num_pages: 400
description: Patriots Royalists and Terrorists in the West Indies examines the complex revolutionary struggle in Martinique and Guadeloupe from 1789 to 1802. The arrival of tricolour cockades  badges showing support for the French Revolution  and news from Paris in 1789 undermined the royal governors authority unleashed bitter conflict between white factions and encouraged the aspirations of free people of colour to equality and black slaves to freedom. This book provides a detailed narrative of the shifting political developments and analyses the roles of planter resentment of metropolitan control social and racial tensions and the ambiguity of revolutionary principles in a colonial setting. Recent scholarship has tended to over-emphasize the colonies agency and to accentuate the conflict between masters and slaves while downplaying metropolitan influences. In contrast this study seeks to restore the importance of destabilizing political struggles between white factions. It argues that metropolitan news ideas language and political culture  the revolutionary script from France  played a key role in shaping the revolution in the colonies.
language: English
title: Patriots, Royalists, and Terrorists in the West Indies: The French Revolution in Martinique and Guadeloupe, 1789-1802
publisher: University of Toronto Press