Faidherbe was posted to Guadeloupe in 1848. Under the pretext that he landed there at the very moment when France abolished slavery (for the second time), his hagiographers would later say that his express passage on the island enabled him to sympathise with ‘the Blacks’. It is even said that he militated alongside Victor Schœlcher, deputy of Martinique and Guadeloupe and ardent defender of abolition, and that he was expelled under pressure from the colonists because of his ‘negrophilia’.
The problem is that historians have found no trace of such a commitment. It is true that Faidherbe was vaguely interested in the condition of the Blacks of Guadeloupe. “It seems that he felt the will to love this cursed race”, notes one of his admiring hagiographers. But he did nothing to improve their lot. And it was simply because he was overstaffed that Faidherbe was sent back to Algeria in 1849 – no more glorious than when he arrived, but affected by an ugly skin disease.