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Remembering that Napoleon reinstated slavery in France

23 points by samizdis 6y ago

throw_m239339 6y ago
Napoleon was a bloody dictator, he shouldn't be celebrated by someone supposed to represent the republic like Macron. Did he celebrate the first french republic in September? No, because he is from/married into the old french bourgeoisie, that's who he represents and works for given his terrible record.
- bleeding 6y ago
  The first French Republic was very much a bourgeois government so I’m not sure why his marriage would keep him from celebrating it.
  - throw_m239339 6y ago
    > The first French Republic was very much a bourgeois government so I’m not sure why his marriage would keep him from celebrating it. The first republic is the foundation of the french state. What's next, Macron celebrating Louis the XVI?
- watwut 6y ago
  Reminder that "bourgeoisie" means "the middle class". Most of us here on HN are bourgeoisie or higher. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with being from the middle class. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with government people being middle class either, in an ideal economy, bourgeoisie is the most common kind of citizen.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    The French overthrew and executed much of their upper class, so their middle class became the elite there, and that's why the term is used in that way. Compared to the UK where there is still an upper class.
    - paleotrope 6y ago
      That is such a simplification of the actual history as to be basically meaningless.
  - kiliantics 6y ago
    That's one definition. Marx defines it specifically as the class of people who own the means of production.
  - throw_m239339 6y ago
    > Reminder that "bourgeoisie" means "the middle class" No, "bourgeoisie" doesn't mean "middle class". I'm using the Marxist definition of the word, I'm not including a household on teacher's salary who own a home. That's what the actual middle-class is in France.
- batmansmk 6y ago
  What you say about Napoleon's political ambition is true. But talking about Napoleon only as a dictator is not understanding the historical context. The Republic was also very bloody; the times were bloody, not just under the rule of the corsican. Isaac Newton dealt in slaves, Euler worked directly under the order of a bloody dictator... yet we can still talk and study their life, right? Remember, we will all look terrible in 200 years from now, maybe because we use gasoline, or eat meat, or buy products made by children, or our capitalism, or our positino towards sex change or racial equality or whatever will shock people's future ethics and morale value. Maybe when I went shopping this morning I committed 15 cardinal sins of the future.
- Renaud 6y ago
  The legacy of Napoleon is much more complex than that. Want it or not, he's both a terrible conqueror animated by a thirst for power at all cost and also a builder of modern institutions still in use today. The same things could be said of most kings, queens and emperors of Europe across the ages. Reigns without mercy, enslaving and conquering, abusing and torturing, yet they cemented the future and a good portion of the institutions they set up are still in use today in one form or another. And yet people still honour their memory and their legacy. Napoleon's reign caught up because the state was in trouble at the end of the XVIII century (insecurity, lack of funds, a general state of disarray). The rapid change in political structure -with all its instabilities- after the Revolution made (some) people yearn for stability. And thus Napoleon seized power through a coup. And that's how the country got governed by a dictator, who proclaimed himself Emperor and started to chip away at people's freedoms in the name of stability. A somewhat still-current cautionary tale...
dudul 6y ago
Probably a technicality but slavery was never authorized in mainland France. It was only in the colonies. I know it didn't change anything for those who were enslaved, but it may also be good to remember that it was a time when all major powers used slaves, and France made a point of never allowing it in the actual country.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  > it was a time when all major powers used slaves This is really key here. There's a trend to hold people of the past up to standards of the present, but the world was extremely different then. Before the advent of farming machines and nitrogen fixation, labor dictated the power of a nation, labor relations and unions weren't a big thing, and a huge majority of the population worked in agriculture. Because there were no nuclear weapons capable of destroying the entire planet, superpowers commonly fought for resources, meaning the surviving nations had to be strong. The world is different.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Napoleon reinstated it in 1802 and it was abolished in 1848. There were only 46 years in between. The state bought the slaves and then freed them. That is not a question of change within centuries, that is various people at that time making active decision to keep or abolish slavery.
    - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
      None of what I stated contradicts what you said. But limited resource availability and geopolitical instability made that political decision to remove slavery much more difficult than it is today.
      - watwut 6y ago
        Did it, really? Was France resource starved when Napoleon decided to take over Russia too? Or rather, was he power hungry, ambitious and did not cared? Why do you assume that 1948 decision was super hard due to missing resources? Napoleon contemporaries did characterized him as power hungry tyrant. This is not just projecting current values. People in the past had opinions too. There's a trend of assuming that people in the past were simple, without agency and that society was uniform. Contemporary people do make own decisions, some of them harmful and egoistic. We don't blame current political decisions (including stuff like what Isis did) purely on circumstances. The past people deserve the same treatment.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Renaud 6y ago
Something that I don't see mentioned in the article is that slave-owners in the French Caribbean threatened to switch to the British side following the abolition of slavery -as slavery had not been abolished by the British at that time, a fact that is also not mentioned in the article. Napoleon reinstated slavery for a lot of reasons. None of them good but it looks like inaction would not have been such a bounty for the local populations either way...
prionassembly 6y ago
Didn't Macron give some kind of posthumous honor to Pétain? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4tWz0iOCzY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4tWz0iOCzY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slx4IsfsZPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slx4IsfsZPA https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46129990 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46129990 https://www.france24.com/en/20181108-macron-stokes-anger-with-plan-honour-nazi-collaborator-petain-world-war-1-vichy https://www.france24.com/en/20181108-macron-stokes-anger-wit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_P%C3%A9tain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_P%C3%A9tain

23 points by samizdis 6y ago

Napoleon was a bloody dictator, he shouldn't be celebrated by someone supposed to represent the republic like Macron. Did he celebrate the first french republic in September? No, because he is from/married into the old french bourgeoisie, that's who he represents and works for given his terrible record.

bleeding 6y ago
The first French Republic was very much a bourgeois government so I’m not sure why his marriage would keep him from celebrating it.
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  > The first French Republic was very much a bourgeois government so I’m not sure why his marriage would keep him from celebrating it. The first republic is the foundation of the french state. What's next, Macron celebrating Louis the XVI?
watwut 6y ago
Reminder that "bourgeoisie" means "the middle class". Most of us here on HN are bourgeoisie or higher. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with being from the middle class. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with government people being middle class either, in an ideal economy, bourgeoisie is the most common kind of citizen.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  The French overthrew and executed much of their upper class, so their middle class became the elite there, and that's why the term is used in that way. Compared to the UK where there is still an upper class.
  - paleotrope 6y ago
    That is such a simplification of the actual history as to be basically meaningless.
- kiliantics 6y ago
  That's one definition. Marx defines it specifically as the class of people who own the means of production.
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  > Reminder that "bourgeoisie" means "the middle class" No, "bourgeoisie" doesn't mean "middle class". I'm using the Marxist definition of the word, I'm not including a household on teacher's salary who own a home. That's what the actual middle-class is in France.
batmansmk 6y ago
What you say about Napoleon's political ambition is true. But talking about Napoleon only as a dictator is not understanding the historical context. The Republic was also very bloody; the times were bloody, not just under the rule of the corsican. Isaac Newton dealt in slaves, Euler worked directly under the order of a bloody dictator... yet we can still talk and study their life, right? Remember, we will all look terrible in 200 years from now, maybe because we use gasoline, or eat meat, or buy products made by children, or our capitalism, or our positino towards sex change or racial equality or whatever will shock people's future ethics and morale value. Maybe when I went shopping this morning I committed 15 cardinal sins of the future.
Renaud 6y ago
The legacy of Napoleon is much more complex than that. Want it or not, he's both a terrible conqueror animated by a thirst for power at all cost and also a builder of modern institutions still in use today. The same things could be said of most kings, queens and emperors of Europe across the ages. Reigns without mercy, enslaving and conquering, abusing and torturing, yet they cemented the future and a good portion of the institutions they set up are still in use today in one form or another. And yet people still honour their memory and their legacy. Napoleon's reign caught up because the state was in trouble at the end of the XVIII century (insecurity, lack of funds, a general state of disarray). The rapid change in political structure -with all its instabilities- after the Revolution made (some) people yearn for stability. And thus Napoleon seized power through a coup. And that's how the country got governed by a dictator, who proclaimed himself Emperor and started to chip away at people's freedoms in the name of stability. A somewhat still-current cautionary tale...

dudul 6y ago

Probably a technicality but slavery was never authorized in mainland France. It was only in the colonies. I know it didn't change anything for those who were enslaved, but it may also be good to remember that it was a time when all major powers used slaves, and France made a point of never allowing it in the actual country.

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
> it was a time when all major powers used slaves This is really key here. There's a trend to hold people of the past up to standards of the present, but the world was extremely different then. Before the advent of farming machines and nitrogen fixation, labor dictated the power of a nation, labor relations and unions weren't a big thing, and a huge majority of the population worked in agriculture. Because there were no nuclear weapons capable of destroying the entire planet, superpowers commonly fought for resources, meaning the surviving nations had to be strong. The world is different.
- watwut 6y ago
  Napoleon reinstated it in 1802 and it was abolished in 1848. There were only 46 years in between. The state bought the slaves and then freed them. That is not a question of change within centuries, that is various people at that time making active decision to keep or abolish slavery.
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    None of what I stated contradicts what you said. But limited resource availability and geopolitical instability made that political decision to remove slavery much more difficult than it is today.
    - watwut 6y ago
      Did it, really? Was France resource starved when Napoleon decided to take over Russia too? Or rather, was he power hungry, ambitious and did not cared? Why do you assume that 1948 decision was super hard due to missing resources? Napoleon contemporaries did characterized him as power hungry tyrant. This is not just projecting current values. People in the past had opinions too. There's a trend of assuming that people in the past were simple, without agency and that society was uniform. Contemporary people do make own decisions, some of them harmful and egoistic. We don't blame current political decisions (including stuff like what Isis did) purely on circumstances. The past people deserve the same treatment.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Renaud 6y ago

Something that I don't see mentioned in the article is that slave-owners in the French Caribbean threatened to switch to the British side following the abolition of slavery -as slavery had not been abolished by the British at that time, a fact that is also not mentioned in the article. Napoleon reinstated slavery for a lot of reasons. None of them good but it looks like inaction would not have been such a bounty for the local populations either way...

prionassembly 6y ago

Didn't Macron give some kind of posthumous honor to Pétain? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4tWz0iOCzY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4tWz0iOCzY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slx4IsfsZPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slx4IsfsZPA https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46129990 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46129990 https://www.france24.com/en/20181108-macron-stokes-anger-with-plan-honour-nazi-collaborator-petain-world-war-1-vichy https://www.france24.com/en/20181108-macron-stokes-anger-wit... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_P%C3%A9tain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_P%C3%A9tain