1791-Jan.: The popular French gazette L’Ami de la Liberté, published in Guadeloupe, gained an eager and subversive following among the black population in Do…

1791-Jan.: The popular French gazette L’Ami de la Liberté, published in Guadeloupe, gained an eager and subversive following among the black population in Dominica. Despite their restricted literacy, enslaved people reportedly clubbed together their small earnings on Sundays to purchase the paper so it could be read aloud to them. The island’s Privy Council denounced the publication for providing open encouragement to the enslaved and promulgating opinions in their favor. The editor, an anonymous figure known only as “XYZ,” was attacked by the proslavery press as a man of no character. This collective engagement with revolutionary media demonstrates the sophisticated ways the unfree obtained and manipulated political intelligence.