The Rhetoric of Imperial Orders: Napoleon Bonaparte, his family and their dream of the reconquest of Haiti

Abstract

The impact of Napoleon’s invasion of Haiti had far reaching consequences for colonial history. It was responsible for the Louisiana Purchase by the United States in 1803 and the first successful slave uprising in the colonial New World. The failure of Napoleon’s campaign illustrated the weakness of his military strategies but also his dynastic claims that supported them. By engaging his brother-in-law, Emanuel Leclerc, Napoleon lost France’s most important Caribbean and North American territories. His presumed dynastic superiority was an echo of his claim to European white superiority over the rights of native and Afro cultures that was overturned for the first time in the history of colonial slavery. An examination of the roles of his family in this colonial catastrophe demonstrates the extent to which their claims to dynastic and European superiority dominated their racist social and political rhetoric which inspired their campaign to reclaim Haiti. Napoleon Bonaparte and his family participated in the mission to reconquer Haiti after its governor, Toussaint Louverture, declared its independence in 1801 by drawing up a new constitution. In response, Napoleon organized an invasion led by his sister, Pauline’s husband, General Emmanuel Leclerc in 1802. Napoleon’s rhetoric established a theater of imperial conquest and revoked both French Republic’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and Toussaint’s Haitian Constitution. Napoleon’s desire to reconquer Haiti was also inspired by his wife, Josephine’s creole identify and fantasy of plantation wealth she enjoyed as a child in Martinique. This fantasy of an elite plantation society was enjoyed again by Pauline in Haiti where she organized elaborate soirees for its upper echelons before the death of Leclerc from yellow fever. The rhetoric of social imperialism was practiced at her parties by her guests and reinforced the resurgence of the French colonial empire. The rhetoric of republicanism was sacrificed to the grandeur and culture of imperialism and colonialism by Napoleon and his family who sought to uphold his emerging empire and dynasty.