📅 18 September 1792
Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, Étienne Polverel, and Jean-Antoine Ailhaud arrived in Saint-Domingue with troops to enforce the rights of free people of color and restore French authority. They initially...
📅 31 Oktober 1793
Commissioner Étienne Polverel issued emancipation measures covering the colony’s western and southern provinces, completing the local abolition begun in the north. Proclamations differed in timing and...
📅 24 September 1792
On 24 September 1792, civil commissioners Polverel, Sonthonax, and Ailhaud issued a proclamation defining their authority in Saint-Domingue. Their mandate was to enforce the 4 April equality law and...
📅 3 December 1792
On 3 December 1792, civil commissioner Étienne Polverel issued an ordinance prohibiting designations of color in public acts. The rule challenged official racial categorization within colonial...
📅 20 Juni 1793
On 20 June 1793, sailors and white colonists aligned with Governor Galbaud attacked the civil commissioners at Cap-Français. The fighting set much of the city on fire. Facing defeat, commissioners...
📅 21 September 1793
On 21 September 1793, civil commissioner Étienne Polverel proclaimed emancipation in the western and southern provinces. The decree required newly freed people to continue working on plantations,...
📅 31 Oktober 1793
On 31 October 1793, Polverel issued rules concerning the policing and discipline of emancipated plantation workshops. The ordinance demonstrates that official emancipation did not end attempts to...
