Victor Hugues

An illustration of Hugues

Jean-Baptiste Victor Hugues (July 20, 1762 – August 12, 1826) was a French politician and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Guadeloupe from 1794 to 1798. He is best known for his actions during the French Revolutionary Wars, where Hugues played a major role in implementing the Law of 4 February 1794 which abolished slavery in France's colonies.

Early life

Jean-Baptiste Victor Hugues was born on 20 July 1762 in Marseille into a wealthy family. His father, Jean-François Hugues, was a merchant, and Hugues's mother Catherine Fodrin was born into family of silk traders from Saint-Étienne. Hugues moved along with his family to the French colony of Saint-Domingue during the early 1780s, where he eventually acquired ownership of a number of slave plantations. During the 1790s, Hugues was forced to return to France as a result of the Haitian Revolution. There, he was appointed as prosecutor of the Committee of Public Safety in La Rochelle with the support of the city's branch of the Jacobin Club. In 1794, he was appointed as the governor of Guadeloupe by the National Convention, which had voted to abolish slavery in all French colonies in 4 February of that year.

Governor of Guadeloupe

A proclamation issued by Hugues abolishing slavery in Guadeloupe

In Guadeloupe, counter-revolutionary French royalists signed the Whitehall Accord with the Kingdom of Great Britain, pledging to place their islands under British protection in exchange for the continuation of slavery. A British expeditionary force invaded and occupied Guadeloupe in April 1794, and Hugues arrived at the colony on 21 May with 1,150 French troops. He immediately declared the abolition of slavery on Guadeloupe, which quickly led to most of the island's Black population, both free and enslaved, coming over to his side. Hugues's forces captured Pointe-à-Pitre from the British on 26 May, and retook control of all of Guadeloupe on 6 October when he forced a British force of 800 white royalists and 900 Black soldiers to surrender at their camp in Barville.

Even though he abolished slavery in Guadeloupe, Hugues maintained a system of forced labour in the colony. He also reorganised the military forces of Guadeloupe, recruited a large number of newly emancipated people until Hugues had a force of 10,000 men under his command. This force consisted of racially integrated units where Black people were allowed to serve as officers, a rarity for the era. Hugues also purged all alleged counter-revolutionaries from the colony by executing them using a guillotine brought from France, and devoted significant efforts to establish a successful economy in Guadeloupe which would continue to export cash crops grown on plantations to Europe.

During his tenure as governor, Hugues authorised privateers operating out of Guadeloupe to attack British and American merchant shipping, which contributed to stabilising the colony's finances but also led to the outbreak of the Quasi-War between France and the United States. He also made several attempts to invade nearby islands under British control, with mixed results. On 18 April 1795, Hugues landed in British-held Saint Lucia with 600 soldiers and joined forces with 250 white French republicans and 300 Black republicans; the latter were mostly equipped with pikes but some carried muskets captured from the island's British garrison. In response, the British landed over 1,000 troops from Castries at Vieux Fort who marched overland to Soufrière.

On April 22, the British attacked Hugues' troops at Fond Doux and Rabot, though after intense fighting they were eventually forced to withdraw back to Castries. On 19 June, the remaining British forces in Saint Lucia withdrew from the colony along with a number of white royalists, the latter of whom had their slaves liberated by Hugues. In 1796, he led a failed attempt to capture Anguilla from the British. On 22 November 1798, Hugues was replaced as governor of Guadeloupe by Edme Étienne Borne Desfourneaux, and returned to France.

Later life and death

In 1799, the French Consulate sent Hugues as a official to French Guiana, where he was responsible for managing forced labour in the colony and then slavery itself after Napoleon re-established slavery in France's colonies via the Law of 20 May 1802. He continued to serve as an official there until the Portuguese conquest of French Guiana in January 1809. Hugues eventually returned to France, where he was prosecuted for allegedly committing treason and engaging in conspiracy with the enemy. He was only acquitted in 1814, and returned to French Guiana when the Portuguese handed it back to France in 1817, where Hugues continued to serve as an official before staying on after retiring as a private citizen. He died on 21 August 1826 in Cayenne. Hugues had been featured in several works of historical fiction, including Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier's 1962 work Explosion in a Cathedral and American author James A. Michener's 1989 work The Caribbean.

External links

• Hugues, Victor. "Guyane française. Code civil. Avec modifications, ordonnance coloniale du 1er Vendémiaire an XIV (23 septembre 1805), pour son introduction dans cette colonie", Cayenne, Imprimerie du roi, 1822. [1]
• Sainte-Croix de La Roncière, Georges de. "Grandes Figures coloniales : Victor Hugues, le conventionnel", Paris, chez l'auteur, 1932. [2]
• Lara Henri Adolphe. "Contribution de la Guadeloupe à la pensée française : 1635-1935", Paris, Jean Crès, 1936. [3]
• Brard, René. "Le dernier caraïbe", Bordeaux, chez l'auteur, 1849. [4]