Jean-Baptiste Belley

Jean-Baptiste Belley
Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley by Girodet, 1797. Belley appears with a bust of the abolitionist Guillaume Raynal.
Deputy in the National Convention
In office
24 September 1793 – 31 October 1795
Parliamentary groupThe Mountain
ConstituencySaint-Domingue
Deputy in the Council of Five Hundred
In office
31 October 1795 – May 1797
Parliamentary groupThe Mountain
ConstituencySaint-Domingue
Personal details
Bornc. 1746
Gorée, French Senegal, Kingdom of France
Died1805
Le Palais, Brittany, French Empire

Jean-Baptiste Belley (c. 1746 – 1805) was a Saint Dominican and French politician. A native of Senegal and formerly enslaved in the colony of Saint-Domingue, in the French West Indies, he was an elected member of the National Convention and the Council of Five Hundred during the French First Republic.[1] He was also known as Mars.[2]

Life

Belley was said to have been born on 1 July 1746 or 1747 on the island of Gorée, Senegal, but the precise dates of his birth and death are uncertain. At the age of two, he was sold to slavers sailing for the French colony of Saint-Domingue. With his savings, he later bought his freedom.[2]

In 1791, Saint Dominican Creoles incited a slave rebellion, aimed at the overthrow of the Bourbon Regime. As their fellow revolutionaries in France thought the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789, they began to see that slavery would need to be abolished.[3]

In 1793, Belley was a captain of infantry, fought against the Bourbon forces of Saint-Domingue and was six times wounded. On 24 September 1793, he was one of three members (deputés) elected to the French National Convention by the northern region of Saint-Domingue, together with Jean-Baptiste Mills, of mixed race, and Louis-Pierre Dufaÿ, a European, thus becoming the first black deputy to take a seat in the convention.[3][4][5] He, along with the other two elected deputies, sat with the Montagnards.[1] On 3 February 1794, he spoke in a debate in the Convention when it decided unanimously to abolish slavery.[2][3][4]

However, the formal abolition of slavery did not disarm the Bourbon Government supporters, and the war continued. Although he was recognized as a full citizen of the Republic, Belley was an active spokesman for black people. When Benoît Gouly, a pro-slavery deputy from Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, called for special laws reinstituting slavery for the French colonies, Belley denounced a pressure group of colonists meeting at the Hôtel Massiac called Club de l'hôtel de Massiac[6] in a speech published under the title Le Bout d'oreille des colons, ou le système de l'Hôtel Massiac mis à jour par Gouly.[7] He succeeded for a time in maintaining the Republican principle of equality between people in France and in its colonies, whatever their colour.[4]

In a declaration of age and marital status for the representatives of Saint-Domingue in the convention, Belley says that he was born at Gorée, is forty-eight years old, has never left the territory of the republic, and has lived forty six years at Cap-Français.[5] In a 'declaration of fortune' dated at Paris on 10 Vendémiaire, Year 4 of the Republic (viz., 1 October 1795), Belley declares that from the Republic he has only his 'emoluments', that he has bought no property, and that he owns only the contents of his room.[8]

Belley continued to serve into the Council of Five Hundred and was reelected on 8 September 1796.[9] On 5 March 1797, he drew the note stating: "Member of the Council of 500 until this coming May."[1] He returned to Saint-Domingue with Charles Leclerc's expedition of 1802 as an officer of gendarmes, but he was arrested, sent back to France and imprisoned in the fortress of Belle Île. He was still being held prisoner there in 1805 when he wrote to Isaac Louverture, the son of Toussaint Louverture. He died later the same year.[3]

Portrait

In about 1797, Belley's portrait was painted by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, and was exhibited in Paris in 1798.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c Levecq, Christine (2019). "Jean-Baptiste Belley and French Republicanism". Black Cosmopolitans: Race, Religion, and Republicanism in an Age of Revolution. University of Virginia Press. ISBN 9780813942193.
  2. ^ a b c d Hall, Catherine, [1]Archived 11 December 2006 at the Wayback Machine Review of The Birth of the Modern World 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons, by C. A. Bayly online at history.ac.uk, accessed 7 August 2008
  3. ^ a b c d Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy~Trioson Archived 18 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine, at safran-arts.com, accessed 7 August 2008
  4. ^ a b c (French) Jean-Baptiste Belley, député de Saint-Domingue à la Convention at histoire-image.org, accessed 7 August 2008
  5. ^ a b (French) Declaration of age and marital status Archived 28 November 2006 at the Wayback Machine, manuscript conserved at the Centre historique des Archives nationales, Paris, photograph online at histoire-image.org, accessed 7 August 2008
  6. ^ The club of reactionary colonial proprietors meeting since July 1789 at the Hôtel Massiac werere opposed to representation in the Assemblée of France's overseas dominions, for fear "that this would expose delicate colonial issues to the hazards of debate in the Assembly," as Robin Blackburn expressed it (Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 (1988:174f). These opponents of the anti-slavery Amis des Noirs included Pierre-Victor Malouet, a leader of the monarchiens, and Moreau de Saint-Méry, President of the Electors of Paris, who received the keys to the fallen Bastille, which were later presented to another slaveholder, George Washington (noted by Blackburn, 174).
  7. ^ "The planters' cloven hoof revealed, or the Hôtel Massiac project published by Gouly". The "ear-tip", the bout d'oreille of the title, refers to La Fontaine's couplet, from L'Ane vêtu d'une Peau de Lion ("The Ass Dressed in a Lion Skin"): Un petit bout d'oreille, echappé par malheur, / Découvrit la fourbe et l'erreur... (A small bit of ear-tip, unluckily escaped, uncovered the ruse and the error...).
  8. ^ (French) Declaration of fortune Archived 23 November 2006 at the Wayback Machine, manuscript conserved at the Centre historique des Archives nationales, Paris, photograph online at histoire-image.org, accessed 7 August 2008
  9. ^ Gaffney, Jennifer Ann (23 April 2014). Citizenship and Emancipation: Voting Rights during the Haitian Revolution after 1793 (Thesis). p. 75. hdl:1969.1/152862.
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