In August 1777 a crowd gathered in Port Louis, the capital of the Indian Ocean island of Ile de France (now Mauritius), for the execution of Benoît Giraud, otherwise known as 'Hector the Mulatto'. Though the term 'mulatto' implied some 'white' parentage, Giraud was also described as a 'free-born black' from Martinique, an island on the other side of the French colonial empire. More immediately, he had come from Paris, where he had been put in the Châtelet prison and then, to his outrage, exiled to Ile de France by order of the Naval Minister. What he was supposed to have done to warrant this treatment is far from clear. The correspondence from Paris to the island administrators simply stated that he was a 'dangerous' man who had made a number of unfounded and defamatory allegations against unnamed public figures. The identity of one of these figures was revealed a few months after Giraud arrived on Ile de France.

LRB 18 October 2001 | PDF Download