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Royalism and the Origins of the Haitian Revolution, 1763-1806.” ABSTRACT Keywords: Haitian Revolution, Royalism, Haiti, Caribbean, Hispaniola, Authoritarianism Using newly discovered sources from Spanish and French archives, “Subjects of the King: Royalism and the Origins of the Haitian Revolution, 1763-1806,” re-examines the social, political, and cultural history of the Haitian Revolution. Specifically, I explore the royalist origins of the August 1791 slave revolts in the French colony of Saint Domingue that sparked the famous 1791-1804 Revolution. In addition to tracing the movements of multilingual border crossers of uncertain loyalty, I document a royalist counterrevolutionary movement that sought to destroy the republican ideals of the French Revolution and restore Louis XVI to the throne. The current scholarly consensus posits that important causal factors in igniting the revolts were French Republicanism and Enlightenment-era abolitionism. I do not refute these claims, but I contest their centrality, filling a historiographical void by pointing to royalism, a venerable phenomenon with African as well as European roots, as a counterintuitive emancipatory model. I show that Saint Dominguan revolutionaries were part of a long-entangled history on the shared island of Hispaniola within which African descendants acted as pivot points between the two colonies, often crossing the border and manipulating both French and Spanish institutions. In doing so, they fashioned a multifaceted royalist viewpoint that paradoxically depended on monarchical articulations of rights and freedoms. Ultimately, my study calls upon scholars to rethink the way in which the enslaved in Saint Domingue conceptualized freedom, challenging the assumption that royalism was a rigid historical counterpoint to Enlightenment ideals. ÓCopyright by Jesús G. Ruiz, 2020 All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND DEDICATION On April 23, 2010, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act was signed into law by the then governor of the State of Arizona. The law, simply known as “SB 1070,” allowed law enforcement officers to attempt to determine the immigration status of an individual wherever there was a “reasonable suspicion” that the person was undocumented. Sometime after the law passed, I was pulled over by a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy who asked me for my social security number and grilled me on my work and education. My fear from this encounter soon turned into anger and I decided that I should perhaps become an immigration attorney. I took the LSAT and got into a few programs, but the law schools never got back to me regarding funding. Around the same time, a good friend of mine had told me about a Master’s program in Caribbean Studies with which I could study overseas. I applied, and after speaking with the director and now dear friend and mentor, José Buscaglia, it was clear that I had a good chance at full funding. Excited at the prospects, I made the decision to pursue the Master’s at The State University of New York at Buffalo. The Master’s program at SUNY Buffalo introduced me to the works of C.L.R. James, Aimé Césaire, and Edouard Glissant. My interest on the Haitian Revolution soon followed, and I wanted to find out everything I could about what had transpired in that colony that was once called the “Pearl of the Antilles.” José Buscaglia, whom we affectionally (and still, despite his insistence not to) call “Profe,” taught me a multitude of things, including Spanish paleography. He helped me make sense of, transcribe, and translate archival records in the General Archive of the Indies (AGI), as well as understand that I needed to continue this research and get a Ph.D. For that, and everything else I thank you, Profe. I also thank Dalia Muller, for introducing me to the ii works of Laurent Dubois and Ada Ferrer, and for opening my eyes to the possibilities of history as a profession. Looking back now and, to use Glissant’s term, I can say that this dissertation in many ways has its rhizomatic base at Buffalo. Tulane University gave me an opportunity to further pursue what started in Buffalo, and I’m especially grateful to The Stone Center for Latin American Studies and the History Department. I also thank the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for kindly funding multiple research trips to Spain and France. Other institutions and centers which have funded my research deserve recognition: the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York; the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island; the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware; the Tinker Foundation; the U.S. Department of Education; and the Fulbright U.S. Student Program for research in Spain. I am also grateful to all of the staff and faculty at the Instituto de Historia in the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Madrid, Spain, particularly Consuelo Naranjo-Orovio who has seen this work grow through the years. I thank the library staff at the Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos in Seville, Spain, for providing me with a space to work after long hours at the AGI. I also wish to thank the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University for the invitation to participate in the Mark Claster Mamolen Dissertation workshop; I particularly want to thank Vincent Brown for his crucial commentary on chapters three and four of the dissertation, as well as Alejandro De La Fuente and George Reid Andrews for their insight. Many thanks to Cécile Vidal who welcomed me at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales while I was conducting research in Paris, and who was kind enough to offer up her time and thoughts. Lastly, I thank the Center for Latin American iii and Caribbean Studies at NYU, for providing me with the resources necessary in finishing this work; with special thanks to Ada Ferrer for acting as my sponsor. Friends and colleagues have inspired me, helped me grow, and seen this project blossom into fruition. I apologize for any omissions. First, I want to thank my family from home: Adam, Reena, Tawni, and Amanda. My SLU crew: Tom, Sajana, Danny-B, and Dan Shafer. To Elizabeth Polcha, Andres Pletch, Peter Haffner, Joseph la Hausse de Lalouvière, Fernanda Bretones Lane, and Brenna Casey for all of their comments, feedback, and willingness to share insights during the research and writing stage of the dissertation. To my Fulbright family, J.J. Mulligan Sepulveda, Casey Lynch, Mary Clare Freeman, and Dillon Webster, thank you guys for such a great year in Spain.. I’m thankful to the “Austin crew,” Ernesto Mercado-Montero, Adrian Masters, and Chloe Ireton, for their friendship, generosity, and inspiring work. To Chloe: I believe that our time at the JCB together and what you had to say about my work was in many ways a turning point in my project and my overall self-confidence; thank you, hermana. In New Orleans/Tulane, I thank Mira Kohl, Christina Leblanc, and Miranda Stramel for their friendship and solidarity. I also thank Jimena Codina, Katy Henderson, Vanessa Castañeda, Mike and Alicia Zapata, Laurence Mahe, Andrew Dafoe, Ezra Spira-Cohen, and Mart Trasburg for their camaraderie. A special thanks to Xosé ‘Pepe’ Pereira Boán, Boris Martin, Antonio Jiménez Morato, Aroldo Nery, Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Sarmiento Panez, and Handy Cuellar, for the endless conversations, dinners, and laughs over drinks; but most importantly, for helping me understand the true meaning of brotherhood. My dissertation has benefited from the rich commentary from professors such as Alyssa Sepinwall, Marilyn Miller, Marlene Daut, John Garrigus, Renee Soulodre- iv LaFrance, Erica Johnson, Ernesto Bassi, David Wheat, Grete Viddal, and Jane Landers. At Tulane, I’d like to thank Justin Wolfe, for helping me look at the bigger picture of Royalism and what it means when thinking about questions of freedom and democracy. A special thank you to James “Jimmy” Huck, Edie Wolfe, and everyone at the Stone Center for their intellectual mentorship, overall patience, and guidance through the years. They gave me an opportunity seven years ago, when no one else would and, here we are. I have to give a special thanks to the members of my committee, for their countless letters, feedback, and goodwill. To Laura Rosanne Adderley, thank you for never letting me lose sight of that history from below in my project and for teaching me to conceptualize it within the African Diaspora. To Emily Clark, thank you for teaching me the multifaceted methods of Atlantic History and pushing me to ‘zoom out,’ when needed. To Guadalupe García, I am grateful to you for teaching me about the insidiousness of power, how to focus on close readings, and of the role of space when thinking about slave revolts in the Caribbean. Finally, to Kris Lane: thank you for the countless conversations, the rigorous methods training, your patience, generosity, endless letters, archival solidarity (and the numerous café’s con leche), and for generally teaching me how to become a better historian. I am indebted to you for sharing your expertise and guiding me through this long but enriching process. My relationship with you has strengthened my belief in the humanities, and in believing that my work matters. My work has taken me to various cities in the United States, Haiti, France, and Spain. Along the way I have learned two new languages, taken many train (and bus) rides, spent long days in the archives, and spent time away from family. Even though the last seven years have not been without countless hours of solitary work, the one constant v source of support and love in my life has been my family, both by blood and marriage. My family from Sonora, Mexico, have always cheered me on from afar and I owe a great gratitude to all of them – los quiero a todos.
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