Annexes
Concepts eurocentriques et définitions (d’après Terrence A. James, 2005)
- History: A chronological or narrative of chronological records of events.
- Self-esteem: Pride in oneself; self-respect.
- Culture: A group’s program for survival and adaptation to its environment.
- Negro: A member of the negroid ethnic division of the human species. A black person in America whose ancestry can be traced directly back to his/her slave master.
- Ethnic and Racial Pride: Cultural and racial self-respect.
- Racism: A racially motivated act carried out by one ethnic group towards another ethnic group that results in one group’s suffering a bad experience based on the belief that some ethnic groups are inherently better than others and therefore deserve oppressive treatment.
- Cultural Pluralism: Multiple, several or numerous presentations of many cultures.
- Community: A group of people having interests, likenesses/characteristics living inthe same locality and under the same government.
- Segregation: The practice of separating the races particularly for educational control, miseducation and counseling and guidance into certain occupations.
- Ethnicity: The condition of belonging to a particular ethnic group/a sizeable group of people who share common characteristics; language, religion and cultural heritage.
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Objet : Talleyrand demande aux Américains de cesser tout commerce avec Haïti après l’indépendance
Ce petit texte de Talleyrand résume toute l’idéologie raciste de l’époque qui, jusqu’à aujourd’hui, domine l’imaginaire collectif occidental et non-occidental.
Lettre de Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, alors ministre des Relations extérieures de Napoléon Bonaparte, à l’ambassadeur de France à Washington, le général Louis-Marie Turreau, lui demandant de faire pression sur les autorités américaines pour cesser toute activité commerciale avec Haïti. Le 28 février 1806, les États-Unis ont décrété un blocus contre le nouvel État.
« Il est devenu nécessaire de renouveler les représentations déjà adressées au gouvernement fédéral et d’insister de nouveau auprès de lui pour qu’il adopte enfin des mesures sévères et propres à prévenir de semblables communications entre une nation policée et des peuplades sauvages qui, par leurs mœurs féroces et leurs usages barbares, sont devenues étrangères au système de la civilisation; non seulement la sûreté de la France, mais encore la sûreté de toutes les colonies européennes et celles des États-Unis réclament ces cessation. Quel est le résultat de ces rapports commerciaux? De fournir à des hommes atroces les moyens de perpétuer leurs excès, de leur donner le pouvoir de signaler par de nouvelles cruautés, une haine constante et générale pour tous les hommes que la naissance, les mœurs distinguent d’eux; de perpétuer au milieu des Antilles un établissement de brigandage et de piraterie […].
L’existence d’une peuplade nègre armée et occupant les lieux qu’elle a souillés par les actes les plus criminels est un spectacle horrible pour toutes les nations blanches; toutes doivent sentir qu’en la laissant subsister dans cet état, elles épargnent des incendiaires et des assassins, et il n’est pas de raison assez forte pour que des particuliers appartenant à un gouvernement loyal et généreux secourent des brigands qui sont déclarés par leurs excès les ennemis de tous les gouvernements; il est impossible de croire que les nègres de Saint-Domingue aient quelques titres à une protection et que les chances commerciales résultant d’un trafic aussi odieux balancent les raisons graves et décisives qui le prohibent entièrement. »
Source : Pierre Branda et Thierry Lentz. 2006. Napoléon, l’esclavage et les colonies, Paris : Fayard, p. 201-202.
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Thomas Jefferson on the French and Haitian Revolutions, 1792 © 2013 The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Transcript
Thomas Jefferson to Marquis de Lafayette, June 16, 1792. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC08063)
Philadelphia, June 16, 1792.
Behold you then, my dear friend, at the head of a great army, establishing the liberties of your country against a foreign enemy. may heaven favor your cause, and make you the channel thro’ which it may pour it’s [sic] favors. while you are exterminating the monster aristocracy & pulling out the teeth & fangs of its associate monarchy, a contrary tendency is discovered in some here. a sect has shown itself among us, who declare they espoused our new constitution, not as a good & sufficient thing itself, but only as a step to an English constitution, the only thing good & sufficient, in their eye. it is happy for us that these are preachers without followers, and that our people are firm & constant in their republican purity. you will wonder to be told that it is from the Eastward chiefly that these champions for a king, lords & commons come. they get some important associates from New York, and are puffed off by a tribe of Agioteurs which have been hatched in a bed of corruption made up after the model of their beloved England. too many of these stock jobbers & King-jobbers have come into our legislature, or rather too many of our legislature have become stock jobbers & king-jobbers. However, the voice of the people [2] is beginning to make itself heard, and will probably cleanse their seats at the ensuing election. – the machinations of our old enemies are such as to keep us still at bay with our Indian neighbors. –what are you doing for your colonies? they will be lost if not more effectually succored. Indeed no future efforts you can make will ever be able to reduce the blacks. all that can be done in my opinion will be to compound with them as has been done formerly in Jamaica. we have been less zealous in aiding them, lest your government should feel any jealousy on our account. But in truth we as sincerely wish their restoration, and their connection with you, as you do yourselves. we are satisfied that neither your justice nor their distresses will ever again [struck: be] permit [struck: ed] their being forced to seek at dear & distant markets those first necessaries of life which they may have at cheaper markets placed by nature at their door, & formed by her for their support: – what is become of Mde de Tessy and Mde de Tott? I have not heard of them since they went to Switzerland. I think they would have done better to have come & reposed under the Poplars of Virginia. pour into their bosoms the warmest effusions of my friendship & tell them they will be warm and constant unto death. accept of them also for Mde de la Fayette & your dear children – but I am forgetting that you are in the fields of war, &then I hope in those of peace. Adieu my dear friend! God bless you all.
Yours affectionately Th. Jefferson
