Commission De Tabago (1 results)
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Précis des vexations exercées par ordre du Ministère François, contre les Habitans de Tabago et leurs Créanciers Anglois
[Roume de Saint-Laurent, Philippe-Rose]; [Commission de Tabago]
Published by [De l'Imprimerie du Patriote François, Place du Théâtre Italien], [Paris], 1790
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Add to basketUnbound. First edition. Single leaf, broadside, printed in two columns. Unbound. 2 pp. A contemporary protest against abuses of colonial administration in Tobago, printed during the first debates on law and sovereignty in France's overseas possessions. Printed at the Imprimerie du Patriote Françaispress of one of the major polit…ical newspapers of the Revolutionand also issued as a supplement to the Journal de Paris, the first French daily newspaper active and influential during the early Revolution (samedi 15 août 1790, as confirmed by the copy preserved at the University of Lausanne), this pamphlet denounces the abuses committed in Tobago under the Commission de Tabago (1786), a tribunal established by the Ministry of the Marine to adjudicate debts between British creditors and French planters after the island's restitution to France in 1783. The anonymous pamphlet attacks the administration of Philippe-Rose Roume de Saint-Laurent (17431805), ordonnateur of Tobago from 1786 to 1790, accusing him of establishing an arbitrary and self-serving tribunal that violated both French law and the guarantees of the Treaty of Paris (1783). Appointed under the authority of the Maréchal de Castries and serving alongside Governor Arthur Dillon, Roume reorganized Tobago's financial and judicial systems, creating the Commission de Tabago to adjudicate debts between British creditors and French settlers. The Précis portrays this commission as a tool of despotismsuppressing appeals, favoring local elites, and undermining property rightsand presents Roume's actions as emblematic of the ministerial corruption of the ancien régime. His recall to France in 1790 marked the collapse of this administration, soon to be examined by the National Assembly. A Grenadian-born colonial official of wide Caribbean experience, Roume later served in Saint-Domingue and Santo Domingo, where he worked with Toussaint Louverture during the Haitian Revolution (Caribbean History Archives, 2007a, 2007b). After the Seven Years' War, Tobago became a British colony (17631781) before being captured by the French and confirmed as French by the Treaty of Paris (1783). The treaty guaranteed that the inhabitants would retain their property under English law, allowing British settlers to keep their lands and obligations as before the conquest. In practice, these guarantees proved difficult to reconcile with French colonial legislation. The transition created overlapping jurisdictions and conflicting claims between English creditors and French buyers, particularly over mortgages and land titles established under English common law. To regulate these disputes and facilitate the settlement of debts owed by planters to their English creditors, the Ministry of the Marine established the Commission de Tabago in 1786. The Précis contends, however, that this body soon exceeded its administrative mandate, assuming judicial powers that supplanted the island's ordinary courts and violated the protections set out by the 1783 treatythereby provoking widespread protest among both French and British inhabitants. An important contemporary testimony to the legal and political controversies arising from France's reoccupation of Tobago. The affair, later debated in the National Assembly, epitomized tensions between ancien-régime authority and Revolutionary legality in France's overseas possessions. Rare. Not recorded in RBH. WorldCat locates copies at TU Darmstadt, Harvard University, and the New York Public Library. Besides the Lausanne copy, another copy traced at the John Carter Brown Library. References: Caribbean History Archives. (2007a, December). Philippe Rose Roume de Saint-Laurent. Retrieved from l; Caribbean History Archives. (2007b, December). Roume's last moments Fictionalized. Retrieved from . Light toning; a clean, well-preserved copy. First edition. Single leaf, broadside, printed in two columns.
