Strains of Unity: Emancipation, Property, and the Post-Revolutionary State in Haitian Santo Domingo, 1822-1844 by Andrew J. Walker A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) in the University of Michigan 2018 Doctoral Committee: Professor Rebecca J. Scott, Chair Professor Marlyse Baptista Professor Jean M. Hébrard, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Associate Professor Jesse E. Hoffnung-Garskof Associate Professor Richard L. Turits, College of William & Mary Andrew J. Walker [email protected] ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0868-9060 © Andrew J. Walker 2018 Dedication For Mary Ann Bartrug ii Acknowledgments At the University of Michigan, I have had the pleasure of learning from a deeply supportive set of mentors, colleagues, and friends. First and foremost, I would like to thank Rebecca Scott for years of guidance and close reading of works in progress. I have been inspired by her approach to crafting compelling narratives based in meticulous archival research, by her support for the ongoing projects of students and colleagues, and by her efforts to forge dialogues and collaborations across institutional boundaries and borders. Richard Turits taught a graduate seminar on Caribbean history during my first semester at Michigan that introduced me to some of the most exciting questions in the field, and he has since pushed me in turn to think harder about the larger questions that this dissertation poses. I am very grateful to Jean Hébrard and Marlyse Baptista, who not only read and commented on chapter drafts but also taught me how to carry out collaborative work at the intersection of disciplines during our research project on the origins of creole languages. I would like to thank Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof for helping me to consider how the unification of Hispaniola fits into a larger story about nation-building and the formation of myths of racial harmony across Latin America. I began to assemble the first blueprints for this project over the course of an independent study and a prelims field led by Julius Scott, whose careful attention to the transformative political power of material and intellectual interconnections has continually reframed how scholars understand the Haitian Revolution and the Atlantic World. I would also like to thank Paulina Alberto, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, and Ryan Szpiech for leading readings courses and research seminars that directly influenced this dissertation. iii Special thanks to the following institutions for funding this project during the successive stages of research and writing: the Fulbright Association, the University of Michigan, the Rackham Graduate School, and the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. I am very grateful to the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center at Harvard University for providing support to attend the 2017 Mark Claster Mamolen Workshop. Many thanks as well to the organizers, sponsors, and graduate fellows of the Race, Law, and History program at the University of Michigan Law School. I would like to thank all of the students, staff, and faculty at the following institutions for welcoming me and for providing invaluable feedback on this project: the Université d’État d’Haïti, the Universidad de Puerto Rico- Recinto de Río Piedras, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. This dissertation was made possible by the work and support of archivists and scholars in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Spain, France, and the United States. I am very grateful to Ingrid Suriel and to the entire archival staff of the Archivo General de la Nación in Santo Domingo for their help locating and consulting documents. I thank Quisqueya Lora Hugi for her pioneering scholarship on the unification era and for her encouragement to work closely with the notarial records at the AGN-RD. I also want to thank Roberto Cassá, María Filomena González Canalda, and Raymundo González, among many others, for their efforts to restore, catalog, and digitize portions of the AGN’s holdings. Many thanks to Antoine Césaire and the rest of the team at the Archives Nationales d’Haïti for all of their guidance, assistance, and patience. I am also grateful to the staff of the Archivo General de Puerto Rico in San Juan, the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid, the Archivo General de Indias in Sevilla, the Archivo General de la Marina Álvaro de Bazán in Viso del Marqués, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, the Archives Diplomatiques in La Courneuve and Nantes, the National Archives and Records Administration iv in College Park, and the William Clements Library in Ann Arbor. Thanks to Guillaume Baudin, Altina Hoti, Chloe Ireton, Adrian Masters, Andrés Pletch, Jesús Ruiz, Guillermo Ruiz Stovel, Ana María Silva, Fidel Tavárez, Veronica Valentin, and the rest of the community of researchers, grad students, and instructors in Spain. Anne Eller provided comments on several presentations, called my attention to documents and secondary sources at key stages of the research and writing process, and served as a crucial interlocutor during our overlapping visits to the Dominican archives. Above all, I would like to thank her for her infectious enthusiasm and for her commitment to writing Dominican and Haitian history as one story. María Cecilia Ulrickson introduced me to the Dominican national archives and offered invaluable advice about working there before I ever set foot in Santo Domingo. Special thanks as well to Antony Keane-Dawes, Christienna Fryar, Winter Schneider, and Charlton Yingling, who helped to organize panels on the unification and postslavery lives around the Caribbean at successive annual meetings of the American Historical Association. I am very grateful to Julia Gaffield for sharing a rare issue of the bilingual gazette L’Étoile Haïtienne that she located at the British National Archives. Other scholars who have played a central role in shaping this dissertation with their comments, questions, and conversation include George Reid Andrews, Ernesto Bassi, Michael Becker, Fernanda Bretones, Vincent Brown, Jean Casimir, Adriana Chira, Marvin Chochotte, Christina Davidson, Evelyn Dean-Olmstead, Robin Lauren Derby, Rachelle Doucet, Alain El Youssef, Céline Flory, Ada Ferrer, Alejandro de la Fuente, Marial Iglesias Utset, Chloe Ireton, Quisqueya Lora Hugi, Graham Nessler, Edgardo Pérez Morales, David Sartorius, Fidel Tavárez, and Alessandro Tuccillo. I would like to thank Laurent Dubois, Deborah Jenson, Jocelyn Olcott, and Jacques v Pierre for teaching me so much about Haiti, the U.S., and Latin America, and for encouraging me to embark on my own research. In October 2017, the Centre Challenges and the Université d’État d’Haïti sponsored a conference in Port-au-Prince to mark the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the 1937 massacre of Haitians in the Dominican Republic. My understanding of Haitian-Dominican relations has been profoundly shaped by the groundbreaking work of the conference attendees. Many thanks to Watson Denis for extending a generous invitation to attend the conference and for helping me to get situated in Port-au-Prince. I would also like to thank Jean Casimir, Lewis Clorméus, Rachelle Doucet, Widdy Emmanuel, Jean Eddy Lacoste, Ethson Otilien, Jean-Alix René, and Hervé Rosan for their insights, questions, and suggestions for further leads for research. Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know an extraordinarily welcoming community of musicians based in Michigan and beyond. Playing music with Doug Carpenter, Andy Eggleston, Sam Haapaniemi, Scott Lamparski, Hannah Lewis, Lauren Marquardt, Rachel Sexton, Micah Spence, Amalia Tonsor, and Greta Van Doren has been a continual source of joy and inspiration. Special thanks to Cheryl Wong, Evan Lebow-Wolf, and Kyle Rhodes, who have welcomed me into their homes more times than I can count, sharing brunches, potlucks, stews, duck eggs, and plenty of fiddle tunes. In Ann Arbor, I’ve been very grateful to share the time and friendship of Noah Blan, Pedro Cantisano, Johanna Folland, Hakeem Jefferson, Adam Fulton Johnson, Sara Katz, Hiroaki Matsusaka, Emma Park, Ángela Pérez-Villa, Andrés Pletch, Marcela Reales, Andrew Rutledge, Ana María Silva, Diana Carolina Sierra Becerra, David Spreen, Alexander Stephens, and Kevin Young. Thanks to Kelsey Gamza and Dustin Gamza for their friendship and support throughout grad school, for inviting me on summer trips to Lake Huron, and for giving me the opportunity vi to officiate their wedding ceremony. Thanks as well to Ben Bergmann, Joe Catapano, Ignacio Leonhardt, Will Passo, Monica Hogan Thysell, and Mark Thysell for their friendship over time and distance. Finally, I would like to thank my family for all of their help during this long process. Kevin Black and Carlen Ruschoff brought a sense of humor and perspective whenever I shared tales of the ups and downs of graduate school. Chris Burr expressed interest and excitement in my research in different countries and archives, helping to remind me of how rewarding and unique this job can be. My mother Cynthia Walker and my sister Elizabeth Burr have repeatedly volunteered their space, time, and labor. They have provided indispensable feedback on chapter drafts and presentations and graciously agreed to host me during summers, holidays, and an interim of several months between archival trips overseas. By their example, they have taught me, probably more than they realize, about how to face professional and personal challenges