Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: “Reflections on Slavery”

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's essay “Reflections on Slavery,” published in his book A Voyage to the Island of Mauritius (or, Isle of France), offers an account of slavery and its atrocities. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre was a well-known French writer and botanist of the eighteenth century who studied with the Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This work was written during Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's travels to the Île de France, or Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean following his time with the French army. This piece highlights the author's shock over what he learns about the slave trade. He argues that the Native inhabitants of both the American and African continents were being negatively affected by this practice, losing their populations to benefit Europe's fortunes in sugar and coffee. He discusses the harsh treatments that created the short lives and fast turnover of enslaved people in the Caribbean. He also discusses the effectiveness of the Code Noir, the collection of French laws regarding slavery in the French colonies, and who it truly benefited. This piece is quite a powerful work that considers the harsh realities faced by enslaved people. It also examines the often convoluted reasons of continuing the intuition of slavery itself while calling out those who profited from luxuries produced by slavery.