Napoleon Bonaparte was an irredeemable racist, sexist, and despot - good that he died (200 years ago).

 NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, emperor and racist

May 5th 1821 Boney died: the world heaved a sigh of relief. 

Napoleon Bonaparte: “an irredeemable racist, sexist, and despot”

writes Professor Marlene L. Daut of UVA Charlottesville in her article for the New York Times.

  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/opinion/france-year-of-napoleon.html

“La France est le seul pays qui avait réinstallé l’esclavage après l’avoir aboli.”

 France is the only country that ever re-introduced slavery after its abolition.

ALTHOUGH we should not forget that slavery continued in USA after abolition (and its effects still continue) ; nor that Britain and others supported apartheid in South Africa ; nor that French, British, Portuguese, Belgian and Spanish colonialism was a form of slavery, often including sexual abuse, war crimes and genocide ; nor that Arab nations today practice slavery in many different forms.

 So here are two very different men: Toussaint Louverture led the Haitian Revolution of 1791, then allied with Revolutionary France when the French abolished slavery in 1794; and who died in 1803 in a French prison after Bonaparte sent an army in 1802 to conquer Haiti and re-establish slavery. Boney is the one in the hat.

We do NOT celebrate Boney. Want a happy life?  Then you do not want another Bonaparte!

Everyone knows that Bonaparte was a general who crowned himself Emperor, eliminating the French Republic.

Why do French Republicans and democrats worship a man who made himself Emperor?

General Bonaparte made war on all his neighbors, selling Louisiana to Jefferson to pay for his warmongering in Europe. First the Russians beat him …. then finally Boney “met his Waterloo” in 1814.

Dr Daut writes: “As a Black woman of Haitian descent and a scholar of French colonialism, I find it particularly galling to see that France plans to celebrate the man who restored slavery to the French Caribbean, an architect of modern genocide, whose troops created gas chambers to kill my ancestors.”

Né esclave, c’est en tant qu’homme libre que Toussaint prend la tête en 1791 de la revolution haîtienne à St Domingue. En 1794 la Révolution française abolit l’esclavage et Toussaint Louverture embrasse la France. C’est Napoléon qui réimposera l’esclavage en 1802 en dont l’armée trahira Toussaint, qui mourra en 1803. Refusant de céder, Haïti obtiendra son indépendance en 1804. Pourquoi célébrer ce tyran français symbole d’oppression par les Blancs, qui trépassa le 5 mai 1821 en exil sur l’île St Heléna? Marlene déplore celui qui avait restoré l’esclavage aux Caraïbes, inventé le genocide et dont les soldats avaient créé des chambres à gaz pour tuer ses ancêtres haïtiens.

 

“In 1794, in the wake of the revolution that transformed France from a monarchy into a republic …. France declared slavery’s abolition throughout its territory. But in 1802, Napoleon …. reversed that decision, making France the only country to ever have brought back chattel slavery after abolishing it,” writes Daut. 

 

Let me tell you, folks:  Boney was a warmonger, a racist, and I am not supporting any celebration of his life. He also burned the flax crops in Brittany - where I am writing this blog post - in order to destroy the Breton economy and weaken resistance to Napoleonic domination. Do I like him? No!