Abstract
Paul Cheney demonstrates how one particular eighteenth-century plantation in Saint-Domingue was tied up in international affairs. Focusing on ‘the way that the international division of labour shaped daily life’ on the Ferron de la Ferronnays family plantation in the Western Province, he ‘exposes the relation between Saint-Domingue’s phenomenal wealth and its besetting weaknesses’ (p. 2). Building especially upon the work of Gabriel Debien, Cheney breaks with what he sees as a tendency by recent historians to focus on the colony’s urban centres by returning to the plantation. In doing so, this microhistory reveals important economic and ideological connections within the French Atlantic in the last decades of the eighteenth century and into the early nineteenth century.
Cheney admits his ‘good fortune’ with the sources for this monograph. He was able to access the Ferronnays family papers in two locations. First, when the family fled France, the French Revolutionary government seized a substantial collection of documents, most importantly over 200 letters written by the long-time family lawyer and plantation manager Jean-Baptiste Corbier, which are now held in the French National Archives. Second, he convinced an inheritor of the presence of additional documents within a family archive, and he was able ‘to reconstruct one of the three most extensive plantation archives for a colony, Saint-Domingue, whose historians are poorly served, in this respect’ (pp. 13–14).
Cheney divides his book into seven chapters, organised topically. The first chapter lays the groundwork for the remainder of the book, tracing the French Atlantic connections established by the Ferron de la Ferronnays family, starting in Brittany and Anjou. Although among the ‘rich provincial nobility’ of France, the Ferronnays family sought opportunities in trade and industry beyond the hinterland regional economy of Anjou after the Seven Years’ War. In Saint-Domingue, the Ferronnays joined the ranks of the grand blancs (plantation owners) referred to as ‘Lords of Saint-Domingue’ growing sugar in the Cul de Sac plain. Cheney asserts, ‘Too little attention is paid, on the whole, to the role of the military nobility in assuring the basic conditions of profitability for the plantation complex’ (pp. 26–27). He also highlights how tensions between elites in France and Saint-Domingue were a major weakness for the colony.
The second chapter is an intensely close examination of sugar production. He details growing, milling, and refining, as well as issues related to soil fertility, water syndicates, and taxation. In this regard, this chapter, coupled with the sixth chapter on cultivation during the French Revolution, is indispensable for any scholar of sugar produced by enslaved labourers in the Americas, not just those who focus on Saint-Domingue. In addition, in the second chapter, Cheney makes fruitful comparison between Caribbean plantations and Roman latifundia, drawing on the role of the household in each institution. This comparison serves to provide a deeper understanding of how white plantation owners and managers perceived plantation society. The third chapter further delves into the ideology surrounding slavery in Saint-Domingue, particularly how Enlightenment ideals influenced, even if superficially, shifts in the treatment of enslaved peoples in the colony during the eighteenth century. In Saint-Domingue, issues of humanity and financial interest were deeply entangled, but profit bore heavily upon how planters and managers embraced sensibility and charity in relation to their enslaved labourers.
The fourth chapter will be of particular interest to maritime historians as it examines how the Seven Years’ War and American War of Independence affected France’s colonies, particularly plantation life. For example, Saint-Domingue experienced significant wartime shortages, including wine and powder for their wigs, due to the British seizing French ships after the Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1778. In addition to troubles with importing goods, planters like Ferronnays, who ‘specialised in the production of muscovado sugar, were doubly or even trebly penalised by the interruptions of war’ (p. 119). This was because merchant ships were limited and captains preferred clayed sugar because it required less cargo space. A final maritime connection Cheney presents is that Saint-Domingue sent troops to aid the American colonists in fighting the British, landing nearly 700 men in Savannah, Georgia in 1779.
The fifth chapter probes the unhappy union between Etienne-Louis Ferron de la Ferronnays and a creole woman, Marie-Elisabeth Timothée Binau. Through this discussion, he reveals the marital rights of women in the Old Regime French Atlantic, the use of libelle, stereotypes of creole women, and ultimately how divisions among whites contributed to France’s loss of Saint-Domingue. In his introduction, Cheney states, ‘Cul de Sac too is a book about people’ (p. 13). However, it is important to note that this book, especially through the fifth chapter, presents a history of the plantation very much from the top, relying on the available archival sources, presenting noble and bourgeoisie perspectives. In fact, enslaved Africans factor into this work passively, subjects of concerns for humane treatment and benefactors of manumission.
The sixth and seventh chapters explore the effects of revolution and its aftermath on the Ferronnays plantation. Throughout this book, but most obviously in the sixth chapter, Cheney does not refer to the tumultuous events in Saint-Domingue from 1791 to 1804 as the Haitian Revolution. Instead, he makes reference to the French Revolution in Saint-Domingue and a civil war in the colony in the 1790s. He indirectly addresses this choice in his introduction, invoking French planter conceptions of patrimony. He claims, ‘In the planter’s mind the place remained, eternally, Saint-Domingue’, citing plans to retake the colony after its independence and indemnities paid by Haitians to France after 1825 (p. 11). This further reflects the perspective represented in this book, as he often lets the sources speak for themselves, but also omits how the larger population of the colony, those who were enslaved, saw plantation society, the revolutionary events that brought about their freedom and independence, and their creation of a black Haitian nation.
Cheney ends with an epilogue related to his own visit to Haiti with doctoral students from the University of Chicago. He explains some of the reactions he received from modern Haitians. Even after two centuries, Haitians remain suspicious of outsiders, even scholars, assuming they intend to profit off them. This personal account shows just how deeply plantation society and the ideologies held by the whites who controlled it cut into the psyche and identity of its descendants. Indeed, it seems that today, even scholarly work on plantations in Saint-Domingue continues to be connected to international affairs.