ESCLAVAGE. Manuscrit, Mémoire sur l'étendue et les bornes de - Lot 555

ESCLAVAGE. Manuscrit, Mémoire sur l'étendue et les bornes des lois prohibitives du commerce étranger dans nos colonies, 1765; cahier de 19pages in-fol. "The colonies are establishments all founded to operate the consumption and outlet of the products of the metropolis". But France, which "has more colonies than trade [...] lets a very important part of the products of our isles go to waste", and "burdens their cultivation by the insufficiency and excessive price of negroes". The memorandum refers to the instructions given by His Majesty in February 1765 to the governors of Martinique and Guadeloupe... While Guadeloupe "required 9 to 10 thousand negroes per year", the French trade "in seventeen months, had provided only 900", and it "is almost no longer possible to buy blacks, because the extreme need for negroes is never in our isles without a similar impotence to obtain them. Indeed, the colonists can only pay for the negroes they lack with those they have at work". Traders are well aware that they are only indebted to the efforts of the English for the growth of Martinique, "to which they have supplied thirty thousand negroes"..... We must therefore "put a stop to our laws prohibiting any purchase of foreign negroes in our colonies"... Etc. In conclusion, we must "put an end to the eternal disputes between our merchants and the planters of our Isles, by pronouncing 1° on the necessity and means of correcting the insufficiency and high cost of negroes imported into our Colonies by the trade of the Kingdom. 2° on the necessity of resorting to foreigners for the sale of the syrups and taffias of our Colonies, as long as they are neglected by the French trade, and to supply the Colonies with the necessary livestock and wood"...