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| Volume No. 1 Issue No. 34 - Monday, December 30, 2002 |
The Colored Ascendency in Dominica
 by: Thomson Fontaine
A striking feature of Dominican slave society in the early 1800s was the large proportion of people described as colored. The category was however ambiguous and sometimes referred to slaves and free people alike.
In some instances, these were generally believed to be the offspring of black slaves (usually females) and white males. This group would later become known as the Mulatto Ascendency and comprised mainly light-skinned descendants of the pre-Emancipation freedmen.
Before the Emancipation Proclamation liberated all the slaves, some of the colored went on to own slaves and control property. In a census conducted in 1815, it was revealed that 2, 666 persons were colored, 1,123 whites and 18, 862 were slaves.
The proportion of colored slaves however kept rising and by 1830, the colored accounted for 15.6 percent of all births among the slave population, with a peak of 32.9 percent in Roseau.
Indeed, by the time of Apprenticeship, in 1834, colored, or nonwhites, constituted the bulk of the nonslave population. Most of the colored males, being neither estate owners nor laborers, fitted poorly within the plantation economy. They developed a penchant for politics.
Since 1771, Dominica had enjoyed separate government from the rest of the Leeward Islands, and by 1775, it was officially ruled by a governor assisted by a nominated Council, and an elected House of Representatives. In 1833, three colored men used the new political and civil rights granted to freedmen to contend successfully for seats in the local house.
The colored men in an effort to increase their political influence attempted to include all nonwhites under their political umbrella. The actions of the laborers who themselves were confused with the colored category led to the Census Riots of 1844, which later became known as La Guerre Negre (Creole for the Negro's War).
Editor's Note: Material was obtained from: Peasants and Capital - Dominica in the World Economy by Michel-Rolph Trouillot
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