Claude Ribbe

Claude Ribbe (born 13 October 1954) is a French writer and academic historian of Caribbean origin.

Early life and education

Ribbe was born in Guadeloupe. His family migrated to France, where he completed his schooling and became a historian.

Career

Ribbe has specialised in the history of colonialism in the Caribbean. He has also been active in promoting civil rights in France for people of ethnic African and Caribbean origin.

He has supported the recognition of figures such as Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, in 1793 the first man of Afro-Antilles origin to be promoted to general in the French Army.

In his book The Crime of Napoleon (2005), Ribbe controversially accused Napoleon of having used sulphur dioxide gas for the mass execution of more than 100,000 rebellious black slaves when trying to put down slave rebellions in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and Guadeloupe. He said this was a model for Hitler's holocaust nearly 140 years later.

In Ribbe's words, Napoleon, then First Consul, was the man who, for the first time in history, 'asked himself rationally the question how to eliminate, in as short a time as possible, and with a minimum of cost and personnel, a maximum of people described as scientifically inferior'.^[1]

However this has been ridiculed and debunked by other contemporary French historians.^[2]

References

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Persondata
Name	Ribbe, Claude
Alternative names
Short description	French writer
Date of birth	13 October 1954
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death