A Colonial Cul de Sac: Plantation Life in Wartime Saint-Domingue, 1775-1783

A Colonial Cul de Sac

Plantation Life in

Wartime Saint- Domingue, 1775 – 1782

Paul Cheney

If, as Michel- Rolph Trouillot claimed, the Haitian Revolution used to be “unthink-able” and its history relegated to silence, over the last decade or so it has become almost unstoppably garrulous.1 A number of recent studies have considerably enriched and revised C. L. R. James’s seminal work, as Haiti has come to occupy a central place in increasingly internationalized accounts of the French Revolution.2

From the dual perspective of the Haitian and French Revolutions, however, Haiti’s international history only begins with the slave uprisings of August 1791, while Hai-ti’s prehistory as French Saint- Domingue is relegated to the historical background, occupying the more restricted space of metropole- colony relations or — more nar-rowly still — the social history of plantation life in an isolated colonial backwater. But what if the plantation itself has an international history? The division of labor in the world economy during the eighteenth century established the broad economic framework that made Saint- Domingue a source of sugar, coffee, cotton, indigo, and profit for Europeans. The basic premise of this article — that the plantation econ-omy of eighteenth- century Saint- Domingue was simultaneously rich and fragile — is not new, but historians generally advance this position on the basis of aggregate trade statistics.3 The following study examines how planters, managers, and, to a lesser degree, slaves adapted to two principal sources of this instability, international warfare and fluctuating trade regimes in the region. A microlevel examination of

Radical History Review Issue 115 (Winter 2013) doi 10.1215/01636545- 1724715© 2013 by MARHO: The Radical Historians’ Organization, Inc.

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the adaptive physiognomy of production reveals something that trade statistics can-not: the internal organization of plantation life was determined, sometimes in self- limiting ways, by international forces. The plantation did not end with the collapse of the Old Regime in Saint- Domingue, and so continued to play its contradictory role from 1791 until the early nineteenth century, in ways that are suggested by the findings of this article. The actual or potential profitability of tropical export com-modities ensured that the elites of western Hispaniola looked beyond the plantation economy only when they were pushed to do so by the forcible and passive resistance of ex- slaves. For these elites during the struggle for independence, the vitality of this sector seemed the sole guarantee of Haitian economic, and hence political, auton-omy.4 But the hopes pinned upon the plantation economy proved illusory. Through-out this period, the plantation economy of Saint- Domingue remained essentially what it had been during the eighteenth century — a rich prize, but one that was continuously subject to imperial predation, the chaos of war, and the disarticulation of the markets upon which it absolutely depended.

What follows is a microlevel study of the effects of international warfare, in this case the American War of Independence (1775 – 1783), on one plantation situ-ated in one of the most profitable and highly developed areas of sugar cultivation in eighteenth- century Saint- Domingue, the Cul de Sac plain, near Port- au- Prince.5 Naval warfare was not an accidental feature of the Atlantic economy, but as the his-torian Richard Pares has observed, it was “a branch of business, not only for the colo-nists who claimed the protection of the navy but for the strategists who planned the operations.”6 And there were many wars over the long eighteenth century, including the Nine Years’ War (1688 – 97); the War of Spanish Succession (1701 – 13); the War of Austrian Succession (1740 – 48); the Seven Years’ War (1756 – 63); the American War of Independence (1775 – 83); and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792 – 1815). The costs and interruptions to trade these wars entailed helped to determine the profitability of individual plantations and therefore of the system of plantation production in the aggregate. Indeed, during the eighteenth century, critics of Europe’s “mercantile system” found a receptive audience by pointing out the enormous costs to Europeans of colonial warfare. Moreover, this criticism went, an economy that favored opportunistic profit taking over long- term economic and (white) demographic development made colonies soft military targets.7 During these conflicts, as Robin Blackburn has observed, “the American plantation might with-draw for a time within a shell of ‘natural economy’ if the market for its products was temporarily disrupted, but this could not be done indefinitely without devaluing and decomposing the plantation.” The rapid decomposition of the plantations on the Cul de Sac plain during wartime provides a case study in the fragility of the plantation in the face of normal economic shocks.8

Much had changed in the French colonial empire between the Treaty of Paris (1763) that ended the Seven Years’ War and France’s entry into the American

Cheney | A Colonial Cul de Sac 47

War of Independence in 1778. The strains of war almost infallibly expose under-lying social conflicts, consigning divided nations with resource constraints to defeat; the events of the Seven Years’ War were no exception.9 In this case, the inevitable disruptions of war demonstrated that the French metropole was not keeping up its side of the pacte coloniale (colonial pact), which dictated that the metropole would protect the colonies but in exchange it had the right to exploit them economically and hold them in political tutelage. Planters may have welcomed naval protection, but they had long bristled against the Exclusif (Exclusive), the trading regime that left most island imports and exports in the hands of merchants from a limited num-ber of French ports. This policy, whose explicit aim was to funnel colonial profits into metropolitan hands, decreased the price of colonial exports, while restricting the availability and raising the price of slaves and subsistence goods to planters. Although contraband thrived in the French Antilles, attenuating some of the effects of the Exclusif, for geographic and political reasons the planters on the Cul de Sac plain could not as easily avail themselves of this illicit commerce. Alienated colo-nists in Martinique and Guadeloupe were anything but fervent defenders of their islands: the British took Guadeloupe very early on, in 1759, and Martinique fell to them in 1762. Over the entire conflict, French trade in the Antilles was profoundly disrupted, falling between 81 and 90 percent, while Guadeloupe and Martinique experienced unprecedented booms during British occupation.10

The Seven Years’ War served as a wake- up call in government circles, after which enlightened self- interest led to a softening of the Exclusif to the advantage of colonial planters; French colonists defended their islands more assiduously and even contributed some troops to the wider war effort.11 If the colonies were more patriotic and hence better defended internally, by this time the French also had no territory to protect in North America and had a better equipped navy.12 Britain, by contrast, seemed to manifest the same vulnerabilities that beset the French during the Seven Years’ War: a widely distributed colonial empire, part of which was in revolt against the trading regime imposed from the metropole. In this context, the French scored a series of naval victories against British possessions in the Antilles. Naval blockades and an embargo against the former thirteen colonies fell quite hard upon islands like Barbados and Jamaica.13 Nevertheless, the limits of these political reforms and strategic advances found expression in local attitudes. Planters took for granted a tenuous situation, anticipating that the coming conflict would affect virtu-ally every aspect of plantation life in Saint- Domingue, from food consumption and sugar production to capital investment, labor allocation, and credit arrangements. In places like the Cul de Sac plain, planters had experienced the limits of metropolitan naval protection, sensed the cold calculus to which their interests were subject in government circles, and feared most keenly of all for the social peace upon which their fortunes depended.


Suffering in Black, White, and BrutThe plantation studied here belonged to Marquis Etienne- Louis Ferron de la Fer-ronnays (1731 – 98), member of a rich clan of Breton nobles well established in Nantes, in Paris, and in Saint- Domingue; Etienne- Louis served as colonial administrator in Saint- Domingue in the 1760s and 1770s and, like two of his brothers, rounded out his fortune by marrying the daughter of a well- to- do (white) creole.14 Upon the flight from France and the Revolution in 1791 by Etienne- Louis and his brothers Paul and Pierre Jacques Auguste, the entire family’s papers were sequestered, so we now have Etienne- Louis’s business documents, including correspondence, account books, and contracts; taken together these sources provide rich and varied infor-mation on plantation life in eighteenth- century Saint- Domingue at the high- water mark of this colony’s economic development.15 Ferronnays’s Cul de Sac plantation represented a unit of production that was becoming increasingly typical in an era of economic expansion on the island and consolidation among the planter elite: a large- size enterprise with 80 carreaux of land (1 carreaux = 3.19 acres), approximately 100 field slaves fit for work at any given time, and around 200 slaves in total.

The letters of Etienne- Louis’s gérant (attorney or plantation manager), Jean- Baptiste Corbier (1734 – 88), form the centerpiece of this collection. Corbier was a highly literate, conscientious, and graphomaniacal man; in normal times, the Mar-quis de Ferronnays received around thirty lengthy letters per year from his gérant in Saint- Domingue, which provided minute accounts of sugar cultivation, maintenance and upgrades to the rolling mill, weather conditions, problems of water supply, and price information on purchases and sales. Corbier himself was of very modest ori-gins, but through education and, one senses, acute intelligence, this innkeepers’ son attached himself very early on to the Ferronnays family, managing their landed interests in Brittany and serving as seneschal of La Bigeottière, a seigneurie near Laval owned by Etienne- Louis’s mother. Corbier died a well- to- do and respected bourgeois in La Flèche, capable of marrying his daughters off to local nobles. By the time Corbier went to Saint- Domingue in 1774, where he also ended up owning con-siderable property, two coffee plantations with about two hundred slaves total, he had worked for the Ferronnays family for nearly a quarter century, and so wrote to his employer the marquis with a mix of authority on business matters and a personal intimacy completely at odds with the two mens’ disparate social status.16 Beginning in 1783, Corbier’s son, who came from France to Saint- Domingue in 1776 at the age of fifteen to learn the sugar business at his father’s side, took over the job — and correspondence — of gérant of Ferronnays’s plantation on the Cul de Sac plain.

In addition to quotidian business information, Corbier discussed at length his wider views on business practice, a subject that ranged from reflections on debt and investment strategy to slave management, including discipline, health, food sup-ply, and sexual relations on the plantation. These letters, which are replete with melodramatic detail about the struggle between the Marquis de Ferronnays and his


beautiful but abandoned and errant wife, provide a window on the conflict- ridden relations between creole and metropolitan members of the planter elite. Taken together, this information about the plantations owned by Ferronnays evinces a revealing set of contrasts: rural Saint- Domingue was an isolated place with a distinc-tive culture, social structure, and set of economic rhythms; at the same time, its links to the French metropole and the world economy influenced its internal development in decisive ways. The place was immensely rich but socially fragile; it was deeply integrated into the world economy but in such a manner as left it periodically — and catastrophically — cut off from the metropolitan center.

Even before France’s entry into the war, the prospect of a lengthy conflict began to color Corbier’s business decisions, and in this respect Corbier’s preoc-cupations reflected those of his employer and of the French colonial administra-tion more generally.17 Already during the summer of 1776, Corbier began to worry about the possible effects on the island of an embargo on British commerce: these included depriving Saint- Domingue of adequate wood supply, as well as pushing up the costs of slaves’ provisions and of slaves themselves. As vice commander of Saint- Domingue (and later as interim commander), the marquis was familiar with these issues. In this respect, Ferronnays resembled many of his fellow plantation owners on the Cul de Sac plain, among them Noailles, d’Argout and Nolivos, who were also military commanders and colonial administrators. Ferronnays’ ministerial writings, along with queries and complaints that echo in Corbier’s letters themselves, indicate a deep familiarity with the sugar business, including a strategic environment in the Antilles that pushed external markets from one sort of disequilibrium to another.18

In regarding the prospect of renewed war, Corbier saw trouble ahead for his employer, a spendthrift nobleman who was, like so many other planters in Saint- Domingue, up to his ears in debt — around 800,000 livres tournois (about 1,064,000 colonial livres) by Corbier’s reckoning. During wartime, frightened creditors might well begin to demand repayment en masse, and at the same time land prices would drop and sales would halt. Renting out his plantations to others could not fully hedge against this risk: a 1775 lease agreement letting out Ferronnays’s property at Grand Rivière (near Léogne) to Julien Claude Valdec specified a radical reduction in the rental price in case war interrupted trade.19 In this context, Corbier recommended that Ferronnays increase his liquidity by selling some land immediately and put off buying any more slaves in order to avoid “multiplying your encumbrances.”20

Although Corbier was trimming his sails in anticipation of shifting politi-cal and commercial winds, he and others continued to indulge in wishful thinking, encouraged by false rumors of an insurgent victory in 1776 in New York (in reality they were routed by the British) and then positive news of Washington’s exploits in New Jersey. “Nobody believes the war will come, and nobody in situ makes any preparations whatsoever on their plantations,” Corbier wrote. Even the relatively cautious Corbier hoped against hope that he would continue quietly to make sugar.


Local planters and merchants might well have maintained this illusion; despite an embargo on English goods and the distant thunder of confl ict on the North Ameri-can continent, sugar prices held up through 1777 (see fi g. 1), ensuring a “pretty income” that year for Ferronnays of around 586,000 colonial livres (386,000 livres tournois) gross revenue.21

Once France signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce in February 1778, sugar prices dropped precipitously as British seizures commenced and as its navy stationed warships outside Saint- Dominguan ports. Indeed, the initial intensity of the British offensive against French shipping led some to believe that this confl ict would be worse for the colonies than the Seven Years’ War, despite improvements in the French navy and a more consolidated strategic situation. In 1778, Ferronnays lost 80,000 pounds of sugar to a British seizure, despite Corbier’s newly adopted practice of dividing sugar sales into multiple shipments. At this point, the reality of the war began to sink in deeply.22

Although the prices of all sorts of provisions had begun to rise already in 1777, after the outbreak of war a real scarcity set in, affecting that most daily of rou-tines: mealtime. “From this point forward,” Corbier wrote in April 1779, “we have no fear of deepening misery, we lack everything; in the last war, everybody assures me, the colony didn’t experience anything remotely similar. If the Minister [of the navy] sought to have us recognize the multiplicity of our needs, he has succeeded; I would like to see him at my dinner, without wine and quite often without fresh meat, no powder for our wigs; he could fi nd this article, however, for it is sold at a

Figure 1


horrendous price, fashioned from rotten wheat taken from the King’s storehouse.” Corbier’s cri de coeur in the face of missing wig powder may seem fanciful — even grotesque — but for the crown, wartime shortages posed a serious geopolitical and economic threat. Writing in March 1779, Commanders de Vaivre and d’Argout (the latter owned a plantation on the Cul de Sac plain) reported “starvation and misery” in the colony, prudently omitting wig powder from their tales of deprivation.23 Louis XVI and his ministers responded by sending provisions to the colonies through the intermediary of large merchant houses, hesitating to conduct the business directly for fear of exciting politically damaging accusations of a “famine plot” at home. This emergency provisioning, however, did little to palliate the “misery” of planters such as Ferronnays, who were unable to pry these newly arrived goods loose from the established merchant houses to whom they were already massively indebted. In these straitened circumstances, Corbier found himself doing business with a certain Seguineau, “a Jew, but I’m forced into it for the time being” — and so summed up his vexations. At unpredictable intervals ship convoys delivered provisions and packets of letters, which brought variety to planters’ tables and temporarily beat back Cor-bier’s creeping sense of isolation from the marquis as well as his own family. But just as quickly, it seemed, the sea closed up again and wartime deprivations resumed, their intensity increased by dashed hopes for renewed peace and prosperity.24

Amid this tableau of suffering at the Grande Caze at Cul de Sac, Corbier repeatedly assured the marquis that his slaves “didn’t feel the hardship”; “in this sit-uation you’d sleep with the chickens to protect them. Nevertheless, I help the slaves out [donne de l’aisance] as much as I can.” Was Corbier exaggerating the suffering of his household and diminishing that of the slaves for effect? Undoubtedly so, at the margins, but the details in Corbier’s letters, in conjunction with the accounts he sent back to France, give the impression of a concerted plan to assure slave subsis-tence in the context of war and drought.25 In the beginning of the conflict, Corbier fed slaves the stores (rice, salted beef, fish, and peas) that he had stockpiled against the eventuality of war. Corbier was convinced that while garden plots and local production of food were essential, “it is an abuse to believe that the slaves [nègres] can live on vegetables alone.” As the war intensified and provisions became scarcer, Corbier withdrew land from sugar cultivation, a strategy whose duality of purpose we can discern in many of Corbier’s wartime measures. His efforts were in line with a much- ignored ordinance, issued by Commanders de Vaivre and d’Ennery in August 1776, directing planters to sow a certain quantity per slave of bananas, as well as manioc or potatoes. The measures were meant to be enforced through regular inspections, which probably never happened. The commanders stipulated that it was not sufficient to “leave to slaves a certain amount of land for their own personal cultivation.” The traditional jardin de nègre (slave’s garden) had to be sup-plemented, at the expense of the productive capacity of cane fields, “for the safety of the colonies . . . in case of war.”26 Sweet potatoes and millet (patates, petit mil)


were common food crops in the French Antilles that were rotated periodically into cane land as a way of refreshing the soil, a system called assolement that worked in much the same way as turnips or clover in the Norfolk system of crop rotation.27 In substituting sweet potatoes and millet for sugar, Corbier reconditioned the soil in Ferronnays’s cane fi eld at a very low opportunity cost — well exceeding the normal proportion of one- eighth of cane land rotated into subsistence crops — since in the depths of war sugar sales were unprofi table; sugar had even lost most of its value as a means of payment on the island. At the same time, food purchased on the open market became increasingly expensive. It is in this context that we should view the food expenditures made on the Ferronnays plantation (fi g. 2).28

These fi gures pose some diffi culty of interpretation. For instance, there are many portmanteau entries for payments made to ships’ captains (e.g., “ fournitures”) not included in this graph, so that many food expenses of an indeterminate nature may be hidden from our view. This said, there is little reason to believe that this vagueness varied greatly from year to year, so we can probably trust the general expenditure curve in fi gure 2. The second is that meat and bread purchases are ret-rospective: payments made in 1777 may stand for consumption that occurred in late 1776. These are reasonably reliable fi gures because the butcher and baker sold their goods on the island and Corbier had accounts with them, so there is little question of these very basic items being hidden elsewhere. Purchases of food for slaves were much more likely to be made in advance, so that we can interpret the purchases of

Figure 2


1776 and 1777 — with the aid of Corbier’s comments — as provision for lean years ahead. (Only a partial accounting is given for 1774.)

What can be concluded with reasonable certainty from these figures? Wine consumption decreased during the war, while the amount of money spent on meat and bread, when they were available, increased. Fresh meat was largely produced on the Spanish side of Hispaniola and, when available, it became more expensive. In the leanest year, 1782, meat did not even appear in Corbier’s accounts. It is impos-sible to judge the extent of his exaggeration, but Corbier recounts to Ferronnays that most of his meat purchases in these lean times were destined for consumption by slaves laid up in the hospital. Bread, by contrast, increased as a proportion of house-hold food consumption as it went up in price — precisely the behavior we would expect of a “Giffen” or inferior good. At the table of the Grande Caze, whites ate bread and shrinking quantities of meat — often unaccompanied by wine or imported delicacies — whereas in the slaves’ quarters there were increasing supplies of sweet potatoes and millet, but they ate them without the habitual supplements to their diet that came from overseas. Unaccounted for here is the “essentially mysterious but nonetheless real commerce” by which slaves managed to round out their food supply, as well as an increase in livestock stealing. Finally, Corbier took to feeding temporarily worthless syrups to his mules for lack of proper feed.29 At Cul de Sac, land and labor were reallocated toward subsistence agriculture, and what little cash or credit remained was largely channeled into the purchase of inferior goods.

As sugar production became unprofitable, Corbier also began to reallocate slave labor to “better uses,” including building a new irrigation canal and an aque-duct to bring water to the rolling mill: “one shouldn’t work in the same way during wartime as during peace,” he concluded. Drought conditions in 1777 and 1778 made these investments an even higher priority than usual, but the hill country behind the Cul de Sac plain, where some of Ferronays’s land lay, had always been a hydro-logical challenge for sugar- growing colonists.30 Local officials must have been aware that slack labor supplies on plantations presented an opportunity for them as well, because during this period — at least to judge by Corbier’s comments — corvée labor on road and dam building increased while provoking much less ritual grumbling among the planters.31

While Ferronnays directed slack labor to infrastructural improvements, the war context decisively shaped and limited his investment possibilities. The Marquis de Ferronnays had long sought to set up sugar refining operations on his plantation in order to export the more costly blanc (white) rather than brut (raw) sugar, but the collapsed market for sugar of all sorts, in addition to the exorbitant price of refining equipment, made this project impossible for at least several years. Other efforts, such as reconditioning the plantation’s barrel supply or wood- and stone- intensive building efforts, went begging because of the high cost or complete absence of building supplies.32 The marquis’s inability to make any but labor- intensive improve-


ments was the result of high prices, of course, but this strategy was also dictated by the disastrous state of credit markets — and the low standing of the heavily indebted Ferronnays in them. We begin fi rst by examining the fl ow of surplus from the Fer-ronnays plantation. By surplus I simply mean those proceeds of Ferronnays’s planta-tion that were not plowed directly back into expenditures, be they fi xed or circulat-ing capital. In an ordinary year (1775 or 1776) the marquis — through the offi ces of Corbier — would divide the surplus from his plantation between: honoring such bills of exchange bearing the marquis or his wife’s name as were presented to Corbier for payment in Saint- Domingue; retiring debts owed to merchants and others residing in Saint- Domingue (in a some cases these were for land acquisitions); and, fi nally, sending off consignments of sugar to France, along with bills of exchange for the proceeds directly payable to the marquis.33

As the war continued and the plantation’s revenues tumbled, the marquis ceased paying off his creditors in Saint- Domingue, and Corbier was no longer in a position to honor bills of exchange presented to him. In the ordinary course of things Ferronnays could continue doing business with merchants to whom he was indebted. Merchant houses usually distinguished between long- term and short- term credit; as long as planters’ long- term debts were being serviced periodically, they could con-tinue to rack up short- term debts in order to keep the plantation working. But Fer-ronnays’s inability to pay anything made it impossible to secure credit, which hovered at around 10 or 12 percent: “in these circumstances, I can’t send any [sugar] to you, because your bills of exchange aren’t paid; without this you risk having your sugar seized.” Although Corbier did manage to sell some sugar during this interval and to have the proceeds realized in France, Ferronnays’s shriveling credit meant that he missed some fl eeting opportunities to sell sugar at a good price and send it back in

Figure 3


safe convoys to France.34 Ferronnays’s heavy debts going into the war had increas-ingly negative effects once the conflict heated up. A comparison of the price Cor-bier fetched for Ferronnays’s sugar with the average prices in Port- au- Prince quoted in the Affiches Américaines illustrates another aspect of the problem (see fig. 1). Corbier always sold above average prices — usually between 5 and 11 percent in times when prices were already high — but after the crisis hit in early 1778, he found himself on the wrong side of these transactions, systematically losing between 25 and 58 percent of potential gross proceeds on sales, even after sugar markets began to rebound in 1781.35 Corbier, who also owned land and slaves, suffered as well from the economic conjuncture of wartime, and offered the Marquis the following reflec-tions on the long- term effects of the war:

I wanted to make my fortune, but my intention was never to do so at another’s expense. I had long lines of credits that I would have easily paid had it not been for the war, which forced me to slow down my payments. I am devastated by this even though it is not my fault; I still owe money for slaves that I would otherwise have paid for two times over if my produce had retained the slightest value, but I could not sell them or even send them to France. [June 1780]

Gradually the situation eased: as the convoy system improved and prices increased in 1781 and 1782, Corbier retired more of the marquis’s bills of exchange, thereby facilitating the shipment of sugar to France and a more normal course of busi-ness. As he retired more of his long- term debt obligations, the marquis began to shift to other merchant houses and thereby to better his terms of sale. The lesson was nevertheless crystal clear: in wartime overhanging debt imperiled the credit relations — however straitened and erratic — that served as a lifeline for planters in Saint- Domingue. It also made the expansion of plantation’s basic operations more difficult and compromised the marquis’s ability to move into more profitable lines of business such as white sugar production.

Warfare, Economic Development, and the Colonial Cul de SacSaint- Domingue was hardly the sole American colony to feel the economic effects of the American War of Independence. The British West Indies were particularly hard hit by Parliament’s 1775 decision to ban commercial relations with the rebellious colonies; the US Continental Congress reaffirmed this decision from their side dur-ing the same year, which effectively deprived colonies such as Jamaica and Barbados of needed subsistence goods. Jamaica and the eastern Antilles were densely popu-lated and, in comparison to the French Antilles, particularly reliant upon imports for slave subsistence. Although contraband trade helped to soften the effects of this outright ban, American privateers and the French navy put great pressure on this conduit of relief. Given this tense situation, it is unsurprising that 1776 saw another


of the slave rebellions to which Jamaica was unusually prone. Although the effects of these embargoes are difficult to disaggregate from an abnormal concentration of hurricanes over the same period, 5,000 slaves died in Barbados and 15,000 died in Jamaica between 1775 and 1782, most from malnutrition and the disease caused by short food supplies.36 When the conflict ended in 1783, intra- American trade pat-terns had been permanently altered, to the prejudice of British West Indian plant-ers, for whom slave subsistence goods became much more expensive because they could not be shipped directly by American merchants. The stage was set for the eclipse of the British West Indian sugar colonies by the French.

While the relative isolation and vulnerability of island colonies complicate any comparison with the mainland, the economic effects of the American War of Independence on the colonies of the Lower South nevertheless provide an instruc-tive series of contrasts. The War of Jenkins’s Ear (1739 – 43) was the first in a series of conflicts that interrupted the market for South Carolina’s principal export crop, rice, throwing the region into recession. From that point, planters began consciously to diversify their output into such crops as indigo and cotton. When the American War of Independence cut off British textile imports, planters could easily draw upon the skills and tools developed in the previous decades in order to provide “home-spun” clothes for slaves during these lean years. Of longer- term significance, the agricultural and processing skills honed during these decades were mobilized once again in the early part of the nineteenth century when the Lower South became the heart of the cotton South.37 Conditions specific to the American War of Indepen-dence contributed to the stability of this region during the war, as well as to postwar prosperity. Unrest among slaves during this conflict led to the extension of the task system, whereby slaves were left to their own work — be it subsistence agriculture, textile manufacture, or other petty forms of production for the market — after they had completed a defined set of tasks for their masters. This compromise between masters and slaves diverted slack labor to the essential tasks of subsistence produc-tion, and also helped to diffuse social tension by allowing slaves a limited degree of autonomy in their work rhythms. Once the war ended, the planter elite in the lower country turned their attention to a wholesale, capital- intensive renovation of their rice field irrigation works, which had been partly abandoned during the war for lack of willing labor and export markets. As Max Edelson has argued, adjustment to these turbulent market conditions over the eighteenth century in South Carolina led to two distinct but complementary types of economic development: diversification and the deepening of skills in the servile labor force.38 Much in contrast to the case of Saint- Domingue or Jamaica, wartime adaptations prepared the way for transfor-mational economic growth as they contributed to social stability.

In its wider significance as the hemisphere’s first war of colonial liberation, Corbier embraced this conflict with actuarial euphoria. In this respect, his cautious


stance toward the rebellion of the thirteen colonies resembled that of the Affiches Américaines, a local journal that Corbier read. In 1775 and 1776, the Affiches reported American colonists’ grievances against Crown and Parliament with some sympathy, but since their main concern was with the disruptions to good order (and trade) that would result from warfare, they tended to emphasize the path to concili-ation.39 As the conflict progressed, however, the editors of the Affiches clearly began to side with the American colonists against a usurping imperial center, often draw-ing a contrast between their lot and the happy unity of the French monarchy. Albion began to seem more perfidious as the war progressed, and the world- historical con-tours of the conflict emerged for colonial observers. As the Affiches Américaines observed in 1779, “the independence of the English colonies doubtlessly forms one of the remarkable eras of the universal constitution, which will forever illuminate the present century, and add to the various revolutions that have occurred over the course of it.” It was perhaps in this light that the editors of the Affiches began to dis-cuss favorably reform movements taking place in France, such as the representation of all three of France’s estates in the provincial administration of Dauphiné.40 Cor-bier was not swept along in this tide of revolutionary enthusiasm. Although he saw American liberation as a sign of human progress, agreeing that “certainly it is more advantageous to France and to Europe that America be free than under the domi-nation of the English,” he was nevertheless overcome by the atmosphere of nervous discontent and offered up the following counsel of despair: “it would perhaps be more prudent that the belligerent powers get together and carve up the sovereignty of North America . . . peace is what we should desire.”41

Nearer home, Corbier and his correspondents bore witness to a growing social disorder connected to the war. Destitute slaves were stealing lead from the roofs of old houses to sell as rifle shot (May 6, 1780); chickens and other livestock disappeared. Perhaps more frightening for the planter class, marronage was on the increase, as were arson and poisoning, at least reportedly. While Corbier did his best to adapt to the challenges of colonial life in wartime, these improvisations very quickly ran up against their inherent limitations. By December 1779, planters all over the Cul de Sac plain began to lose slaves to malnutrition in “prodigious” num-bers. Although Corbier congratulated himself on the success of his preparations, slaves also began to die at Cul de Sac from chest diseases, fatally weakened by “lack of salted meats.” Corbier’s belief that slaves could not subsist on locally grown foods alone, despite the shift to potato and millet production, proved correct. Not only was Ferronnays unable to update his refining facilities to make white sugar, but his rolling mill — the centerpiece of any sugar operation — was falling increasingly into disrepair because of the impossibility of finding replacement parts. As sugar production and prices fell, the plantation itself slid further into debt, unable to pay even its massively scaled- back costs: “the saddest profession these days is making


sugar.” Corbier complained, “If things continue as they are, one would be better off as a shoemaker.” The Ferronnays plantations did bounce back, as did the rest of the Saint- Domingue sugar economy, in part aided by the blow delivered to the British West Indies during that conflict, but the fundamental economic and social structures remained untouched. In this basically monocultural, export- led econ-omy, Corbier could pursue his inward turn to strategic autarky and labor- intensive improvements only so far. This conclusion is perhaps not so surprising as the speed with which Saint- Domingue fell into misery once deprived of European markets, foodstuffs, and capital goods. Saint- Domingue was after all France’s richest colony with over half a million inhabitants, and yet after barely two years of intermittent blockade, the colony manifested what Corbier took to be its fundamental character: “the colony is the chaos of human societies.” Corbier might well have concluded of the whole of Saint- Domingue and its economy what he reported about of his own colonial abode in times of war, “le Cul de Sac est le plus cul de sac qu’il ait du monde [our Cul de Sac is the deadest dead end in the world].”42

The Ferronnays plantation recovered by 1783, but the coming boom on Saint- Domingue brought other difficulties and exposed a different set of social ten-sions, all of which seemed to vindicate the prediction of the elder Corbier that, were the thirteen colonies to win their independence, only a very artfully conceived set of policies could succeed in keeping Saint- Domingue within the French orbit. Regular bankruptcies among neighbors reminded the Corbiers, both father and son, that high levels of planter debt and intermittent credit shocks emanating from Bordeaux and Nantes were inescapable features of the plantation economy, and its interna-tional context, in war and in peace.43 Rumors of war never entirely dissipated, and as late as November 1787, Corbier’s son was putting off converting Cul de Sac to white sugar production due to renewed fears of war. The Cul de Sac plain, with its fertile land and close port access, began to feel like a very crowded place: irriga-tion schemes became increasingly contentious and expensive; the land market was heating up to speculative levels; and the cost of slaves was going up. A set of letters written by Corbier’s son in 1785 reminds us how these market shifts were felt on the plantation; as fewer slaves were purchased to replenish ranks on the plantation, Cor-bier explained, “the laziest” slaves ran off while those who remained were subjected to an increasingly “rude” work rhythm.44 Despite adequate provisions, overworked slaves were dying in prodigious numbers or lying sick or exhausted in the hospi-tal. Although sugar production was increasing, Corbier fils predicted another crash: “it is impossible, with slaves at 2,500 [colonial livres] and other objects similarly high, that the planters make anything.” In this context, with Saint- Domingue eager to capitalize on stagnation in the British West Indies, planters continued to bridle against the Exclusif, which, even in attenuated form, raised the price of slaves, slave subsistence, and other essential capital goods while limiting their supply. Colonial planters and metropolitan merchants renewed their mutual recriminations, with an increasingly delegitimized crown caught between.45


Corbier père often remarked that the Cul de Sac plain — and Saint- Domingue more generally — had long passed its frontier stage where small planters could come to the island and quickly make a fortune. Rising costs and market volatility favored an oligarchy of planters, like Ferronnays, who could spread fixed costs over larger productive units and who could weather market gyrations better than their smaller competitors. Ferronnays was undoubtedly part of this consolidation among the planter elite, expanding the productive capacity on his Cul de Sac plantation over the 1780s by acquiring land and slaves, but his papers remind us that such expansion always took place on the razor’s edge of overcapitalization and, therefore, of potential bankruptcy. This consolidation had destabilizing social consequences as well: as the plantation economy matured, conflict sharpened between landless whites (petit blancs), plantation- owning free blacks (gens de couleur), and the white large plantation owners (grands blancs). Among the latter class, there was no love lost between newly arrived or absentee French owners — who, like Ferronnays and Corbier, exploited their connections with the royal administration — and the com-paratively less powerful white creole planter class.46

These groups pitched in together to maintain slavery once the threat of abolition — real or imagined — began to loom in 1789, but their relations quickly degenerated to prerevolutionary norms, which helps to explain why the lid was never entirely put on the slave uprisings that began in August 1791. From this point for-ward, international political events once again reached deeply into the countryside. What one planter concluded in 1780 remained true in the 1790s: “I know from per-sonal experience that this country is always subject to revolutions, and all the more so in times of war than in peace.”47

NotesThis article was initially presented during seminars or conferences at the Institut Charles V (University of Paris 7); the Workshop on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Modern France (University of Chicago); and the Centre for the Study of France and the Francophone World (University of Toronto). I would like to thank both organizers and audience for making these intellectually fruitful occasions. Trevor Burnard provided thoughtful comments early on, while Amy Chazkel and the anonymous reviewers at the Radical History Review were helpful in later stages. Research for this article was made possible by funds from the Social Sciences Division at the University of Chicago; revisions were made during a sabbatical leave funded by the American Council of Learned Societies. Nathan Decety, Agatha Kim, and Chris Moore all provided valuable research assistance. 1. Michel- Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston:

Beacon Press, 1995). In contrast to this view, Yun Kyoung Kwon demonstrates the pervasive role that Haiti and its revolution played in nineteenth- century France, in “When Parisian Liberals Spoke for Haiti: French Anti- slavery Discourses on Haiti under the Restoration, 1814 – 30,” Atlantic Studies 8, no. 3 (2011): 317 – 20.

2. On the Haitian Revolution, see C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution (London: Secker and Warburg, 1938); Yves Bénot, La révolution française et la fin des colonies, 1789 – 1794 (The French Revolution and the End of the Colonies) (Paris: La Découverte, 2004); David Barry Gaspar and David Patrick


Geggus, eds., A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean, Blacks in the Diaspora series (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Carolyn E. Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990); Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); David Patrick Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); John D. Garrigus, Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint- Domingue (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); David Patrick Geggus and Norman Fiering, eds., The World of the Haitian Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); and Jeremy Popkin, You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On the globalization of the French Revolution, see, for instance, Lynn Hunt, “The French Revolution in Global Context,” in The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760 – 1840, eds. David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 20 – 36; and Jeremy Popkin, “Saint- Domingue, Slavery, and the Origins of the French Revolution,” in From Deficit to Deluge: The Origins of the French Revolution, eds. Thomas Kaiser and Dale Van Kley (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 220 – 48. See also Ashli White, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); for a prescient discussion of this subject, see Immanuel Wallerstein, “The French Revolution as World Historical Event,” in The French Revolution and the Birth of Modern Political Culture, ed. Ferenc Fehér (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 117 – 30.

3. Paul Butel, “L’essor antillais aux XVIIIe siècle” (“The Development of the Antilles in the Eighteenth Century”), in Histoire des Antilles et de la Guyane (History of the Antilles and Guyana), ed. Pierre Pluchon (Toulouse: Privat, 1982), 109 – 41.

4. Johnhenry Gonzalez, “The Fruits of Destruction: Violence, Land, and the Making of the Haitian Peasantry, 1802 – 1826” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2012), chap. 2.

5. On the early history of this place, see Gabriel Debien, “Aux origines des quelques plantations des quartiers de Léogane et du Cul- de- Sac (1680 – 1715)”(“On the Origins of Some Plantations in the Léogane and Cul- de- Sac Districts [1680 – 1715]”), Revue de la Société d’Histoire et de Géographie d’Haïti (The Haitian Historical and Geographical Society Review) 18, no. 64 (1947): 11 – 78.

6. Richard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739 – 1763 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), iv.

7. See Paul Burton Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce: Globalization and the French Monarchy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 150 – 67.

8. Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492 – 1800 (London: Verso, 1997), introduction, quotation on 376.

9. For eloquent testimony on this point, see Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940 (New York: Norton, 1968), 126 – 76.

10. Pares, War and Trade, 187 – 95. The work of reference on the Exclusif is Jean Tarrade, Le commerce colonial de la France à la fin de l’ancien régime: L’évolution du régime de “l’Exclusif ” de 1763 à 1789 (French Colonial Commerce at the End of the Old Regime: The Evolution of the Exclusive from 1763 to 1789) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1972). See also J. C. Riley, The Seven Years’ War and the Old Regime in France: The Economic and Financial Toll (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 110 – 11.

11. On this understanding within French governing circles, see Malick Ghachem, “ ‘Between France and the Antilles’: The Commercial Assimilation of the American Revolution in


Saint- Domingue, 1784 – 1785,” Working Paper 99026, Atlantic History Seminar, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1999.

12. On the preparation of the French navy for this conflict, see Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and the Seven Years’ War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), epilogue.

13. For these details and this interpretation, see Tarrade, Le commerce colonial, chap. 13.14. Pierre- Victor Malouet, Mémoires (Paris: E. Plon et Cie, 1874), 1:59. On Etienne- Louis’s

colonial career, see France: National Archives, Overseas Section, Aix- en- Provence (henceforth, CAOM), E 245, as well as memoirs in France: National Archives (henceforth, AN), T 210, carton 1.

15. For details on Etienne- Louis’s emigration, see France: Archives Departementales (henceforth, AD), Seine et Marne, 1 Q 779 – 781; for that of Pierre Jacques Auguste Ferron, AD Loire Atlantique, Q 432; on Paul, AD Yvelines, Q 109.

16. The details of Corbier’s life and fortune can only be established piecemeal. See AD, Sarthe, actes civiles, Flèche (La) BMS 1717 – 1738 (suite), 152 (on birth); and Saint- Germain- du- Val BMS 1781 – 1790, 139 (on death). For his plantation holdings, see: France: Commission chargée de répartir l’indemnité attribuée aux anciens colons de Saint- Domingue, État détaillé des liquidations opérées à l’époque du 1er Janvier 1829 (1830, 1831, 1832) (Detailed accounting of payments made from January 1, 1829 [1830, 1831, 1832]) (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1829), 1:278.

17. Commanders on the island seemed to be preparing for renewed conflict as far back as May 1771: Paul- Antoine Nolivos and Alexandre- Jacques, Chevalier de Bongars, “Correspondance générale” (“General Correspondence”) (Port- au- Prince), AN, Col, C9A, 140.

18. See AN, T 210, carton 3, dossiers 41 and 44 for well- informed discussions on defense and food supply. Later, Ferronnays would attempt to influence the ministry to open up wartime trade with the islands. AN, Col, C9A (1778), 146.

19. Ferronnays enjoyed usufruct of this property, which was his wife’s dowry. The lease specified a reduction of one- third in the first two years of the lease and two- thirds in the subsequent years. Valdec was unable to pay even this greatly reduced amount, and the affair wound up in court. See CAOM, G2 47, ff. 528 – 30 and 682. Other agreements made timing and amount of payment conditional on war. See letters from Jean- Baptiste Corbier to Etienne- Louis Ferron de la Ferronnays, AN, T 210, carton 2, July 16, 1779, and July 18, 1779. Subsequent references to this correspondence will simply cite the date(s) in question.

20. On encumbrances, December 27, 1779. See Tarrade, Le commerce colonial, 13. On English commerce, June 26, 1776; on Ferronnays’s debts, August 26, 1775; on land prices and restricted credit during wartime, August 11, 1776; on a proposed land sale, September 20, 1775; and on slave purchases, November 11, 1776. Translations from the original French in this paragraph and elsewhere are by the author.

21. On insurgent victories, November 9, 1776, and February 2, 1777; for quotation, November 8, 1777. On income, February 2, 1778.

22. On seizures, see November 14, 1778; on warships, December 12, 1779. Ferronnays’s factor in Nantes believed that “we were less mistreated in the last [i.e., Seven Years’] war.” Letter of unknown (illegible in correspondence) merchant to Etienne- Louis Ferron de la Ferronnays, Nantes, November 14, 1778, AN T- 210, carton 2.

23. Robert, Comte de d’Argout, and Jean- Baptiste Guillemin de Vaivre, “Correspondance générale: Situation de la colonie” (“General Correspondence: Situation in the Colony”) (Cap Français, March 12, 1779), AN, Col, C9A, 147. “Wig powder” quotation from April 24, 1779, emphasis added.


24. On debt and provisions, April 28, 1780; on Seguineau, April 22, 1778; on correspondence, November 11 and December 8, 1779.

25. On hardship, April 24, 1779; and on chickens, April 28, 1780.26. Victor- Thérese Charpentier d’Ennery and Jean- Baptiste Guillemin de Vaivre,

“Correspondance générale: ordonnance sur les vivres du pays” (General Correspondence: Orders Concerning Provisions on the Countryside) (Port- au- Prince, August 10, 1776), AN, Col, C9A, 144. The local press tried to maintain a stiff upper lip about the war situation, confining itself mainly to cheerleading French forces and execrating the British, but occasionally hints about the situation of the colony leaked out. See Affiches Américaines (American Notices) (Port- au- Prince: l’Imprimerie royale, 1766), October 19 and 28, 1779.

27. On assolement in Saint- Domingue, see Gabriel Debien, “Comptes, profits, esclaves et travaux de deux sucreries de Saint- Domingue, 1774 – 1798,” (“Accounts, Profits, Slaves, and Labor on Two Saint- Domingue Sugar Plantations, 1774 – 1798”), part 2, Revue de la Société d’Histoire et de Géographie d’Haïti (The Haitian Historical and Geographical Society Review) 16, no. 56 (1945): 12.

28. For the strategy of laying up stores, February 16, 1779; on vegetables, June 26, 1776; on food crops, July 18, 1779.

29. On the expense of meat, June 16, 1780; on the “mysterious commerce,” June 26, 1776; on livestock stealing, April 28, 1780; on mule subsistence, March 20, 1779; and on slave hospitals, June 16, 1780.

30. On “better uses” of labor, June 28, 1779; on the irrigation canal and the aqueduct see, inter alia, April 24 and June 28, 1779. On different working habits: June 16, 1780. On the hydrography of this region, see Debien, “Comptes, profits, esclaves et travaux,” 12. On irrigation projects, see Méderic Louis Elie Moreau de Saint- Méry, La description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de Saint- Domingue (1797) (Topographical, Physical, Civil, Political, and Historical Description of French Saint- Domingue [1797]), vol. 2 (Saint- Denis: Société française d’histoire d’outre- mer, 2004), 941 – 45.

31. Compare the comments of January 15, 1775; November 22, 1775; February 12, 1776; and June 5, 1776, to those of January 5 and February 16, 1776.

32. See November 22, 1779. In this case, the “white” sugar in question was not fully refined sugar, but clayed sugar (sucre terré), sugar bleached in clay molds and then formed into loaves. For the discussion that follows, I adopt the white versus raw distinction followed in local price quotations and bills of lading. On sugar types and their production, see Robert Louis Stein, The French Sugar Business in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), chap. 3. On the difficulties of converting to white sugar production: November 8, 1777; December 10, 1778 (with particular emphasis on the absence of materials); and February 16, 1779. On wood costs, June 16, 1780.

33. It is quite likely that the marquis paid other of his debts and production costs out of these proceeds. For example, until 1782, Jean- Baptiste Corbier’s fees were not listed in the account books, and it is possible that some payments were made to him in France by the marquis.

34. On seizures and credit: December 10, 1778. The dating of Corbier’s observation makes clear that it is safe to assume that the situation of 1780 existed in 1778 – 79, when there is a lacuna in the data. See a similar letter of January 5, 1779. For one missed opportunity, see February 15, 1779; on interest rates, October 4, 1780.


35. Affiches Américaines, 1774 – 1784.36. For these acts and the general economic situation, see Selwyn H. H. Carrington, “The

American Revolution and the British West Indies’ Economy,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17, no. 4 (1987): 823 – 50; for mortality figures, see Richard B. Sheridan, “The Crisis of Slave Subsistence in the British West Indies during and after the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 33, no. 4 (1976): 632. On divergent French and English tendencies of plantation food production, see David Watts, The West Indies: Patterns of Development, Culture, and Environmental Change Since 1492 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 239. On the 1776 Rebellion, see Richard B. Sheridan, “The Jamaican Slave Insurrection Scare of 1776 and the American Revolution,” The Journal of Negro History 61, no. 3 (July 1976): 290 – 308.

37. For these details — as well as the broad interpretive scheme relating to the Lower South — see Joyce E. Chaplin, An Anxious Pursuit: Agricultural Innovation and Modernity in the Lower South, 1730 – 1815 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), chaps. 6 and 8.

38. S. Max Edelson, “Affiliation without Affinity: Skilled Slaves in Eighteenth- Century South Carolina,” in Money, Trade, and Power: The Evolution of Colonial South Carolina’s Plantation Society, eds. Jack P. Greene, Rosemary Brana- Shute, and Randy J. Sparks (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 217 – 55. For a discussion of South Carolina’s development that complements that of Chaplin, see S. Max Edelson, Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

39. See, for instance, Affiches Américaines, January 11, 1775; January 3, 1776; January 24, 1776; and February 7, 1776.

40. Affiches Américaines, February 16, 1779, for quotation; June 18 for contrast with French monarchy; June 8 for general views on the American Revolution; and September 7, 1779, on the estates of Dauphiné.

41. On the feebleness of these efforts, see February 16, 1779, and Tarrade, Le commerce colonial, 466. For criticism of the war effort, see February 2, April 4, and December 8 of 1779, and May 6, 1780. Quote on November 22, 1779. Oddly, although Corbier seemed to uphold the principles of the Americans’ struggle, he also believed them to be the “refuse of the human race” (ibid.).

42. On slave deaths, December 8, 1779. The mortality rate that this figure represents is unknown. On shoemaking, December 27, 1779; on chaos, May 6, 1780; and on the colonial “cul de sac,” December 8, 1779.

43. On political prospects, November 11, 1776; on bankruptcies, November 17, 1783, and July 6, 1784.

44. On war fears, November 20 and December 20, 1787. On water politics, see September 20 and November 11, 1788. A letter of August 5, 1784, shows one buyer paying an astounding 4,000 colonial livres per carreau; the normal price was about 250. Ferronnays paid between 1,500 and 1,800 for a field slave from 1774 to 1777; between 1784 and 1788 prices were between 2,300 and 3,000. Quote: January 15, 1786. On mortality and work rhythm: November 12, 1785, and April 20, 1785.

45. On the politics of trade, see Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce, chap. 6; on tensions with (and within) the colonial administration, see Bénot, La révolution française et la fin des colonies, chap. 2.

46. On this process of consolidation and polarization in Saint- Domingue, particularly in


contrast to Guadeloupe and Martinique, see Watts, The West Indies, chap. 8. Mainland French versus white creole relations are a leitmotif of this correspondence, but these tensions sharpen toward the end of the period. For earlier developments, see Debien, “Aux origines des quelques plantations,” especially 54 – 64 on the evolution of class structure. See the letters of December 20, 1787; April 30, 1788; and June 12, 1788. Corbier father and son often recount dinners with the intendant in their correspondence, while the marquis knew the Secretary of the Navy Antoine Gabriel de Sartine. See Malouet, Mémoires, 59.

47. Valdec to Corbier, July 16, 1779. On chaos, May 6, 1780.

A Colonial Cul de Sac: Plantation Life in Wartime Saint-Domingue, 1775-1783

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