Augustin Brunais

In the 18th century, in both Americas, including the Caribbean islands under the French colonial rule, an intermediate social stratum emerged between black slaves and white colonisers. The so-called gens de couleur libre were free, but their position in the colonial system often depended on their skin tone—the lighter the hue, the higher their position in the social hierarchy. The anti-colonial uprising, sparked by the French Revolution, that led to the creation of the free island state of Haiti was a true test of the Enlightenment values which revealed the disparity between universal philosophical postulates and the practice (the French Revolution did not extend its achievements in the domain of freedom to the colonies). The echoes of the Enlightenment ideas and the French Revolution would reached the colonies. Meanwhile, the echoes of events in the colonies reached Poland, a country slowly losing its independence, where peasants’ lot remained undoubtedly worse than the situation of the ‘free citizens of Dominica’.