An excellent book on early Haitian history
The Haitian Revolution is an intriguingly complex historical event filled with multiple apparent contradictions and concurrent protagonists. This book focuses on the role of ?free men of color? in the development of the French colony of Saint-Domingue, the world?s most prosperous at the time. Garrigus book is based on solid primary research: the study of more than 8,000 notary records from 1760 to 1780 from several cities in Haiti?s southern peninsula region, considered Haiti?s most isolated, rural, Creole and distant from the central colonial government influence. The author documents the origins and the social and economic evolution of free mulattoes, the obstacles they faced to legitimize their social and political aims, and how their struggle for legitimacy contributed --sometimes involuntarily-- to the long chain of events that lead Haiti in 1804 to become the second American republic, the first Caribbean republic and the first Black nation in the Hemisphere.
Garrigus focuses on ?free men of color? as a distinct social and economic class, and especially on those who amassed fortunes comparable to those of white French plantiers, and whose complexions could easily be mistaken with those of white men. The book documents the ascent of this social class and its general collective purposes, their rising predominance in the Southern peninsula, and how they fought the tactics of the white minority and the French colonial government to subordinate them through racial discrimination and social degradation, to prevent their full participation in Saint-Domingue?s colonial society. One of the book?s most interesting propositions is how their own vindications lead the free mulattoes to assume causes ?such as the emancipation of black slaves-- that where not part of their initial aims, and that in essence, worked against their own economic and social interests.
The author?s main thesis is that a series of significant changes in Saint-Dominguez?s society during the second half of the 17th century brought forth a new sense of identity among the white colonists that forced the social, economic and racial alienation of white mulattoes. Saint- Domingue society, once divided in social classes regardless of race, degenerated into a cruel racist society. These changes destabilized this prosperous slave society, provoked the radicalization of free mulattoes, and crated conditions that were favorable to the slave uprisings and the eventual Haitian Revolution.
The book is easy to read, and the author?s command over local notary sources allow the book to be sprinkled with reconstructed individual stories that illustrate and lighten the understanding of the broader issues being discussed. He carefully avoids stereotyping, idealizing and demonizing the historical protagonists and the social classes of Saint Domingue ?an attitude too frequent among other Haitian historians-- and encourages the reader to rationalize their acts within the prevailing historical context. This is particularly effective with regards to the free mulattoes, who amid their evident contradictions, become historical subjects that can be more easily understood and appreciated.
