Gens de couleur libres

Gens de couleur libres, 'free people of colour', was the name used in France's Caribbean colonies before the abolition of slavery for free people of African descent, mostly of mixed African and European ancestry. In Saint-Domingue, where about 16,000 were free before 1793, they owned about a third of the land and a quarter of the enslaved people by the late colonial period. Though nominally equal under the Code Noir, they lacked the rights of Frenchmen, notably the vote, and their demand for equal rights became an early central issue of the Haitian Revolution.