Les Beauharnais : Une fortune antillaise, 1756-1796

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, sugar plantations in the West Indies were the Beauharnais family’s main source of income. Augmented by saltworks on the île de Ré and by private income from various domains between the Loire and Charente, this revenue was nevertheless vulnerable to the weather, competition, conflict at sea, as well as the Beauharnais’s own poor management. Their situation was all the more difficult at the end of the Ancien Régime, when their unsuccessful defence of the Windward Islands during the Seven Year War discredited them at court, depriving them of precious support after American independence. The French Revolution gave the next generation another chance, before Josephine’s marriage to Bonaparte eventually restored the family fortunes.