Louis-Henri Saulces de Freycinet (1777–1840).

Bulletin des actes administratifs de la Guyane française. [Nos. 1–12 for the year 1828.]

Cayenne, Imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1828.

8°. 240 pp.

Contemporary marbled paper wrappers.

Very rare complete 1828 run of the official monthly bulletin issued by the colonial government of French Guiana. The Bulletin was the main printed record of French colonial administration in Guiana and ran from 1827-1866. After 1833 the series was titled Bulletin officiel de la Guyane française. Each issue was printed locally at the Imprimerie du Gouvernement in Cayenne and distributed to magistrates and public offices; very few have survived outside official archives.

The first volume of this 1828 issue opens with the founding statutes of the Government Press of French Guiana. Article 1 states that the Chief of the Printing and Bookbinding Workshops had a racially diverse staff under his orders:

“For the Printing Department: a compositor, a pressman, a labourer (Chinese), and a négrillon [Black boy] from the colonial workshop; for the Bookbinding Department: a bookbinder and a sewer (Chinese).”

The bulletins record decrees, ordinances, appointments, tariffs, and local regulations, including many that concern the lives of enslaved people, such as: 

• Detachment of Blacks employed in clearing and draining the lands of Mana, p. 113.

• Three Blacks arrested for marronnage (escape) at Mana declared forfeited and returned to the colonial service workshop, p. 134.

• Trousers granted to Black boys (négrillons) over seven years old, p. 185.

• Clothing of Black women assigned to the personal service of the heads of administration, p. 225.

• Reward to the Indian captain Alexis for the arrest of runaway Blacks, p. 104.

• Reward to Michel, a Black slave of the plantation Guatimala, for capturing offenders in Mont-Sinéry and Macouria, p. 75.

• Renewal of the decree requiring that marriages between free people of colour and their enslaved partners be preceded by manumission, p. 215.

• Repeal of that decree, restoring the earlier Code Noir provisions of 1685 and 1724, p. 226.

These were enacted under Governor Louis-Henri Saulces de Freycinet (1777–1840). A former naval officer and colonial administrator of Île Bourbon (Réunion), Freycinet governed French Guiana from 1827 to 1829, working to reform the penal system, revive plantation agriculture, and restore the colony’s finances after decades of decline. Together, these issues offer a continuous and exceptionally rare record of local governance and colonial policy in early nineteenth-century Guiana.

Rarity: Surprisingly absent from Abonnenc, Hurault & Saban, Bibliographie de la Guyane française, vol. I (1957). We have traced no complete 1828 set in commerce. The BnF holds the only full run that we could trace, see: FRBNF32732137 (http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb32732137k). Their copy has a 12-page index at the end, which lacks in the copy we offer here.

Condition: Lacks index. Spine faded and worn, but inside in excellent condition, wholly untrimmed and partially unopened.

Literature: Henri Mager, "Annuaire de la presse coloniale", 1891, p. 87-88 : https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/view/bsb11602551?page=91