Roume de St. Laurent ... A Memoir

"A creole cocktail of political thriller, historical romance and dashing picaresque replete with pirates and lost gold, corrupt financiers, ravishing coquettes, rabid revolutionaries and future emperors (Dessalines, Naploeon), Roume invites us to consider modernity in the New World, or what Besson frequently refers to as “the nightmare nest of slavery”. In dramatic fashion Roume examines the entanglement of Europe and the Caribbean on the cusp of the Haitian Revolution, the crossroads where the spirits of outmoded European feudalism and nascent capitalism, Enlightenment libertarianism and universalism collided with and contested the magical realism of an Afro-Creole worldview uneasily yet expediently allied with the ambitions of the offspring of the entanglement – the conflicted mulattoes.”

(Simon Lee,  Trinidad Guardian, 3 October 2016)

"Roume ‘works’ as a story from beginning to end, always moving and exciting, always unveiling inner truths about the Trinidadian or Caribbean spirit but also about the human spirit. It is never sensational, not even when you’re describing the horrors of the French Revolution. You ‘explain’ Trinidad better than any author I’ve read, although ‘explaining’ Trinidad is not your main goal. (Or is it?)
Most impressive to me is how you are able to display everywhere in your account such a keen sense of the virtue of restraint and subtlety.  I kept waiting for excess but never found it, not even once. The ‘poetical’ passages and touches are always deeply moving, and plausible, too. The whole thing is stunning.”

(Arnold Rampersad, Letter to the Author, 12 August 2016)

"Philippe Roume de Saint Laurent—who was he? Was he one of Trinidad’s heroes? He’s been called the “coloniser” of the island; he had a lot to do with the 1783 Cedula of Population and the subsequent waves of French migration here, which did indeed “populate” the island and open it up to plantation development….This long, sprawling novel reads like an epic romance, even though the basic facts about Roume’s career are accurate. There’s piracy in the Caribbean, hidden treasure (buried in a cave in Gasparee), revolution and war in France and Saint Domingue/Haiti, intrigues, villainies, manhunts and plots…. Besson’s exciting and lushly written novel gives us a romantic and fascinating view of Trinidad, France and the Caribbean during the era of Revolution—the best and the worst of times, as Dickens famously wrote at the start of his A Tale of Two Cities.”

(Bridget Brereton, Trinidad Express, 2 June 2016)

ISBN: 978-976-8244-21-5
530 pages
Softcover / Kindle

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Making room for Creole history
Review by Simon Lee
Published in the Trinidad Guardian, 3 October 2016

"Jerry Besson’s latest foray into the not so distant but largely forgotten past –a fictionalized memoire of Philippe Roume de Saint Laurent, the man who engineered the 1783 Cedula for Population which birthed modern Trinidad – ebulliently mixes genres in a stampede of individual and historical narratives, exploring aspects of Creole sensibility which have slipped through the seine of recent Caribbean historiography.
 Yet this heavyweight, at close to 500 pages and hugely ambitious in its scope (tracing the creolization of Enlightenment ideals and centering the ‘peripheral’ Caribbean at the heart of the ill-fated French and successful Haitian revolutions) lightly sidesteps the tedium of much historical fiction. Roume immerses readers intimately in the lives of such unforgettable imaginary characters as Sarusima the Carib or the demented white Creole Tante Mam’zelle, along with historical figures like Roume’s shape-shifting second wife Marianne ‘Soubise’ Rochard, the Grenadian mulatresse, whose fictional journals both anchor her husband’s narrative of opportunism and also provide another, insider’s point of view of the events he engaged in.
 A creole cocktail of political thriller, historical romance and dashing picaresque replete with pirates and lost gold, corrupt financiers, ravishing coquettes, rabid revolutionaries and future emperors (Dessalines, Naploeon), Roume invites us to consider modernity in the New World, or what Besson frequently refers to as “the nightmare nest of slavery”. In dramatic fashion Roume examines the entanglement of Europe and the Caribbean on the cusp of the Haitian Revolution, the crossroads where the spirits of outmoded European feudalism and nascent capitalism, Enlightenment libertarianism and universalism collided with and contested the magical realism of an Afro-Creole worldview uneasily yet expediently allied with the ambitions of the offspring of the entanglement – the conflicted mulattoes.
 Although the Haitian Revolution/War of Independence has attracted the attention of writers across the region from Walcott and Lamming, to Cesaire, Glissant and Carpentier, only historians like Laurent Dubois have attempted to chart revolutionary movements throughout the Caribbean at the end of the eighteenth century. In fiction it is only Besson who has made the connection between the Haitian uprising of 1791 and the Fedon uprising in Grenada of 1795, which like similar uprisings in St Vincent and St Lucia challenged the institution of slavery and European hegemony. It is the figure of Roume, a white Grenadian-born creole, who allows Besson to make the connection. Roume’s life journey took him on the wings of ambition and opportunism from Grenada to Trinidad, South America, Europe, Tobago and twice to Haiti, first as an agent of the French crown and then as High Commissioner of the French Revolution.
 Besson characterizes Roume as Frontier Man and Creole by birth and sometime conviction, embodying in him the contradictions of the Caribbean white massa slave-owning class, tainted by the legacy of the nightmare nest of slavery. When his first European-born wife Fanny recoils from him, still reeking from his latest sexual encounter on their Grenadian estate, he dashes her exotic fantasies (“a life of adventure, a sensual mixture of fecundity and elegance in a place on the frontier of the New World…she saw herself with him in paradise”) with all the callousness of those who viewed the slaves as property at worst, or “intelligent animals…without souls” at best. “You had to cover them, conquer them, breed them,” he rages at her with plantation pragmatism.
 Ironically it is a product of precisely this brutal regime, the mulatresse Soubise Rochard, who becomes his second wife, soul mate and companion for life. Born as Marianne Katronice, the illegitimate daughter of an estate owner and his slave mistress, she crosses the divide erected by the aristocracy of the skin when freed by her dying father. However, in pre-Fanon style, for survival purposes, she cultivates a Creole identity as Soubise, only reverting to Marianne when occasion demands.  She is aware of the common ground which unites her with Roume and which ultimately severs him from the Old World despite his manoeuvring: “As a Creole, descendant of Europeans born in these islands, Philippe had an understanding of the land, climate and the blacks…The salt of the Caribbean Sea ran in his veins…we, Philippe and I understood things differently –Phillipe’s imagination contained a great deal of my own.”
 Soubise also recognizes Roume’s fluid identity, knowing “he possessed the actor’s gift of being all things to all men. A born Creole.” His central belief in free will and choice, allied to his insatiable drive to be an agent of change lead him to a major role in the worst excesses of the French Revolution, when as a “blooded Jacobin” he embraces the period of The Terror drawing on an internalized legacy of violence: “we of the slave islands understand how to live without a sense of humanity.”

By positioning Roume at the centre of the revolution in France, Besson echoes the theory of CLR James and others that the modern world was birthed in the Caribbean, in Haiti. Some of the best elements of Enlightenment philosophical theory (equality, liberty) were compromised, betrayed and eventually reversed by the French, because philosophy makes for bad economics and the French Revolution depended financially on slavery as much as the Ancien Régime. As one of the metropolitan characters puts it when dismissing the slaves’ claims to the Rights of Man: “ Rights, human rights cannot apply to them. Soulless, they have not the faculty of choice. Anyway that would mean a collapse of the economy. France cannot afford to free her blacks.” It took the “soulless creatures” of Haiti to effect the praxis of Equal Rights and fight for them successfully, establishing the world’s first free black republic at the same time as Napoleon swept aside the vestiges of the French Revolution to re-establish the old order, in the new guise of an empire.
 Roume’s decline is directly linked to the ascendancy of both Toussaint l’Ouverture  and Napoleon. Sent back to Hispaniola as the Republic’s High Commissioner in 1799, Soubise recognizes the dilemma he faces: “ You must make up your mind, are you of the Caribbean, or do you belong on the other side, the Atlantic.” Although Roume has by now arrived at a common understanding with Toussaint whom he reveres (“both believed that a Caribbean interpretation of the republican ideal could be arrived at. This belief had at its centre the certainty shared by them that the African…was a complete human being.”) he elects to put down his bucket with Napoleon, rejecting Toussaint’s offer “Stay and this nation will honour you…You will stand, an equal, with the men who have liberated the New World.’ Roume’s hestitation can be read as symptomatic of the Creole malaise of failing to fully embrace first liberty and much later independence, the same psychopathology Fanon and Naipaul highlighted, which is still with us in the postmodern Caribbean.
 Roume can stand alone as a viscerally entertaining text, dramatizing the genesis of the modern Caribbean. Viewed in the context of Besson’s prolific oeuvre, both historical and fictional, we can also read it as the continuing expression of a minority or sidelined narrative in the post-independence history of the Caribbean – the Afro/French-Creole story. Political correctness, politically manipulated Afrocentrism and some of the worst aspects of globalization and (under) development have obscured or obliterated this narrative, which we must all be grateful to Besson for retrieving, in the interest of better understanding who we are now and how we got here."

Tobago from English to French

Tobago was once a part of the first, original British Empire, like Jamaica, Barbados and the American colonies, but distinct from India, South Africa or Trinidad.

Tobago has several layers of history, which is why you can stand with your face to the wind, overlooking a truly lovely sweep of the blue seas and lush landscape, with the ruins of an early 17th century Dutch windmill just behind you and a great old rusting cannon, marked for a Georgian king who died in the 1820s, at your feet.

You get a feeling for the past and of ancient things, of the creek and "whoosh" of the mill's four wings, its huge 40 ft sails turning in the very same air in which you now stand. The lines of ox carts bringing the cut cane to be ground, the work songs of slaves going to the fields, living, dying, unmarked and unrecorded lives and deaths by the tens of thousands who toiled the Tobagonian soil.

The great estate houses have all but vanished. In the 19th and 20th century, buildings were put upon their old ballast block foundations, and if you have the time and look very carefully, you may find an old piece of iron, maybe some links of chain, a huge hook, a broken hinge, a great copper caldron in which sugar may have been boiled.

Tobago possesses a profound sense of times already past.  In 1769, Port of Spain was a mud and thatch assemblage of huts built in a swamp, just as the Caroni swamp is today, with a handful of Spanish people, forty or fifty of them, a few slaves, all so poor that their living conditions were hardly different from each other.

Tobago, on the other hand, was well into its third, possibly fourth establishment. Its population was arranged with 10,800 slaves, 1,050 free blacks and 2,300 Europeans. Already the upper regions of its central main ridge were designated as "woods for the protection of rains". The treaty of Paris of 1763, which marked the end of the Seven Year War, now made Tobago British. By Royal Proclamation in 1764 the island was divided into parishes. In April 1768, a Legislative Council was convened. Trinidad would not see anything like that for almost 100 years. 54,000 acres of land were sold. This produced £154,000, at a period when the entire establishment in Trinidad, the European men could just arrange one suit of proper clothes between them all (just in the event of visitors from abroad)! This shows how poor Trinidad was in the pre-Cedula days.

Plantation development in Tobago commenced in earnest with the sale of 500 acres at Courland Bay. The first export of sugar came from Bushy Park in St. Mary's Parish. The drive for development was on. The 10,800 slaves bore the brunt of the actual labour of clearing the forest for the planting of a variety of crops, while enduring the appalling conditions of slavery. They cultivated sugar cane on a large scale.

It is hardly surprising that there were several slave revolts during the late 18th century in Tobago. These were more often than not started by the newly arrived slaves. The first slave revolt in 1770 spread from Courland Estate to Mt. Irvine and Riseland; in 1771, two insurrections were put down by the militia. In 1774, the slave revolt on Queen's Bay Estate was also suppressed. The plantation economy, centered as it was on the system of slavery, perceived the slaves as merely a factor in the production of crops, a commodity like axles for carts or grinding wheels for windmills, expensive to buy, requiring upkeep and maintenance, not to be unnecessarily misused or destroyed, but basically - albeit expensively - replaceable.

There was very little money on the plantations. Food, shelter and clothing were provided by the estate. It was self-sufficient in the crafts and skills necessary to maintain its work, stock and tools. Transactions between the estates and London were handled by bills of exchange and a system of credit.

The services necessary to provide for the shipping  and sale of goods and for the management of income were provided by the merchant banker, who operated out of London. He provided the ships that would transport the products of the estates to England and made arrangements for a constant supply of slaves from the west coast of Africa. These were procured by African merchants, mostly Muslims.

The proceeds of the goods sold in England were used to settle the planters' financial commitments and arrange for supplies and stock. Any residuals were credited to the accounts of the planters with the merchant houses. Produce served as the unit of account and medium of exchange and thus was regarded as a form of money.

In 1776, Tobago's economy suffered a serious setback, as hordes of leaf-eating ants destroyed thousands of acres of sugar cane, ravaging plantations in the windward parishes. This forced a change to the cultivation of cotton, which proved to be an early and timely attempt at diversification and, during the next 15 years or so, up to 15,000 acres were changed to cotton cultivation.

In 1778, with the American colonies in rebellion, an American squadron attempted a raid on Tobago. Their squadron comprised two ships of the line, three brigs and a schooner. They were engaged by the British battleship H.M.S. Yarmouth. During the encounter, the American ship Randolph was blown up with her crew of 315 men. The remainder of the squadron withdrew.

Tobago produced in 1780 35,122 cwt. of sugar, 1,868 puncheons of rum and 1,518,000 lb. of cotton, 20,600 lb. of indigo and 1,600 lb. of ginger. There were 1,637 working cattle and 946 horses. Almost 24,000 acres of land had been cleared. Notwithstanding, Tobago with its length of just 26 miles and width of seven, was not an important possession from an agricultural point of view. However, its value to the British crown lay in its strategic military and naval position. It lay well to windward, which was important in the age of sailing ships. Any force collected there could easily be launched against any of the islands, including even Barbados. A battle fleet coming from Tobago would have a speedy opportunity to fall upon an enemy beating against the prevailing wind.

Tobago was basically out of the hurricane area and had excellent harbour for the ships of those days. It has been felt by historians that the defense of the island was neglected in this period, and that the fortifications such as Fort George in 1777 and the small redoubts listed below came a bit late.

The island could boast of a militia of some 350 men. There were two companies of the 62nd regiment and later two companies of the 48th regiment. The French involvement with the rebellious American colonists eventually led to open war between France and England in 1778.  In that year, the French Admiral Comte d'Estaing was in the West Indies with a squadron having 9,000 soldiers on board. He was unable to save St. Lucia from capture by the British, but was able to take St. Vincent and Grenada from the English. The English planters in Tobago saw this as a catastrophe in the making.

A French squadron of nine ships of the line were sighted off the island on 23rd May, 1781. The British under Lt. Governor George Ferguson surrendered only after a gallant 10-day struggle against overwhelming odds.

Ferguson had upon sighting the French, immediately mastered all able-bodied men, some 427, comprised of planters, militia, sailors and regular troops. The French first attempted a landing a Minister Bay, named by the Dutch Luggart's Bay, but high seas drove them off. They tried again at Rockly Bay. Once again the weather proved too bad for a landing.

The following day, they succeeded in putting ashore 3,100 men at Great Courland Bay. Major Hamilton of the militia, who had manned a two-gun battery at Black Rock across the bay, was able to bring the French ships under heavy fire, until he was forced to retire.

Lt. Governor Ferguson in the meantime had retreated and regrouped his men at Concordia, on the heights above Scarborough, and not far from Mason Hall, fighting a guerrilla action all the way.

The French general Philbert Blanchelande in hot pursuit demanded their surrender, having set up a battery at French Fort, which was then a cotton plantation overlooking Concordia. A French attack on the English position failed in the night, as the French lost their way.

Ferguson and his small band refused to surrender, requesting the French general "not to trouble me again upon this point". From the heights of Concordia, Ferguson was able to see more French troops landing in Plymouth and was forced to wait until the dead of the night to fall back to the base of the main ridge, Caledonia Estate. He did this so well that when the French stormed his position the next day, they found that he had gone.

Ferguson fell back through the forest and steep mountain sides and fortified a mountain top position so as to make a final stand. By this time, the French landed some 400 men at Man-of-War Bay, intent to take Ferguson from the rear. Still, the British resisted. It was only when the French started to burn the plantations that Ferguson's force, many of them planters in short of ammunition and food, decided that the wisest course of action would be to surrender. the French congratulated the English on their gallant defense. The conditions and the laws laid down by the English were left unchanged, although Scarborough was renamed Port Louis.

Redoubts in Tobago

Great Courland: two 18-pounders and one 6-pounder

Little Courland: one 18-pounder and one 9-pounder

La Guiria Bay: two 6-pounders

Queen's Bay: two 9-pounders

Bloody Bay: one 6-pounder

Englishman's Bay: one 6-pounder

Castara Bay: one 6-pounder

Sandy Point: two 18-pounders, two 9-pounders

Fort Granby: two 18-pounders, one 9-pounder, four 6-pounders with three 5.5"-mortars

Philippe Rose Roume de Saint-Laurent

Edited by Gabriella Matouk

A key figure in Trinidad's colonial past, Philippe Rose Roume de Saint-Laurent is regarded as having lived his life in service to the West Indies and its people.

Roume was born on October 13th, 1743 in Grenada. Having been educated on his native soil, it is said that he had planned to spend the rest of his life there, disassociated from public affairs. However, when Grenada fell under British rule in 1763, Roume's loyalty to France led him to take up the position of the only French member of His Britannic Majesty's Council, but he and four others were expelled by the acting Lieutenant-Governor in 1776 for impeding conciliar business. His allegiance to the land of his forefathers motivated his subsequent refusal to join the militia against France, which earned him open disapproval from the British in Grenada. These events were two of several factors that motivated Roume to leave Grenada and travel to Trinidad.

When Roume first visited Trinidad in 1777, the island was still largely undeveloped. Serendipitously, Roume befriended the Spanish officer Don Juan de Catilla, who was surveying Trinidad for the purpose of producing accurate maps. Roume joined de Catilla on his exploration of the island, during which time they examined Trinidad's economic prospects. Fascinated by Roume's ideas, de Catilla urged him to write a report for the Spanish officials in Caracas. The report was well received, and Roume was invited to return to Trinidad to further assess the colony's potential. In the resulting report, Roume proposed incentives for settlers and, in the interest of the new colonists, advocated for the appointment of a Governor who would encourage unity and harmony between the settlers. The Intendant at Caracas followed Roume’s advice, and elected Don Martin de Salaverria, the Commandant of the company of Coastguards at Caracas.

Before he finally relocated to Trinidad in 1781, Roume traveled around the West Indies, encouraging residents of the other islands to settle in Trinidad. Governor Salaverria encouraged Roume to present his ideas for Trinidad’s development to the Intendant in Caracas. Impressed by his vision, the Intendant agreed that Roume should travel to Madrid and present his ideas to the authorities there. Roume went first to Paris, where he took the opportunity to inform the Spanish Ambassador of the state of affairs in the Caribbean. Knowing that the future of the island of Tobago was an issue at hand, Roume advocated for Tobago remaining under French rule, which it did.
After much difficulty, Roume was denied any meetings with Count Galvez, the Minister for the Indies, in Madrid. Galvez was unwilling to share any credit for the plans for Trinidad. However, on November 20th, 1783, the cedula including Roume’s proposals for Trinidad’s development was granted, notwithstanding Galvez’s elimination of any credit to Roume himself. In extensive debt by the end of his voyage, Roume submitted a claim for re-imbursement, which Galvez disregarded.
Despite these setbacks, Roume saw his vision implemented in Trinidad with positive results. He had recommended the election of a Governor who would be objective and unbiased in dealing with the old and new settlers. The well-respected Don Jose Maria Chacon filled the role, and his governorship saw increases in population and prosperity.
With little hope of returning to Trinidad due to his dire financial situation after his visit to Madrid, Roume went to his wife’s house in Paris, desperately seeking employment. At the same time, the French colony of Tobago was in need of an equipped ordonnateur to help improve its suffering economy. Roume presented himself as a candidate and was chosen for the position in April 1786. Roume worked with newly appointed governor Count Arthur Dillon to remodel Tobago’s systems of law and taxation, resulting in tremendous improvements. However, with the advent of the French Revolution and Dillon’s departure in 1789, the Chevalier de Jobal was elected acting governor and proved to be a dishonest college for Roume. Seeing much of his work crumbling before him, Roume willingly departed Tobago in late 1790. On the other hand, the unstable political situation occurring in the island of St. Domingue at the same time would lead Roume to the pinnacle of his career.

St. Domingue, being the most valuable colony in the world, was vital to the French economy, so the news of Revolution on the island was a great threat. In 1791, Roume was appointed by the National Assembly in Paris as part of a three-man Commission to confront the situation in the colony. While hopes for the Commission’s success were high, the Commissioners’ loyalty to the ideals of the Revolution incensed the whites in St. Domingue. Two of the Commissioners departed the colony, fearing for their safety, and Roume followed suit and returned to France in June of 1792.
Despite his departure, Roume remained attentive to the situation in St. Domingue. In 1796, he traveled to Santo Domingo as part of the French Government’s third attempt at a Commission. While in Santo Domingo, Roume supported measures in favour of the blacks in St. Domingue His sentiments were acknowledged by Toussaint L’Ouverture, who asked Roume to take over the position of sole Agent for France in St. Domingue.
Roume and Toussaint had forged an intriguing respect for one another over the years. On one hand, they trusted each other as fellow West Indians, with Roume even requesting Toussaint’s presence as a witness at his divorce hearing and second marriage in 1799 to Marianne Elizabeth Rochard, a coloured woman born in Grenada. On the other hand, Roume’s and Toussaint’s opposite allegiances cemented the rift between them.
Victory for the blacks against France’s attempt to hold on to the colony of St. Domingue marked the end of Roume’s career, and he returned to France. He died in 1805, not wealthy, but contented.
Exploring Port of Spain, one will find streets and structures named after the significant figures in Trinidad’s past. There is no memorial or street named for Philippe Rose Roume de Saint-Laurent, but the enduring effects of his visions and achievements are evocative of his tremendous contributions to the development of modern Trinidad.

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