# Calculation and moral economies during French debate on the abolition of slavery

Caroline Bastide, Philippe Steiner

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Caroline Bastide, Philippe Steiner. Calculation and moral economies during French debate on the abolition of slavery. The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2023, 10.1080/09672567.2023.2239966. hal-04194564

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Calculation and Moral Economies during French Debate on
the Abolition of Slavery

<table><tr><td>Journal:</td><td>European Journal of the History of Economic Thought</td></tr><tr><td>Manuscript ID</td><td>REJH-2022-0151.R2</td></tr><tr><td>Manuscript Type:</td><td>Research Article – Special Issue Submission</td></tr><tr><td>Keywords:</td><td>slavery, calculation, moral economies</td></tr></table>

SCHOLARONE™
Manuscripts
# Calculation and Moral Economies during French Debate on the Abolition of Slavery

## Introduction

The abolition of slavery remained a current political issue for one hundred years, from the later eighteenth to the later nineteenth centuries. In the French colonies abolition was first decreed in during the Revolution, in 1794, but slavery was then reintroduced by Napoléon Bonaparte in 1802. The movement for abolition gained momentum following the abolition of slavery by Great Britain in 1833; France then reversed Bonaparte's intervention in 1848, but Brazil did not follow suit until 1888. Seymour Drescher has called this the “mighty experiment” (Drescher 2002), while Olivier Grenouilleau refers to the “abolitionist revolution” (Grenouilleau 2017), both stressing the crucial importance of the economic and political movement towards the abolition of slavery.

We sought to show in *Calculation and Morality* the way in which French economists, abolitionists and politicians were all involved in this “experiment”, or “revolution”. Our entry point was specific: we focused on the role given to economic calculation during a lengthy debate that ran from 1771 to 1848 (Oudin-Bastide and Steiner 2019). Our starting point was provided by a French economist — Dupont de Nemours, a key member of the Physiocratic school. Many others then contributed to debate: other economists, but also abolitionists and colonists, and during the final period, members of Parliament and senior administrators (see schema 1). All of them relied on some form of calculation.

We will start here with a brief presentation of some key points from this period, stressing the central role attributed to calculation and the moral content of this epistemological device (§1), before explaining how the first calculations were done (§2). Then in the following section we show that these calculations were still in use during the short period — from June 1848 to November 1849 — when the time came to determine the precise amount to be given as compensation to the colonists after the loss of their property rights in enslaved people. Important new issues were at stake, notably the nature of property in the industrial society (§3).
Calculation and moral economies

Our study links together three interrelated elements: calculation, moral economy and long-period sociological analysis.

What is meant by calculation? First of all, calculation involves operations through which entities thought to share significant properties are grouped into the same class, together with the reasons advanced for their having been so assigned. Secondly, categorised elements are assigned a numerical value, making it possible to manipulate them mathematically in a manner commensurate with clarification of the phenomenon studied. Categorisation and quantification are of equal importance. The intervention of calculation in the controversy over the comparative costs of free and servile labour was made possible by this dual dimension: by the diverse sources they were able to include, but also by technical simplicity – essentially, the four rules of arithmetic were all that was needed. However simple this might be, calculation had specific consequences for the controversy over the relative cost of slave and free labour.

The primary consequence is the need to calculate in order to counter a prior calculation. This is clearly stated by François Quesnay in the introduction to *Philosophie rurale*, an important book for Physiocracy:

> Calculation is to economic science what bones are to the human body [...] Economic science is extended and developed by inspection and reasoning; but without calculation it would always be an uncertain science, confused and everywhere prey to error and prejudice. The more that calculations are unshakable in their foundation, sequence and duration, the more that those who think themselves interested in preventing the explosion of enlightenment rush to openly maintain that calculations are false [...] Calculation can only be attacked with other calculations. (Quesnay in Mirabeau 1763, p. xix-xx)

By the later 18th century calculation had gained legitimacy as a rhetorical strategy for the French enlightened public. Calculation had become part of civic epistemology (Deringer 2019, p. 6-12); numbers were accepted as a useful instrument for assessing the truth of a given political decision. Lengthy calculations were common in books published from 1715 to 1755 related to fiscal and monetary issues, and grain markets. One further reason for the role given to calculation in the public sphere comes from its strong association with interest, understood as a general motivation of action. A rational actor was
presumed to calculate her own best interest; hence calculation had traction
beyond the restricted domain of nascent political economy.

The connection between calculation and interest thus involved a moral dimension. We understand the debate on the relative cost of free and slave labour to be a debate over two different forms of moral economy.

Since the pathbreaking study of the moral economy of the English crowd by the social historian Edward P. Thompson (1971) the notion of a “moral economy” has signified popular apprehensions of economic life, apprehensions that differed from those of higher social classes and importantly, contemporary political economists (Fassin 2009, Palomera and Vetta 2016). The “lower classes” for our purposes were enslaved people, and here had no agency, even if they remained at the core of debate. Participants in the debate mobilised moralistic arguments as a key element for understanding the situation, as also political economists, since they considered that morality was part of the problem (Steiner 1998, chap. 1; Sayer 2000).

Morality is everywhere at work among economists, abolitionists and colonists. Calculations of labour costs were constantly linked to questioning the morality of economic activity that presupposed the deportation of individuals torn from their roots and their social relationships, to be sold in the colonies and then forcibly compelled to work. By demonstrating that masters and/or the entire nation would benefit from the employment of free manual labour, abolitionist calculators claimed to reveal the irrationality of colonial or metropolitan defenders of servitude. These abolitionist calculations depended on a deontological ethics that was more Kantian than utilitarian. The emancipation of slaves was judged not only in terms of its consequences; most economists (Du Pont, Say) and abolitionists argued unrelentingly that emancipation had become an obligation quite independent of the interests (colonial or metropolitan) that it might harm. Colonists for their part accused those opposed to slavery of allowing themselves to be blinded by their philanthropic principles, and argued that the slave system was perfectly rational and the only means, at least in the short run, of upholding the interests of everyone. They pointed constantly to the harm that would be done to everyone by abolition – to planters, merchants, consumers and metropolitan manufacturers, to the slaves themselves – and so took a pragmatic ethical position.

But ultimately, as calculation can only be attacked with other calculations,
our study deals with a series of writers rooted in three distinct social settings,
spanning eight decades — from 1771 to 1848 (see schema 1). This is not therefore a study of a given author, or of a given school, but a study of a public economic and political issue. We have to take into account diverse economic writings, both scholarly and popular. Towards the end of our period institutions stepped in, establishing a series of royal and parliamentary commissions that borte witness to the end of slavery in the French colonies.

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>## Schema I
### Direct connections during the debate between economists, abolitionists and planteurs</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>

Pierre Samuel Du Pont, then Du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) economist; Anne-Robert Turgot (1727-1781) senior minister (contrôleur général) and economist; Condorcet (1743-1794) mathematician, philosopher and politician; Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832) economist; Charles Ganih (1758-1836) economist; André Cochut (1807-1890) economist; Adam Hogdson (1788-1862) merchant in Liverpool; André-Daniel Laffon de Ladebat (1746-1829) merchant in Bordeaux and politician; Benjamin Frossard (1754-1830) clergyman and professor; Paul Lavollée (1795-1886) administrator; Charles Rémusat (1797-1875) politician, member of parliament; Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) social scientist, politician, member of the parliament and minister; Victor duc de Broglie (1785-1870) minister (Foreign Office) and politician; Emilien Petit (1713-1780) lawyer in Saint Domingue and politician; Pierre-Victor Malouet (1740-1814) colonist in Saint Domingue and politician; David Duval de Sanadon (1748-1816) colonist in Saint Domingue; Dubuc de Marentille (?- ?) colonist in Saint Domingue, as given on the titlepage of his pamphlet; François-Pascal de Lattre de Montfleury (1749-1834)
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merchant and politician; Paul-Edme Saint-Cyran (1738-1793) engineer; Jean Barré Saint-Venant (1737-1810) colonist in Saint Domingue; Charles Dupin (1784-1873), engineer and politician.

## Costs, Productivity and Morality

In 1771 Du Pont published a calculation in Volume VI of the *Éphémérides du citoyen* that projected a form of argument commonly used by Physiocrats into a domain where moral argumentation was more usual. This did not mean that moral argument was superseded; Du Pont's piece was preceded by a lengthy narrative by the Marquis de Saint-Lambert entitled *Ziméo*, in which the author sought to show that blacks, like whites, displayed intelligence, sensitivity, a sense of honour and above all courage, that it was circumstance and not nature that had given the whites superiority over the blacks. Du Pont first affirmed the superiority of the moral principle: while admitting that slave labour was more profitable than free labour, slavery would nonetheless have to be abolished. It would have to be accepted that sugar would become more expensive, or otherwise go without.

Du Pont's sought to demonstrate that the cost of slave labour was greater than that of free labour. The fact that a slave is not paid a wage does not mean that their labour is free. Du Pont ran through the following cost components of slave labour: the purchase price of the slave, the costs arising from maintenance, but also from the need for an overseer whose lash is the only stimulus to work; and the costs arising from the latent state of war between masters and slaves. The elements of the calculation that Du Pont finally retained are as follows:

<table><tr><td>Interest on fixed capital</td><td>120 livres</td></tr><tr><td>Cost of replacement of capital</td><td>120 livres</td></tr><tr><td>Maintenance</td><td>100 livres</td></tr><tr><td>Cost of overseer</td><td>42 livres</td></tr><tr><td>Cost of security</td><td>38 livres</td></tr><tr><td>Total cost</td><td>420 livres</td></tr></table>

The labour costs of a slave as calculated (420 *livres* per annum or 28 *sols* a day) were much higher than the payments made to many Europeans (between 20 and 25 million of them having, according to Du Pont, barely 30 *livres* a year to live on); and so he demonstrated that slave labour is relatively more costly than free labour.

Du Pont's calculation did not really persuade antislavery writers, for whom he was supposed to represent a source of argument. These writers employed
different elements in their calculations, and also put them together differently (see table I).

<table><caption>**Table I**

**Elements for setting the price of slave labour in the abolitionists' calculations**</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Du Pont</th><th>Condorcet</th><th>Frossard</th><th>Ladebat</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>Cost:</strong></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Capital</td><td>X</td><td>X</td><td>X</td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>Replacement of capital</td><td>X</td><td></td><td></td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>Maintenance</td><td>X</td><td>X</td><td>X</td><td>X</td></tr><tr><td>Coercion</td><td>X</td><td>X</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Security</td><td>X</td><td></td><td>X</td><td></td></tr><tr><td><strong>Benefit:</strong></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Children born from slaves</td><td></td><td></td><td>X</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

Given the differences in their calculation, both in terms of categorization and quantification, it is no surprise that they ended up with very different results (see table II). Du Pont and Frossard claimed that calculations showed that free labour was less costly; Ladebat comes to a conclusion at odds with Condorcet, although the latter did admit that the costs of free and slave labour could be equal. They do however converge once the expected increase in productivity from the use of free labourers is included; their self-interest would induce them to be more effective in their work. Ultimately, all of them believed that the nation would be better off with free labour, while for the colonists costs and benefits would be broadly neutral; with the exception of Condorcet who thought they would not personally benefit from the abolition of slavery.

<table><caption>**Table II**

**Divergent results in the abolitionists' calculations**</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Du Pont</th><th>Condorcet</th><th>Frossard</th><th>Ladebat</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Cost of free labour</td><td><strong>Cheaper</strong> than slave labour; in the long run the two are <strong>equal</strong></td><td><strong>More, or as expensive as</strong> slave labour</td><td><strong>Cheaper</strong> than slave labour</td><td><strong>More expensive</strong> than slave labour</td></tr><tr><td>Productivity of free labour</td><td>Higher (x2)</td><td>Higher (not calculated, or x1.6)</td><td>Higher (x2 or x3.6)</td><td>Higher (x2)</td></tr><tr><td>Abolition of slavery</td><td>Masters and nations <strong>gain</strong></td><td>Masters <strong>lose</strong> and the nation <strong>gains</strong></td><td>Both masters and nation <strong>gain</strong></td><td>Both masters and nation <strong>gain</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>

Colonists also made their calculations. These were made from the
perspective of the master, demonstrating the absurdity of abolition, and were based on numbers that appear to have originated in plantation account books. Having first listed the hazards of colonial life (hurricanes, earthquakes, wars), Dubuc de Marentille (1790) put the product of a plantation employing 80 enslaved workers at 26,660 *livres* (deducting losses and replacements, but not the cost of feeding them). He estimated that the weakest and most incompetent free black would not work for less than 20 *sols*, or 360 *livres* per annum. The wage bill for the 80 free labourers who would replace 80 slaves would therefore come to 28,800 *livres* for this particular plantation.

His calculation is excessive. Dubuc de Marentille does not seem to have understood that any calculation should relate to the *difference* between the labour cost of the slave and the wage of a free labourer. He does deduct the costs related to the wastage of enslaved workers and their replacement from the net income, but he takes no account of their maintenance costs. How can this kind of approach be explained? It could simply be an error, an advantage when seeking to show the impossibility of employing free labour. But it is more likely that this omission related to the management practices prevailing in the Antilles. Enslaved people to a large extent provided for their own subsistence, thanks to the grant of a patch of land; and with both Saturday and Sunday as free days the master had little need to spend any more money on the food and clothing of his workforce. He could therefore maintain the fiction that their maintenance cost was zero.

## Calculation after abolition

Scholcher's commission presented the abolition of slavery as a political decision made without any comparative calculation of the cost of free and slave labour, but this did not mean that such calculations were omitted in subsequent years. The political decision was related to another, since the fifth article of the abolition decree, published on 27th April 1848, stated that "The National Assembly will determine the amount of the compensation to be granted to colonists". This was in line with Tocqueville's report of 1839, whose conclusion suggested that a law be drafted abolishing slavery and determining the amount of compensation for colonists (Tocqueville 1839, p. 78). Two years later, Tocqueville wrote a number of newspaper articles in reaction to a speech by François Guizot, then head of the French Government, in which he declared that abolition would cost 250 million francs. Tocqueville dismissed this as yet
another attempt to alarm the public, since the Broglie Commission had
calculated that the cost of the abolition of slavery would only add 6 million
francs to French public debt. He maintained that the grandeur and honor of
France was much more important to him than this modest sum (Tocqueville
1843, p. 110-111). This issue was examined during the brief period between June
1848 and the final vote in the National Assembly during April 1849 (Beauvois
2013, p. 260-267)<fnref n="1" />.

However, the compensation issue raised many problems in a period when
modern property rights were still being created (Blaufarb 2016) and, at the same
time, in February 1848 were increasingly under fire from the socialist movement.

## Property rights at stake

From February to May 1848 the provisional government [Gouvernement provisoire] arising out of the Parisian revolutionary movement sought to create a socialist programme (Agulhon 1973, chap. 2). One outcome was that leading socialist thinkers published or republished pamphlets and books criticizing the political role of property rights, together with their consequences for social inequality. Pierre Leroux argued that there was significant rift between the wealthy owners of large property — capitalists according to his classification — and a proletariat that had no or minimal property (Leroux 1848). He pointed to the existence of a plutocracy that was limited in size, but very powerful given its wealth and grip upon political power. Louis Blanc elaborated his views on Ateliers nationaux [National workshops], an organization conceived as an alternative to the labour market (Blanc 1839). Beyond these assaults on property, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's claim that "La propriété c'est le vol" [property is theft] resonated in the minds of many liberal and conservative thinkers and politicians.

This situation was not unrelated to the abolition issue, as the opening
sentence of Proudhon's famous pamphlet made it clear:

> If I were asked to answer the following question: *What is slavery?* and I should answer in one word, *It is murder*, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his

<footnote n="1">¹ More precisely, after the decision to abolish slavery in April 1848 there were four preliminary steps before the vote on the final decision on the compensation:</footnote>

<footnote>- A commission for working out terms of compensation (June 1848)</footnote>

<footnote>- A project presented to this commission by Raymond de Verninac-Saint Maure, Navy Minister (August 1848)</footnote>

<footnote>- Cremieux's commission (September 1848, reconvened in January 1849)</footnote>

<footnote>- Debate and a vote in the National Assembly (April 1849)</footnote>
will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: *What is property?* may I not likewise answer, *It is robbery*, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first? (Proudhon 1840, p. 131)

It is hardly surprising to find resolute defences of property rights being made by liberal and conservative thinkers, especially once the provisional government resigned in May 1848 and allowed conservative, even reactionary, governments to assume political leadership after the convocation of the Constitutional Assembly in May 1848. Alfred Sudre wrote an entire book to crush the communist and socialist claims of Owen, Cabet, Leroux, Blanc and Proudhon (Sudre 1848), while Louis Reybaud published a new edition of his critique of socialist thinkers (Reybaud 1849), mocking the new republican government by satirizing the opportunism of petty public servants (Reybaud 1848). Adolphe Thiers also wrote a whole book in defense of property, understood as the foundation of civilization (Thiers 1848); he then published, under the aegis of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, a small pamphlet of extracts that would be more widely read (Thiers 1848b).

*The status of the property rights of the colonists*

As the effective decision to abolish slavery occurred in a period during which property rights were challenged, a careful justification of the status of this property and the calculation of an appropriate level of compensation were required. The starting point was given by the actual regulation of the property in enslaved people and by the dual definition of property rights.

Property in enslaved black people was regulated by the so-called *Code noir* [Code for black slaves], introduced in 1685. Two salient points are here of interest.<fnref n="2" /> Firstly, enslaved people were considered to be “movable” (art.4), and could be sold to pay the creditors of an indebted colonist. However, those linked to the production of colonial goods on a plantation were treated as “immovable by destination” in French legislation; they were considered to be part of the plantation itself and could not be detached from it, even if the master went bankrupt (art. 48).<fnref n="3" /> This point was critical for the protection of the colonists’

<footnote n="2">² In the following paragraphs, we study the law as drafted, not as it was implemented. There were obviously important differences. Until the end of the slave system of production the laws regulating the living conditions of enslaved people (food, clothing) and the use of violence against them were regularly breached by colonists (Oudin-Bastide 2013, 2015, and Régent, Gonfier and Maillard 2015).</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ We here follow the usual perspective of historians on the *Code noir* (Charlin 2009, Niort 2009).</footnote>
capital, since the value of a plantation was largely based on the number of
enslaved black people (Cheney 2017, chap. 3). However, even if they were
treated as goods bought and sold on a market, they were still human beings
(Charlin 2009, p. 60-61, Niort 2015, p. 37-47), even if their living conditions
were terrible: they could marry (art. 10); those who were married and their young
children should not be sold separately (art. 47); they should receive a (Catholic)
religious education (art. 2); and they should be buried in consecrated ground if
christened (art. 14). Their humanity was also recognized by virtue of the
possibility of being freed by a master (art. 56-57), then becoming a subject of
the king (art. 59).

Beyond these economic and religious considerations, the *Code noir* also
regulated the property of a master. Enslaved people should be given food and
clothes by their masters (art. 22-26), while the disabled and the old should
receive appropriate care (art. 27). The *Code noir* also prohibited barbarous acts
and cruelty on the part of masters (art. 42-43). Ultimately, the masters did have
secure rights of property, but this (*usus*, *fructus* and *abusus*, according to the
canonical wording of modern property rights) was far from absolute.<fnref n="4" />

These constrained property rights were also highly specific, according to the
contemporary doctrinal views of French lawyers and economists – in particular
of Pellegrino Rossi, Hippolyte Passy and Alexis de Tocqueville, who were all
members of Broglie’s Royal Commission (1840-1843).

As early as 1837, in his lectures on political economy in the Collège de
France, Rossi maintained that property in enslaved people was different from
those property rights deemed to be based on natural law. The key point here was

<footnote n="4">⁴ After a thorough legal analysis of master’s property rights Frédéric Charlin concludes: “The master’s right of property [*usus* and *fructus*] takes a singular form resulting from the specific nature of its object. In practical terms, the human nature of the slave cannot but influence the implementation of the prerogatives of the right of property, as is shown by regulation with regard to minor owners. The state recognized that an inheritance including slaves could not be managed like any other material goods. The common good of the kingdom and public order dictated that the property rights of masters be regulated, and the colonial context tended to individualize these rights, even make them sacred in the eyes of masters. Property rights related as much to the *interest* as to the *freedom* of the owner. In the colonies, particular incentives were needed to guide the management of slave ownership, not only in the interest of the master — not to hurt or kill a slave — but also in the interest of the state — to keep labour on the plantations, and to tax it [through the capitation tax]. Finally, *abusus* was not the freedom of the owner to do whatever he wished with his slave in these distant lands. Instead, it relates to the decision to emancipate, the frequency of which justified the need for administrative regulation. All of these elements provide an accurate sense of the degree of involvement of the state in the property rights of colonists” (Charlin 2009, p. 147).</footnote>
personal freedom, an anthropological and moral issue for liberal economists since the Physiocrats:

> Slavery wrests from men whom crime has not degraded, from beings whom God has made free and who have not trampled underfoot the gifts of providence, that moral power which separates us from the brute; the moral power which prevents us from confusing the least enlightened man with the most intelligent animal. Man is free and capable, consequently of duties and rights; the brute is not. (Rossi 1837, vol. 2, p. 369)

Property in a human beings created important difficulties. However, there was a straightforward solution: the abolition of such property, pure and simple. Formerly enslaved people would then recover property in their own capacities, they would recover their status as economic actors and be able to possess and accumulate wealth, land included. This was the solution proposed in the early days of the Restauration by Charles Simonde de Sismondi (1814); twenty years later, the abolitionist Cyrille Bissette (1835) argued that compensation was not necessary and, finally, Félix Milliroux, a merchant and abolitionist, took the more radical view that, if compensation was to be paid, then it should be given to the formerly enslaved blacks (Milliroux 1843). This was also discussed by several member of Schølcher's commission (Adelaïde-Merlande 1982, p. 21). During the parliamentary debate on compensation Emiland Menand, an MP of the left, submitted an alternative to the proposal made by the compensation commission. There would be a fund of 60 million francs; half of it would be used for the improvement and support of colonial trade, and the other half used to create new businesses in the colonies (Délibérations de l'Assemblée Nationale 1849, p. 197). There was no alternative, he said; the state owes nothing to the colonists. Astutely, he supported his proposal with references to the French Revolution, when feudal relationships and the property of the clergy were abolished without compensation (Délibérations de l'Assemblée Nationale 1849, p. 200). However, no other MP supported this proposal, and so there was no vote on it.

This line of thought never gained momentum. Liberal lawyers and economists understood the situation as a dual definition of property rights. Obviously, property in human beings was not and could not be made similar to property rights in material goods; equally obviously, enslaved people must recover their property in themselves. But it was also obvious to lawyers and economists that colonists would suffer serious harm from any such political decision; their property in slaves was legal according to the prevailing royal
decision enshrined in the famous *Code noir*. They therefore made distinctions between different kinds of property. To the economists in the Broglie Commission *natural property* was a consequence of natural law, hence this form of property was fully legitimate and independent of the existence of the state and its positive law. Owners then had full rights of property in the sense given to that relation in the French Civil Code of 1804. In contrast to this view of property rights stood what they called *legal property*, emanating from positive law. This second kind of property was not legitimated by any Code; the existence of property in slaves could even be treated as a past moral mistake on the part of the state. Consequently, the State could simply suppress this form of property with due compensation to the citizens had been induced by law to become owner of enslaved black workers. What was the consequence of this distinction? Let us listen again Rossi's lecture:

> Is it any less true that the owners of slaves owned them, that they acquired them, under the guarantee of the law of the country? If they indulged in an illicit traffic, whose fault is it? Of the legislator who encouraged them to do so, or of the individuals whom the legislator misled? The answer is not in any doubt. The country has the right - better, let us say it is obliged to break the chains of slavery; colonists, in their turn, have a right to compensation from the author of the damage done, from the country (Rossi 1837, vol. 2, p. 377)

This position was then repeated by Rossi as a member of the Broglie's Royal Commission on slavery: colonists did not possess their enslaved workers, they only owned their work. If this was reprehensible, the fault lay with the state and "the state should pay compensation" (Rossi in Broglie 1843, p. 68). Passy fully agreed with this position, and Tocqueville followed suit (Tocqueville 1839, p. 54; 1843, p. 105, 108).

Victor de Broglie himself distinguished ordinary property, as defined in the *Code civil*, from extraordinary property, under which the property of enslaved labourers fell. The first was indefinite, provided that the owner did not harm other people and it implied no restriction on the use of the thing; it was absolute in the sense that the owner could use or abuse the thing at will; and this right did not change over time. The second was limited: only the means expressly stated in the law could be invoked in making enslaved people work; the possessor of enslaved people could not do whatever he wished with them since he also had duties to fulfill; finally, this property altered along with public opinion and enlightenment, so this form of property was only temporary, and could be abolished like any other form of privilege (Broglie 1843, p. 262-265). Broglie
stressed the fact that such a distinction was not ad hoc, but made for the sake of the property of the colonists under consideration; he rightly said that there were other property rights limited by their nature, such as literary property rights, patents, privileges, and monopolies.

Colonists also stated that they did not wish to examine whether their property was more or less legitimate; the property was legal, and this entailed the need to compensate them following the decision to abolish slavery, which in their view was nothing but expropriation based on public interest (VA 1848, p. 35). And echoing Proudhon's claims, they add:

> To do otherwise would mean to violently break a principle on which the whole social order rests; it would be to make common cause with those sects which today seek to destroy society by saying that property is theft (VA 1848, p. 36).

Victor Schœlcher, the leading French abolitionist, also thought that compensation was necessary to the success of the abolition of slavery. He made the liberal distinction between legitimate and legal property, and endorsed the need to compensate colonists for the loss of their enslaved workers. He added that such compensation was required to finance the wages to be paid by colonists to their free labourers (Schœlcher 1842, p. 260-261). This view was reassessed during discussion within the commission created in 1848, at the very beginning of the provisional government, to give effect to the abolition of slavery. This was then associated with a broader understanding of the compensation:

> It [the commission] understands the question of compensation in a broader sense than is assumed by the colonists or the ports. In the system of slavery there is the master who possesses and the slave who is possessed; and if France owes compensation for this social state, which it has tolerated and which it is suppressing, it undoubtedly is answerable to those who have suffered as much as to those who have benefited. Compensation cannot be given to property exclusively; it must be assured to the whole colony, in order to turn at the same time to the profit of the owner and the worker. It is in these terms that the commission poses the question; it does not have to resolve it (Schœlcher 1848, p. 306-307).

The decision was debated in the National Assembly from June 1848 to November 1849. These debates linked two different but connected goals (Beauvois 2013): compensate masters for the loss of their legal property, and the maintenance and development of economic activity in the colonies. How these two goals were reached depended on the amount of the compensation, hence calculations returned to the forefront of political debate.
## *Calculating compensation*

Calculation implies two things: firstly, the calculator has to explain which items enter into the calculation; secondly, the calculator has to quantify these various items in order to arrive at a quantitative result. These two steps are at work in this new calculation, as they had been before in the calculation of the difference between free and slave labour.

Historical records show that there were two different forms of calculation for defining the amount of the compensation to be given to the colonists after the abolition of slavery in June 1848: on the one hand, some calculations started from the number of enslaved people at the date of the abolition and suggested they be quantified using market prices. This seemed simple and straightforward, but was in fact more complicated. On the other hand, calculations could start from the cost of labour and in some cases from the difference between slave and free labour; a solution likewise full of pitfalls. Finally, in some instances the calculation had to take into account the nature of the abolition process; this could occur immediately, or be progressive, with a transition period during which the former enslaved people would work on the plantations at a reduced cost for colonists.

The first type of calculation was based on the number of enslaved people multiplied by a price. The number of enslaved people — about 250,000 — was known with sufficient accuracy, following the census carried out in 1833 and then again in 1839 (Broglie 1843, p. 276; Buffon 1986, p. 57).<fnref n="5" /> Broglie’s sub-commission, dedicated to setting the price that would be the relevant multiplier, started from average approximate prices in each of the four colonies and proposed 1,200 francs as the average price for the whole set of enslaved people. The amount to be paid to the colonists was thus: 250,000 x 1,200 francs = 300 million francs. This was the figure that Tocqueville noted in his series of papers following publication of the report by the Broglie Commission (Tocqueville 1843, p. 108). Since the commission then opted for a ten-year transition period, similar to the British apprenticeship arrangement, half of the sum would appear in the form of reduced labour costs. The financial burden for the French State would then be 150 million francs, that is to say a 6 million francs annuity (Broglie 1843, p. 280).

<footnote n="5">⁵ Broglie’s commission gave the following numbers: 74,333 in Martinique, 93,646 in Guadeloupe, 15,515 in Guyane and 66,013 in Bourbon (now La Réunion), so the total sum was 249,507 persons (Broglie 1843, p. 276).</footnote>
The colonists opposed this calculation. Four Colonial Boards reacted to the Broglie Commission before the publication of their report. As expected, their demands were high: they claimed that colonists were entitled to receive the full price not only of their enslaved labourers, but also the entire value of the plantation (land, capital), since the reluctance of newly-freed men to work on the plantations would destroy their value. Three years later, Marc Petit de Baroncourt, a colonist from Bourbon, wrote an open letter to the Duc de Broglie in which he added to the 150 million calculated by the Broglie Commission: 100 million to cover the loss of future production; then 57 million for security costs, the costs of maintaining the disabled and children; and a massive amount for the overhead costs of the abolition process (67 million). His calculation amounted to 374 million francs (Baroncourt 1845, p. 161-162).

Schølcher also opposed the calculation made by the Broglie Commission. According to him, both the number of enslaved people and the price were wrong. Both were too high. Firstly, he argued that children and old enslaved people, about 20% of the total, should not be taken into account: this reduced the relevant population to 200,000 people. But he then argued that this sum was an underestimate, since this population contained enslaved people brought into the colonies after the abolition of the slave trade in 1817; so, he deducted 5% of the remaining population, counting only 190,000 people really worth compensation for the colonists. Secondly, Schølcher proposed using the ongoing price for constrained buyback in Martinique that the colonists had set themselves: 785 francs, which he thought a bit too high, so he reduced it to 750 francs. Thus, the total amount of the compensation would be: 190,000 x 750 = 142,5 million francs, or 6 million francs annuity (Schølcher 1847, p. 490).

This calculation was again examined by the commission charged with setting the amount of compensation in June 1848. They followed Schølcher's mode of calculation for the number of enslaved people, but set the beginning of the illegal slave trade at 1831 instead of 1817 — Schølcher continued to insist on 1817, but he did not succeed in convincing the other members of the commission (Travaux de la commission, 1848, p. 73). The number of enslaved people relevant for compensation then became 198,959. The price was set at 1085 francs, as a geographical average of the average prices in each colony during the previous twenty years (1825-1845); this price was lower than that of the Broglie Commission since it took into account the decreasing value of enslaved people in the years preceding the debates over abolition; but it was significantly higher than the price in Schølcher's calculation. This commission
then set a new value for compensation: 198,959 x 1085 = 215,8 million francs (Compte-rendu des séances de l'Assemblée Nationale, 1848, p. 401). However, the complexity of the process emerges once again. The members of this commission agreed to lower compensation to 120 million francs, given the poor financial situation of the government. They justified this decrease by arguing that it was compensation, and not a full repurchase of the capital loss suffered by the colonist (ibid).

The final calculation of this type was proposed by Jean-Louis Tranchand, a
republican MP, during the final debate on compensation. He argued that the law
under examination was not about the amount of capital expropriated, but rather
a law regarding the restitution of freedom to enslaved people. Beyond that moral
point, he suggested taking the current market price on the slave market, a price
which was much lower than the one considered by the commission: "If, the
compensation is a debt, you have to pay, but don't pay more than what you have
to", proposing no more than 50 million francs (Compte-rendu des séances de
l'Assemblée Nationale, 1849, p. 170).

A second series of calculations was elaborated on the basis of labour costs, or on the difference between the cost of slave and free labour. As early as 1839 Tocqueville argued that a compensation should be calculated on the basis of the extra cost of free labour (wages) over the cost of maintenance of the former enslaved people (Tocqueville 1839, p. 54). However, he did not follow this point up. This second type of calculation was made under the aegis of Raymond de Verninac-Saint Maure, then Minister of the Navy, and included in a draft decree discussed in the National Assembly during August 1848 (Compte-rendu des séances de l'Assemblée Nationale 1848, p. 398 — see table III).

<caption>**Table III**

**Verninac's calculation based on the difference in costs**</caption>
NOTE A L'APPUI.

En calculant à raison de 75 c. le taux moyen du salaire des affranchis (hommes, femmes et enfants de six à soixante ans) et en considérant la moitié de ce salaire comme for-mant seule une charge nouvelle pour les colons, on établit, ainsi qu'il suit, le calcul de l'indemnité.

Nombre probable des noirs de tout âge et des deux sexes qui auront été mis en liberté à l'époque de l'éman cipation générale.................... 248,000

A déduire les enfants de cinq ans et au-dessous, et les vielliards, 20 pour 100.... 50,000

Reste à rémunérer au prix de 75 c..... 198,000

La moitié de ce salaire, soit............ 37

Donne pour dépenses nouvelles à la charge des colons pour chaque jour...... 73,200

En comptant 250 jours de travail salaré, cl.................... 250

La dépense annuelle est de............ 18,315,000 fr.

Soit pour cinq années.................... 5

Total............ 91,575,000

Ce qu'il y a d'approximatif dans ces calculs permet d'en ramener le résultat à la somme ronde de quatre-vingt-dix millions de francs.

The calculation started with the same number of enslaved people minus the old and children, setting the number of people composing the enslaved labour force at 198,000. Then, on the basis of an average wage cost of 0,75 francs, calculators categorized half of this cost as an additional charge on the colonists. This gave a daily additional cost of 73,200 francs, so 18,315 million francs a year for a conventional 250 day's work per annum. The compensation was then calculated as financial assistance for five years, to give a total sum of 91,575 million francs, which was reduced to 90 million, because "of what is approximate in these calculations".

During the final debate in the national Assembly the former Finance minister, Michel Goudchaux, advocated the calculation proposed by his former colleague, the Minister of the Navy. The debate was clearly dominated by the prevailing financial situation: the minister of finance stated that he was not able to pay more than 90 million francs in compensation. This was not a surprise. Due to the differences between the proposal by the commission charged with setting the compensation and the calculation proposed by Verninac, a final commission was created to find a compromise, under the presidency of Adolphe Crémieux, the former Minister of Justice. The report by this commission contained a lengthy discussion of the various calculations reviewed above, and acknowledged that none of them were that reliable: the current market price of enslaved labourers was not relevant. Compensation was not legal expropriation since the property of the colonists in slaves was not full property, and the so-called difference between the maintenance of enslaved workers and their wages
as free labourers was only a guess (Crémieux 1848, p. 516)<fnref n="6" />. Crémieux’s motto was justice and utility: justice for the colonists who had lost a part of their “extraordinary property” or “legal property”, whatever the name given to it; utility for the new free labourers who would receive a wage, and utility for the country and the colonies that would benefit from the compensation as a means for maintaining economic activity.

Thus, once the final figure had been set (under pressure from the minister of finance), the debate turned to the method of payment of compensation to the colonists in the five colonies concerned. This involved a complex debate about the timing of the payment and its nature: would the colonists receive a capital sum, or would they receive a rent, associated with an increase in the French public debt (Crémieux 1848, p. 517-520; Délibérations à l'Assemblée nationale 1849, p. 241-279). We will not enter into this part of the issue, but we would like to pinpoint *the limited nature of the compensation, mirroring the limited nature of the property of colonists in their enslaved labourers*.

The compensation was not the market price of the colonists’ former capital in the form of enslaved workers, nor the loss of value of their plantations; everybody was clear on that point, except the colonists. However, beyond that, compensation came with strings attached: article 7 of the law (*loi relative à l’indemnité accordée aux colons par suite de l’affranchissement des esclaves*) passed in April 1849 stated that 12% of the rental annuity of 6 million francs would be deducted from the final payment, in order to fund the banking and financial institutions that would be needed to further the future economic development of the colonies.

## Conclusions

<footnote n="6">⁶ The Minister of the Navy took part to some of the debates of the commission in charge of setting the compensation in July and August 1848. In his final appearance he proposed a calculation based on the difference in the cost of free and slave labour, but then said clearly that the commission members could calculate as much as they want, provided that they did not exceed the 90 million francs that the minister of finance was ready to pay: “The Government does not wish to make the principle it has laid down, which makes compensation a remuneration for work and excludes the idea of buying back individuals, the official basis of the new proposals that the commission would make. The important thing, in his eyes, is that the sum he has determined not be exceeded and that the method of settlement be maintained. The commission can adopt all the modifications that it will judge useful on the basis of the distribution as for the individuals, provided that a figure of 90 million francs payable in ten annuities emerges from its conclusions” (Verninac, in Travaux de la commission, 1848, p. 154).</footnote>
From the 1770s to the 1840s abolitionist calculators and economists were unable to agree on the difference between free and slave labour: was free labour more or less costly than slave labour? The colonists claimed that it was so costly that the colonial economy would collapse. In the years 1848-1849, during the short and complex debate about the amount to be paid to the colonists, calculators were again in trouble: what was the price to be paid when France was restoring former slaves to their freedom? 374 million (according to some colonists)? 300 million (Broglie's commission)? 120 million (Commission for setting the compensation)? 90 million or 80 million (Finance minister)? 50 million (according to one representative); or simply zero because those who had suffered were the enslaved people themselves (according to Milliroux)? The issue was certainly sensitive, for property rights were under attack by socialist thinkers precisely at the time when the modern conception of property rights was being formulated, replacing the old tenurial system of the Ancient Régime with the full independent ownership necessary for the creation of an equal citizenship suited to a democratic social state (Blaufarb 2016, p. 10, 209). The issue was all the more sensitive since the colonists' ownership of their enslaved workers was seriously incompatible with this equal citizenship.

In fact, in both cases, and after much debate and calculation, political decision took the lead. In February 1848 Scholcher's commission abolished slavery in France without any calculation regarding the relative costs of free and slave labour. One year later, the price tag of the abolition process was ultimately determined by the limited financial possibilities of the government, which was no longer as radical as the provisional government that came to power after the revolutionary period of February 1848.

Nevertheless, both processes generated a flurry of calculations. These calculations were the sign of the quantitative mind that was increasingly associated with economic thinking. Beyond this change in the role given to calculation, we may conclude with William Deringer (2019) that this quantitative dimension did not bring truth, that calculations were instead an element of political dispute: they were arguments, they were not answers.

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