In 1793, France declared war on Great Britain. The grands blancs in
Saint-Domingue, unhappy with Sonthonax, arranged with Great Britain
to declare British sovereignty over the colony,
believing that the British would maintain slavery.
William Pitt the Younger, believed that the success of the slave
revolt in Saint-Domingue would encourage slave insurrections
throughout British Caribbean colonies. He also thought that
control of Saint-Domingue, the richest of the French colonies,
would be a useful bargaining chip in eventual peace negotiations
with France.
The French were concerned with financing industrialization based upon
New World slavery. England occupying Saint-Domingue would mean access
of its great wealth while simultaneously preventing French industrialization.
Instead, an embargo upon knowledge of a successful slave revolt was
necessary, in fear of igniting slave revolts throughout the New World
(possibly even in Africa, Australia, India, British Guyana: all British
colonies). Furthermore, the cost to the British was millions of pounds,
and thousands of dead soldiers, which would anger the English population
(with the anger of the Gordon Riots and with the French Revolution in
mind as an example of an alternative - hence Pitt's Terror).
In 1797 Colonel Thomas Maitland arrived in Port-au-Prince, and wrote that
the British army in Saint-Domingue had been "annihilated" by the yellow
fever. Toussaint L'Ouverture took the fortress at Mirebalais, then Fort
Churchill in an assault that was as noted for its professionalism as well as
for its ferocity. Though the British used artillery, Toussaint L'Ouverture's
army placed ladders on the fortress walls. Though Toussaint L'Ouverture's army
was driven back four times, with heavy losses, Toussaint L'Ouverture's army
won in 1798: Maitland sailed to London to advise a withdrawal from Port-au-Prince,
but Toussaint L'Ouverture "promised" not to support slave revolts in British
Jamaica.
Thus England was quite involved with French Colonial slavery in the New World,
and Bluestockings like Jane Austen pointing out problems with pluralism and
absenteeism related to slavery in the Caribbean plantations were not welcome.
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