Political Convictions: French De(X>rtation Projects in the Age of Revolutions, 1791·1854 Allyson Jaye Delnore Char!olles,·ille. Virginia B.A., Wesuninsler College. 1996 M.A., University ofMass.achusetts, 1998 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor ofPhiJosophy Department of History University of Virginia August 10M © Copyright by Allyson Jaye Delnore All Rights Reserved August 2004 Abstract Political Convictions: French Deportation Projects in the Age of Revolutions, 1791-1854 This work studies the role of deportation in the punishment of political protest and the consolidation of power in France between the French Revolution and the Second Empire. In particular, it traces the development of an official policy of colonizing the overseas empire with French deportees. Approximately 10,000 individuals were deported within the French overseas empire as a result of colonization through deportation efforts during this period. Of these men and women, the vast majority had been implicated in crimes of protest or revolution. In fact, deportation decrees became a common official response to social and political troubles throughout greater France during the Age of Revolutions. Though little known, the history of deportation is the story of various interest groups negotiating within a political culture that valued three different goals, all of which spanned changes in government and governing ideology between the Revolution of 1789 and the Second Empire: (1) cleansing the metropole and colonies of revolutionary elements, (2) improving the economic situation of existing colonies, and (3) finding French men and women to serve as pioneers in new lands. Throughout this period, many political elites and social reformers advanced the theory that deporting political criminals would secure order in the metropole, strengthen the overseas empire with an infusion of new “colonists,” and even result in the moreal reformation of the convicts. Yet for all the grand intentions of French political elites, each successive attempt at establishing communities of deportees overseas failed due to a combination of legislative indecision in the metropole, administrative inefficiency within the empire at large, concerns over local stability in the overseas colonies, and an almost universal unwillingness to participate in the colonial project on the part of the deportees. Nevertheless, for over sixty years, political elites continued to support colonization through deportation measures despite these failures. Only after official and popular perceptions of common-law crime changed, thereby linking common- law criminals to social and political disorder, did the official attitude toward deportation change. After 1854, the goal of deportation was not colonization, but merely the internment of dangerous criminals in remote locations. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As with any work of this magnitude and personal significance, this dissertation would not have been possible without the steady assistance of a remarkable array of people. I first have to take this opportunity to thank my dissertation director, Professor Sophia Rosenfeld, whose patient advice, prompt comments, and insight made the research and writing process manageable and even fascinating. For allowing me time to complete my research and begin writing in France, I am grateful to the German Marshall Fund, the University of Virginia, and the École Normale Supérieure for finding merit enough in my project to grant me the resources I needed to pursue it. And for making the research time in France all the more productive and enjoyable, I owe Jennifer Sessions, in particular, a debt of gratitude for sending references, helping me figure out research logistics, and being a steady friend. I want also to thank my parents, Sam and Jenafer Dunn, for believing that I would someday finish school (despite the evidence to the contrary). And, finally, I am forever grateful to my husband, Abe, from whom I asked as much editing advice as I did love and support, and who was never stingy with either. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . iv Chapter INTRODUCTION . 1 One A REVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO PUNISHMENT . 24 Two BUILDING EMPIRES, DEPORTING ENEMIES . 94 Three SEVENTY REPUBLICANS IN THE SEYCHELLES . 131 Four WRESTLING WITH RATTLESNAKES . 153 Five FINDING A PLACE FOR PUNISHMENT . 214 Six THE LYON PLOTTERS AS AGENTS OF CIVILIZATION . 251 Seven CONVICTS IN THE COLONIES AND A NEW PUBLIC ORDER . 286 CONCLUSION . 333 Appendix One MAPS . 343 Two ILLUSTRATIONS . 349 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 353 For Abe, Sam, and Jenafer with thanks and affection LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AN Archives nationales, Paris BN Bibliothèque nationale, Paris AN CAOM Archives national centre des archives d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence APP Archives de la Prefecture de Paris AP Archives parlementaires SHAT Service historique de l’armée de terre, Paris SHM Service historique de la marine, Paris 1 Introduction The lives, experiences, and beliefs of French political deportees defy formulaic descriptions and broad generalities. For those men and women forcibly sent abroad to France’s overseas colonies during the period between the French Revolution and the Second Empire, both the reasons for their exile and the prospects for their return to France diverged widely. During this period of political and social revolution, moreover, the backgrounds and ideologies of deportees differed dramatically from person to person. From landed property owners to carpenters, from royalists to democratic-socialists, a complete list of the deportees from the Age of Revolution would cover the full spectrum of social classes and political allegiances available to French people at this time. Let us consider, for example, the brief biographical portraits of two victims of deportation who figure prominently in this dissertation—François Barbé-Marbois and Alphonse Gent. The Comte François de Barbé-Marbois was born in 1745, the son of the director of the royal mint in Metz. Rising in the king’s service through his family connections, Barbé-Marbois received a post as a French representative abroad and in the colonies. He served as a consul-general in the United States and as intendant to French San Domingue. Recalled to France in 1789, he held a post at the foreign ministry until retiring from national politics in 1791 and returning to Metz as the town’s mayor. During the Directory, he once more returned to the national political stage upon his election to the Council of Ancients. His royalist sympathies, however, resulted in his deportation to French Guiana in South America after the Fructidor coup of 4 September 1797. But after Napoleon’s seizure of power in 1799, Barbé-Marbois received permission to return to 2 France, and he henceforth considered himself indebted to the First Consul for his renewed liberty. In 1801, Barbé-Marbois was named director of the public treasury, and in 1802, he became a senator. He negotiated the treaty wherein the French ceded the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803, and received in return a substantial monetary gift from Bonaparte as well as the title of count. Yet despite his apparent allegiance to the emperor, Barbé-Marbois was one of the authors of Napoleon’s act of abdication in 1814. Consequently, Louis XVIII made him a peer of France in June 1814 and appointed him the Minister of Justice in August 1815. Leaving the ministry in May 1816 to appease the ultra-conservative members of the Chamber, he remained president of the cour des comptes until his retirement for health reasons in April 1834. His final years were devoted to composing his memoirs, including two separate accounts of his time as a deportee.1 Following a quite different political path, Alphonse Gent was born in Roquemaure, France in 1813 to a bourgeois family. Trained as a lawyer, Gent joined the bar first at Nimes, then at Avignon. In 1848, he was elected deputy of the Vaucluse, in which capacity he sat on the extreme left of the Assembly and became commissioner of the provisional government of Avignon. Heading for Paris in 1849, he failed in his bid to win a seat on the Legislative Assembly and instead collaborated with Henri Delescluze on the left-wing journal, Révolution démocratique et sociale. With the help of a friend in 1 For autobiographical information, see François de Barbé-Marbois, Histoire de la Louisiane et de la cession de cette colonie par la France aux États-Unis de l'Amérique septentrionale, vol. 1829 (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1829); François de Barbé-Marbois, Journal d'un déporté non jugé, ou déportation, en violation des lois, décrétée le 18 fructidor an V (4 septembre 1797), 2 vols., vol. 1 (Paris: Institut de France, 1834); François de Barbé-Marbois, Histoire de plusieurs déportés à Sinnamari racontée par un père à ses enfans (Limoges: Barbou, 1839). 3 the Ministry of Public Works, Gent narrowly escaped arrest on 13 June 1849, but agreed to defend some of the social-democrats caught up in Lyon during the persecutions. Remaining in the Midi region of France, Gent’s actions were carefully monitored by the high police, who finally arrested him the next year for conspiracy against the government. Along with two other men, Gent was sentenced to deportation to the Marquesas Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Two years after his arrival in the remote island chain, his sentence was commuted to exile and he and his wife went to live in Chile for several years. Gent finally returned to Europe in 1861. Living in Italy and Spain, he wrote articles for two French newspapers, Le Siècle and Le Temps. Then, receiving word that the emperor Napoleon III considered the term of his exile to have expired, Gent and his wife returned to France, where he re-entered political life around 1869. But clashing with Gambetta in his attempts to regain a foothold in local politics in southern France, Gent did not return to his former standing until the end of the Second Empire and the creation of the Third Republic in 1871.