Seven Years' War made it difficult to buy European products. Seeing an opportunity for growth, free colored man Philippe paid Louis Verais 3000 livres for a half-share in mulatto slave Joseph, a 35-year-old shoemaker. At 6000 livres, Joseph became three times as valuable as an average male slave through the contract. Other free colored men or slaves found success through saddle-making, a highly respected and lucrative craft; some even used this momentum from saddle-making to become planters. In 1752, a saddle-maker named Julien Delaunay, a free colored man, agreed to pay 300 livres to another man to capture and butcher animals for him. Later, he accumulated enough money to buy a hillside farm for 3000 livres. Even further on, in the 1770s and 1780s, Delaunay was considered a planter more than he was a saddle-maker.
Regarding social mobility, free women of color had a unique opportunity to achieve freedom due to an imbalance in Saint-Domingue’s population. Saint-Domingue had relatively few European women; French immigration to the colony was overwhelmingly male. Early on, French men outnumbered women by about four to one or up to six to one. These factors led to female slaves being able to utilize sex to “forge complex relationships with their masters" and receive better odds of freedom. However, sex was not the only way women could achieve social mobility; some also relied on white patrons to help sustain economic independence. Such can be seen with Marie Bety, who relied on “Jean Maignan, the white former militia commander of the Nippes district," who served as a banker for Bety from 1749 to 1760. Maignan would often disburse money that Bety spent, such as a kerchief, linen, and striped muslin she purchased from a merchant named Tolet. Bety used Maignan’s continued patronage to assert authority over the white men she employed. “It was through him that she paid a white man to guard her property, a doctor to treat a slave, and a bailiff to serve papers on a white planter." Women also had higher manumission rates, granting them earlier access to capital ownership, thus leading to free women of color often dominating free men of color in Saint-Domingue’s economy.