Ca--vt-e_ :!? <>ec ""-- ;)J oc )77- 60 7 J The Making ofHaiti "" The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below Carolyn E. Fick The University of Tennessee Press KNOXVILLE ! l Slavery and Slave Society its height in l789. the french colony of Saint Dornin~ue. the Pearl of i A the Antilles and· the pride of France. wa'i bv far the wealthiest and most Aourishin~ of the slave colonies in the' Carihbean. Tl~t• trememlous for­ tunes amassed by the white planters. as well as the men· hunt bourgeoisie of that era. had been generated by the forced labor of over half a million black slaves, raided from their homelands in Africa and forcihly broul!ht to the 'l"ew World to till the preeminent and ever-e:":panding demand for labor and profits. Yet there was very liule in its early seventeenth-1:enturv beginnings to ' indicate that Saint Domingue would become the colonial Hercules that she was by the eve of the revolution. The lln;t french settlers were. in fact. of a dubious nature, composed of fanner jlibu.,tiers. or pirates and freebooters operating in tht· coastal waters. along with the inland boucanien involved in hunting and the trafficking of hides. 1 What little subsistence farm in!! the houcaniers did engage in eventually gave way. by the 1670s. to the more lucrative exploitation of tobacco and, by 1685, of indigo. thus initiating the ; transition to a plantation-oriented economy and the introduction of forced labor, •~ The first imported laborers to Saint Domingue. however. were the t>n­ J gagis, or white indentured servants of peasant and laboring class origins. initially from the western maritime regions of f'rance. who came to serve ~ under three-year contracts and eventually worked and lived side by side 1 in m~ar-equal numbers with black slaves. It was the conversion to indigo. though, financed in part through capital derived from spurious fiibu.,te opera­ < tions. that accelerated the utilization of Africans as plantation laborers. Tht> ' larger-scale. labor-intensive production of sugar and the ex:c\usive induc­ tion of black slaves into the colonial work force were by then hardly two decades away. with the engages en•ntuall)' occupying the lower ranks of econome, or overseer, specialized tradesmen. and. occasionally. stewanl on the plantations.-' It was from these disparate elements that a dominant white colonial planter class emergell in I he ei~~:hteenth century.' and bv the eve of the rem­ lotion constituted the most sigmt-icunt segment of the white-population. for it 11 .u: ~ ' /Jw·k!!rmtwl lo H.l!l."o/utirm S/un•n 11nrl Slun• SIH:IP/l" 111•1 ~ 1171 ""'""upon tlw plautatiun ~~~tern and sla1·e labor that t!w t>ntire enmomy ,md reprt'"sentati,·es nf the Freneh maritime huurgeoisie and the French-born 1wahh uf ~aint Oomin!!:ue <lepended. During the latter decatll's of the culn­ hun·aucrats-wt>re eollectiv .. Jy l...nown in the island as the grand:J blancs. ni.Li n·!!imt•. hnwe1·.-r. most planters nu lun~er elaimed pt'rmanent fl'sidence '· .-\t the head of the bu!"f'allcracy were the ~ovemor and the intendant. both 111 tht• colon\. lrulet>d. one rardy came to !:'aint Domlll)!Ue "ith the de,ire to ;tppoinlt."'d hy the king as his Hffirial representatives and eharged with the ~ta~· ·IllY lon!!er than it would take to make a quiek fortune. Simp!~· stated. functions and eontrol of t:olonial administration. Together they represented th,. first and foremost aim of the planters was to make money. to make more the absolute authority of the king. Jg:ainsl which there was no recourse, and money. anti to make it all as quickly as possible in order to return to France -~ thus created a constant souree of bitterness for the colonists. The planters to .. njoy the luxuries and comforts that their overseas investments ensured t hated them for their arrogant. despotic pretensions and were only further them. In general. most colonists considered themselves as mere travelers frustrated by the special privileges and protection accorded by the Crown to in the colony and spoke continually of revisiting or of returning to France the merchant bourgeoisie. within the following year. In fact, a significa~t portion of the planter class ..' Alongside the grands blancs in city and country were the lower- and ~ seldom. if ever, even set foot on the island.~ · middle-class whites who. as plantation mat'!agers. procureurs, and tEconomes These absentee planters were represented in the colony either by their ' in the country, were known as petits blancs. In the towns. they occupied posi­ "f:l:"nts or plantation managers. who kept them more or less infonned of tions as lawyers. shopkeepers, retail merchants. grocer-;. and tradesmen. production levels. profits. expenses, and the general operations of the plan­ usually carpenter-; or masons. While many of the petit.i blancs were descen­ tation. The agent. or procureur, usually a pennanent resident in the colony, dants of the fonner seventeenth-century engages, there were also among the thus took over full administration of the plantation and assumed all the rights •·" urban "small" whites a whole host of vagabonds, petty criminals, debtors, and prerogatives of the owner:6 in his turn, the procureur could become a ' and soldiers-of-fortune who swanned to Saint Domingue, where, regardless plantation owner himself. But the delegation of powers to an agent almost ' of one's background or origin. the single privilege of race could elevate the 'l 11 imariably meant harsher treatment for the slave than if the master were ; most despicable to a position of social respectability. A British soldier who present to check the excesses of an overzealous or often sadistic overseer. 7 was sent to Saint Domingue some years after the revolution began, spoke of For the colonial planter, life was generally one of monotony and isolation, ' .. the necessity the White People are under, of making a pointed difference compensated by sheer dissipation and indulgence.~ The arrogance and con­ between the two Colour-;," and offered these observations: "A white Man ceit of the white planters was sustained by surrounding themselves with a ~ how ever low his Situation, in every sense of the Word mav be, conceives swann of domestic slaves to satisfy every need. want, or caprice. Indeed. himself equal to the Richest Man in the Colony ... in regard to the respect ' the most visible sign of wealth and the most flagrant indication of superiority . he expects shall be paid him ... 12 consisted in the number of domestic slaves at one's disposal, for .. the di~­ It would be an oversimplification. however, to argue. as one historian has nity of a rich man consisted in having four times as many domestics as he done, that despite the social and economic differences that separated the needed."' To further ensure their prestige and enhance their status, some '' planters from the petits blancs, these differences were of relatively minor planters would usurp nobility by merely inventing a fictitious past, laying importance since they were subsumed under the one unifying factor of race j false claims to their ancestry. and thereby hiding their lowly origins. 10 prejudice, tying together all the diverse sections of the white population. 13 Yet all this extravagance merely contributed to the boredom and social Race prejudice was undeniably practiced by white society against the mu­ alienation of the typical planter. separated as he was bv !on~ distances over la\\(){'"S and the blacks, and by virtue of the common bond of superiority that deplorable roads from the nearest neighbor. Whatever social life existed in membership in !he white race alone afforded them. the various categories of Saint Domingue was to be found in the two principal cities of le Cap and whites, as diven;e in their origins as in their :<ocial and political functions. Port-au-Prince, where the cuhural and intellectual aetivities of the colony nonetheless fanned a distinct and privileged social caste. Their superiority were centered. Although attempting to imitate French culture. the cities thus extended not only over the entire mass uf black slaves-some fifteen were nonetheless vulnerable to local habit. debauchery, and deeadent life­ times their own number-but. as well. over the a.ffranchis. or free persons of ~'' lt>s: so for the rural planter. social life centered invariably around his color, who constituted an intermediate sector of colonial society but whose business: hi5 slaves. his ~U~(If, his cotton. his coffee. his prutits. numbers. estimated roughly at twentv-'>even thousand. near!~· equaled that These pl11nters. as well. as their white eountt>rparts in the cities-the of the whites. 11 There was a universally aecepte{l and a JUridically enforced J . : ~ I /io!< h'!!f'11Uit/ 1•1 h'o" 'lit<! I• !I! .~1m ,.n 'md .~1m ,. ·' "' ,.., ll'l\ 11 lll<Tea,..,·rJ o\t:r tifl•f•>hllo .l m·:lr-"'lllal b..d,tnt't' 1•ilh tiw "hilt> p<~p11\.t1J<m. , ,!\lm 111 ."'ault IJ•unill!!!U' 'o '!""'I'll r;wo• r·.-latrHns. It ,,,.~,·r:Pd that··,, whit<' iiiL"W<lN'. l!!''''r •n "rong .1 h!ad•. ·· .m<l ;t ··qu,1ilv tlw Tilt' lll<J,\ dwm..Jti<' rate ,f \uJIWH'T. ,,..,.urr•·d in th<~ t.t~l ""' ,\,·­ ,~ th•• ,js<t-•1~ "a~ <~pf.Jiietltu dllf,//1< lu_,_ rnu~t .,f "hom '"'n· !'wt• rmd;uto.. s .. -. ··;_~de~ qf t\\t' t•o\om,ll n-;:unt', 11.he<1 t\w frt"t' c•n\ured population jlllll]Wd from ,1 nwre 0.000 iu ]770 to 27 ..-JOO Ill \7:l'J.