Affranchi

"Affranchi" is a former French legal term denoting a freedman or emancipated slave. It is used in English to describe the class of freedmen in Saint-Domingue and other slave-holding French territories, who held legal rights intermediate between those of free whites and enslaved people of color. In Saint-Domingue, roughly half of the affranchis were gens de couleur libres (freed people of mixed race) and the other half freed blacks.

The term comes from the French word for emancipation — affranchissement, or enfranchisement in terms of political rights. Ironically, however, the affranchis were barred the actual franchise (voting) prior to a 1791 court case whose decision in their favor prompted a backlash from the French planter class which sparked the Haitian Revolution.

The term affranchi was also used loosely to refer pejoratively to any free person of color, even those born free (for example, a mixed-race child born to a white mother.)

The affranchis had legal and social advantages over enslaved Africans and became a distinct class in the society between whites and slaves. They could get some education, were able to own land, and could attend some French colonial entertainments. Sons of planters especially tended to share in advantages of class and property, and they considered themselves above the petits blancs, shopkeepers and workers who nonetheless had more political rights.

The colonists passed so many restrictions that the affranchis were limited as a separate caste: they could not vote or hold colonial administrative posts, or work as doctors or lawyers. They were also forbidden to wear the style of clothes favored by the wealthy white colonists. In spite of the disadvantages, many educated affranchis identified themselves culturally with France rather than with the enslaved population. A class in between, the free people of color sometimes had tensions with both whites and enslaved Africans.

Ambitious mulattoes sometimes distanced themselves from their African roots in an attempt to gain acceptance from the white colonists. As they advanced in society, affranchis also held land and slaves. Some acted as creditors for planters. One of their leaders, the indigo planter Julien Raimond, claimed that affranchis owned a third of all the slaves in the colony. In the early years of the French Revolution and Haitian Revolution, many gens de couleur were committed to maintaining the institution of slavery, although they wanted political equality for men of property, regardless of skin color.

External links

• African Americans in New Orleans: 'Les gens de couleur libres' (Free people of color), Online Exhibits, New Orleans Public Library, 1999