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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles “Free of Everything Save Independence”: Property, Personhood and the Archive in Nineteenth- Century Haiti A dissertation in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Winter Rae Schneider 2018 © Copyright by Winter Rae Schneider 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION “Free of Everything Save Independence”: Property, Personhood and the Archive in Nineteenth- Century Haiti by Winter Rae Schneider Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Lauren Derby, Chair Scholarship on slavery and emancipation in the Caribbean has wrestled with how to characterize freedom after slavery as it was experienced by freed populations. “Freedom” itself as a metric for understanding life after slavery has been effectively problematized as it represented the continuation of forms of control and violence—albeit in different terms—that racialized and marginalized freed populations even though they were free. More recent scholarship within this field has turned to material culture as a way to historicize freed people’s lives and agendas as the terms through which they understood and approached liberation from bondage. Haitian history after the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) represents a significant absence in this field, although it represents the first regional instance of neo-imperialism and racialization under national authority after slavery in the region. Premised on a perceived absence of archival documentation that can speak to Haiti’s internal struggles, the first half of the nineteenth century in the country has been understood through romanticized narratives of an idyllic, cooperative, rural society on ii the one hand, and a repressive militarized state on the other. With this dissertation, I ask the question of how to read freedom after slavery in Haiti through an examination of Haiti’s foundational period of state-building under President Jean-Pierre Boyer (1818-1843). This dissertation engages Haitian “independence” in the years surrounding the recognition of Haitian state sovereignty by France in 1825 as it was reflected through Haiti’s 1825 debt to France, in Haitian law surrounding property and personhood, and as it was reflected in rural projects of self-determination and belonging through land ownership. The research for this dissertation is drawn from Haitian nineteenth-century notarial documentation from the city of Gonaïves and the Artibonite Valley, Haitian civil registry records housed in the National Archives in Port-au- Prince, and the records of French colonists who owned property in Gonaïves and the Artibonite Valley held in France’s overseas and national and departmental archives. Additionally, this dissertation draws from oral history interviews and historical ethnography research in Gonaïves, conducted between 2013 and 2016. This dissertation engages the question of historicizing Haitian freedom theoretically through a focus on law and bureaucracy within neo-imperial and postcolonial contexts, and it traces its theoretical foundation to the fields of Black Geographies and landscape archaeology. Such a theoretical orientation allows this dissertation to critically engage the legal and bureaucratic structures of Haitian independence within historical landscapes shaped through both projects of national control and through the experiences of rural non-elite populations. Throughout, this dissertation engages the structures of Haitian independence as they also represent a fraught yet authoritative archive of the first decades of Haitian freedom after the revolution. This dissertation argues that the recognition of Haitian sovereignty by France was conditional on the recognition by Haiti, in turn, of racial privilege, construed as property rights, of Saint Domingue's former colonists. It also argues that Haitian state law and bureaucracy iii around property was itself a site of claims-making in rural areas. By structuring Haitian independence through a property discourse that stressed Haitian identity as the irrevocable right to own land, President Boyer instituted an ideology of inalienability and self-possession through property ownership that was taken up and used to dramatically different ends by both the state and by rural Haitian populations. iv The dissertation of Winter Rae Schneider is approved. Andrew Apter Judith A. Carney Robin Davis Gibran Kelley Carla G. Pestana Lauren Derby, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 v DEDICATION To my son Idris Wendell Oxius Figaro, for our past and future. In loving memory of Oxilace Figaro, Diana Estil, Pascal Bien-Aimé, Germain Sené, Joseph Pierre, Fortuné Dorival, Omême Dorival and Registre Jean-Louis. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION ....................................................................................... ii DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... ix VITA ............................................................................................................................................ xiv INTRODUCTION—ON PROPERTY AND HAITIAN FREEDOM ............................................ 1 On Freedom after Slavery in the Caribbean and Atlantic World........................................ 6 Scope of the Project: Prisms of Haitian History ................................................................. 8 On the Archives of Haitian Independence ........................................................................ 13 On Land Stories and Dispossession .................................................................................. 16 Summary of Chapters ....................................................................................................... 18 CHAPTER ONE—CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE: DEBT AND RECOGNITION BETWEEN HAITI AND FRANCE IN 1825 ................................................................................................... 21 A Prehistory of Debt and Recognition between Haiti and France .................................... 22 Pétion, Indemnity, and Independence ............................................................................... 27 Indemnity As Sine Qua Non, the “Condition Of Existence”: Later Haitian and French Negotiations Over Sovereignty and Debt ......................................................................... 29 Liquidation of Indemnity Claims to Properties in the Artibonite Valley to “those who have rights” ....................................................................................................................... 38 Establishing the Rights of Claimants through Documentation ......................................... 42 Establishing Value: Land and Slaves, Capital Value and Use Value ............................... 44 Legacies of Recognition: Disloyalty through Non-payment ............................................ 50 CHAPTER TWO—“MY MOST SACRED RIGHTS”: SUBJECTING LAND AND PERSONHOOD TO PROPERTY IN BOYER’S REPUBLIC .................................................... 56 Questions of Continuity and Change in The Form of Law and Property ......................... 59 The Haitian Civil and Rural Codes: Citizenship, Rights, Property and Labor ................. 67 “Sur La Police Rurale”: Agricultural Order, Rural Surveillance and Recordkeeping ...... 75 Durable Law and Inalienable Rights to Property .............................................................. 81 CHAPTER THREE—“UNE HABITATION DE CINQ CARREAUX”: STATE LAW AND FAMILY LAND IN GONAÏVES' NOTARIAL ARCHIVES ..................................................... 90 Jérôme Dubois, a Notary in Gonaïves .............................................................................. 98 Legal Ritual in Rural Spaces........................................................................................... 106 Land Surveys .................................................................................................................. 110 Land Sale Receipts .......................................................................................................... 112 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 117 CHAPTER FOUR—“THE COUNTRY HAS CHANGED, NOT US”: WOMEN’S TESTIMONY IN THE ETAT CIVIL OF THE ARTIBONITE, 1816 AND 1825 .................... 120 Visibility and Strategic Personhood: The Etat Civil in the Plaine des Gonaïves ........... 124 Another Country: 1816 Death Records in Petite Rivière de l’Artibonite ....................... 134 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 141 vii CHAPTER FIVE—“AU SUCRE DANACHE”: MEMORY AND DISPOSSESSION IN LAKOU SOUKRI ....................................................................................................................... 142 “Bitasyon m,” “my plantation”: Locating Legal and Lived Legacies of Habitation Danache........................................................................................................................... 148 Nineteenth-century Legacies of Lakou Soukri ............................................................... 158 Self-Possession and Belonging as Critique of Racial Property .....................................
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