Medical Practitioners and the Former French Colonies: “Antagonists of the Colonial System”?
In 1846, the British Anti-Slavery Reporter published a review of the brochure Situation of the slaves in the French Colonies – Urgency of their emancipation[1], written in French by Jean-Baptiste Rouvellat de Cussac (1781–1857), former counsellor at the Royal Court of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Since their colonization by the French in 1635 these Caribbean islands were an integral part of the French Empire for their strategic and economic significance. In the early 18th century, France was on the course to becoming Europe’s leading sugar supplier, a position it indeed achieved by the end of the century.[2]
Fig.1: Colonies Françaises. La Guadeloupe by Victor Lavasseur (1838), Arch. Dép. Martinique, 36Fi89.
Enslaved labour formed the backbone of this economy, particularly in the production of agricultural commodities such as tobacco, coffee, and sugar. In this system based on the exploitation of human bodies, medical professionals played a vital role. They arrived from France and practised in the colonies as surgeons, physicians, midwives, and apothecaries. The anonymous author of the above-mentioned review states that “medical men, if they were free to reveal all they knew, would be formidable antagonists of the colonial system. But their mouths are sealed.”[3] By scrutinizing Cussac’s writing published in 1845 and more specifically its fifth chapter entitled Lawyers and Medical Professionals under the Colonial System, the aim of this blog-entry is to comprehend the ambivalent role he attributed to medical professionals in perpetuating the institution of slavery in the French colonies.
In the context of this source, it is crucial to highlight that health surveillance became increasingly organized in the French colonies from the late 17th century onward.[4] Unlike the British, where specific laws regarding enslaved individuals’ health were not enacted before the 1790s[5], Article 27 of the French Code Noir (1685), stipulated that slaveholders were responsible for the well-being of their enslaved.
The slaves who are not fed, clothed and supported by the masters according to what we have ordered by these articles will notify our attorney of this and give him their statements, based on which and even as a matter of course, if the information comes to him from elsewhere, the masters will be prosecuted by him and without cost, which we want to be observed for the cries [crieries] and barbarous and inhumane treatments of masters towards their slaves.[6]
Transgressions could result, at least in theory, in criminal charges against the enslavers. Right from the first sentence of Cussac’s chapter on medical practitioners, he contends that crimes against the enslaved frequently went unpunished, as “everyone [in the colonies] conspires” to ensure that these crimes remain concealed.[7] He chose to publish this report at the end of his career, explaining that at the age of sixty-three, he believed he owed “truth and justice” to his contemporaries.[8]
Fig. 2: Palais de Justice. Fort-de-France, Arch. Dép. Martinique 15Fi176.
Born in 1781, Cussac followed in his father’s footsteps, working as a lawyer in the South of France, before leaving for the colonies in 1829. After eight years, he departed from the island of Guadeloupe and spent a year in mainland France. Surprisingly, despite his (negative) experiences in Guadeloupe, he chose to return to the colonies, hoping to see “the government soon bring about beneficial changes to the colonial system”.[9] Yet this hope of his was rapidly crushed because upon arriving in Martinique he experienced that “great care is taken […] to ensure that everything related to slaves remains unknown in France”[10].
Cussac’s writing draws on personal observations and evidence collected during his fifteen-year tenure as Royal Counsellor in the French colonies. His agenda with regards to abolitionism mean we approach these observations critically. Nonetheless, the value of this source lies in his direct interactions with enslaved individuals. We learn of their daily routines, duties, punishments, and sufferings through Cussac’s eyes. These sections hold particular significance, because in contrast to former British, Spanish, or Portuguese colonies no writings by the enslaved in the French colonies exist to date.
But what accounts for Cussac’s dedicating a chapter to medical practitioners in the colonies?
At first, it is crucial to emphasize that in chapter 5 Cussac refers to a specific category of medical practitioners, the so-called Médecins au rapport, officially summoned by the colonial government to examine injured bodies of enslaved people and ascertain causes of death. Their reports determined whether additional investigations would be conducted and whether the enslaver would have to face legal proceedings, and it is this connection between medical practitioners and the system of slavery that concerns Cussac.
During the final two decades of slavery, and due to the growing presence of judges from metropolitan France, who often opposed slavery, the number of trials of enslavers did rise.[11] This, however, according to Cussac, had little consequences and did not improve the situation of the enslaved. He claims that most of these legal proceedings ultimately ended in the acquittal of the slaveholders. In addition to lawyers who did not support the enslaved, he places responsibility on the Médecins au rapport for this situation. In one example, Cussac recounts – in a state of disbelief – that one of the most distinguished doctors in Martinique seriously claimed that a broken arm might not result in any illness or work disability.
Fig. 3: “Negro Heads, with Punishments for Intoxication and Dirt-Eating” by Richard Bridgens, in: West India Scenery, London 1836, plate 20.
Cussac also took issue with the kind of advice medical practitioners offered to enslavers. Some trial documents involving enslavers as well as medical manuals provided guidance to slaveholders on improving the medical care of enslaved individuals.[12] More often, however, the Médecins au rapport purposefully downplayed the harshness of the punishments. Their descriptions are very detached and similar patterns of explanations are consistently employed. Cussac highlights for example that most of the deaths of enslaved people are explained by an illness called mal d’estomac or dirt-eating.[13] That such explanations were highly racist is illustrated in a response to Cussac’s writing by Ernest Le Mengnonnet who states that “the enslaved’s affection for eating dirt represents a deviation of taste”.[14] In this context, these particular medical practitioners can be described as supporters of the system, contributing to the firm racialization not only through the production of racialized knowledge of black bodies[15] but also through their medical findings and explanations.
The close ties between enslavers and medical professionals were also based on economic considerations. As Cussac notes: “Indeed, it is not the enslaved who remunerate the physicians; thus, it is solely to the masters’ that these doctors must appeal if they intend to enhance their wealth in the colonies.”[16] Isabelle Homer’s study on medical practitioners in Saint-Domingue revealed that a significant number of them arrived with the aspiration of amassing wealth in the colonies.[17] To cover travel expenses and in exchange for food and lodging, some of them committed to work on a plantation side for three years, thus integrating fully into the colonial system. Consequently, many medical professionals were politically and financially invested in the system of slavery, with some of them even owning enslaved individuals themselves. This demonstrates that their interests aligned closely with those of the plantation owners and thus with the colonial system itself. An example from Jamaica illustrates that open resistance to this system could also have negative repercussions for medical doctors. In this case, a physicist was barred from practicing because he reported the true circumstances of an enslaved man’s death to the authorities.[18]
It is important to bear in mind that enslavers compensated medical practitioners not only for their medical expertise but also with the explicit goal of increasing plantation productivity, especially after the abolition of the French slave trade in 1817 when a constant supply of slave labour was no longer assured. Hence, the so-called ‘amelioration acts’ implemented during the 1830s, were not framed in terms of granting rights to the enslaved. Instead, the main impetus behind these acts seems to have been the establishment of a more stable and lasting system of slavery and to prevent slave revolts.[19] Later ordinances, such as the one from October 19, 1846, which required plantation owners to provide an adequate supply of drugs, reflect nevertheless an ongoing commitment to addressing healthcare and medical needs among the enslaved.
The ambivalent role of medical practitioners in the French colonies becomes evident when Cussac concedes at the end chapter 5 that not all doctors acted in the same manner. At this point a more comprehensive study of these legal proceedings is needed to provide a more nuanced understanding of their direct impact on the process of racialisation.
Based on the examples from Cussac’s writing, the conclusion of the author, who reviewed Cussac’s text for the Anti-slavery Reporter appears correct in suggesting that medical professionals can indeed be largely seen as supporters of the system of slavery. In essence, Cussac, through his publication, acts as a ‘whistleblower’, shedding light on the horrors of slavery, the transgressions of plantation owners, and the collusion between local and central administrations. Nevertheless, it becomes clear that he, probably like some medical practitioners too, was caught in an ethical dilemma, even if he did not explicitly address it: On the one hand, he sought to protect the enslaved, or at the very least improve their condition – due to his moral convictions – on the other hand, as part of the colonial administration, he was responsible for maintaining the social order, hence preserving the system of slavery. And yet, Cussac highlights through his chapter on medical professionals that such contradictions existed, and that the system of slavery could be questioned even from within its own structures, especially perhaps its legal framework.
Teresa Göltl is a PhD student in History at the University of Heidelberg and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She currently works as a research assistant at the Chair of Early Modern History in Heidelberg and is part of the Centre Internationale de Recherche sur l'Esclavage et Post-Esclavage. Her research focus lies on the French Atlantic and especially on the entanglements of law and slavery as her PhD project focuses on trials of enslavers in the 18th and 19th century.
[1]Original title of this source: Situation des esclaves dans les colonies françaises: urgence de leur émancipation. All translations are my own.
[2] Wimmler, Jutta, The Sun King’s Atlantic. Drugs, Demons and Dyestuff in the Atlantic World, 1640–1730, Leiden: Brill 2017, 11.
[3] The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, Vol. I (London: 1846), 11.
[4] Elsa Dorlin, “Naissance de la race. Médecine esclavagiste clinique négrière et étiologie raciale (XVII-XIX siècles)”, in: La Fabrique de la race dans la Caraibe de l’époque moderne à nos jours, ed. Sylvain Lloret, Marine Cellier and Amina Damerdji (Paris: Garnier, 2021), 27–45, 28.
[5] Richards B. Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves. A Medical and Demographic History of Slavery in the British West Indies. 1680–1834, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 272.
[6] For the Code Noir see the transcription and translation by John Garrigus, https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/1205/2016/02/code-noir.pdf [12.10.2023].
[7] Jean-Baptise Rouvellat de Cussac, Situation des esclaves dans les colonies françaises: urgence de leur émancipation (Paris: Pagnerre 1845), 72.
[8] Ibid. 8.
[9] Cussac, “Situation des esclaves”, 111.
[10] Ibid. 9.
[11] He was not the sole colonial official to document his experiences. Adolphe Juston as well as Xavier Tanc likewise published letters and pamphlets exposing the deficiencies in the judicial administration. For further information on these magistrates see: Nelly Schmidt, Abolitionnistes de l’esclavage et réformateurs des colonies, 1820–1851. Analyse et documents (Paris: Karthala 2001).
[12] For the British Caribbean see for example: Collins David, Practical Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves, in the Sugar Colonies by a Professional Planter (London 1811). Or James Grainger, An Essay on the more common West-India Diseases: And the Remedies which that country itself produces to which are added, some hints on the Management & of Negroes, (London 21802).
[13] Cussac (1845), “Situation des esclaves dans les colonies”, 75.
[14] Ernest le Mengnonnet, Réponse à M. Rouvellat de Cussac (Paris: Firmin-Didot 1845), 6.
[15] On this topic: Rana A. Hogarth, Medicalizing Blackness. Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780–1840 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press 2017).
[16] Cussac, “Situation des esclaves dans les colonies”, 75.
[17] Isabelle Homer, Médecins et chirurgiens à Saint-Domingue au XVIIIe siècle, Unpublished dissertation École des Chartes 1998, <https://bibnum.chartes.psl.eu/s/thenca/item/57581#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-2%2C-1%2C3%2C1> [15.10.2023], 151.
[18] Sheridan, “Doctors and Slaves”, 283.
[19] Mulich, Jeppe, A Sea of Empires. Networks and Crossings in the Revolutionary Caribbean, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020), 109.