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Cultivators, domestics, and Slaves: Slavery in Santo Domingo under Louverture and Napoleon, 1801–1803

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2019

Maria Cecilia Ulrickson
Maria Cecilia Ulrickson*
Affiliation:
Morgan State UniversityBaltimore, [email protected]
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Extract

On January 13, 1803, the French notary Derieux visited the first of several estates owned by Domingo Rodríguez, recently deceased. Rodríguez's property lay in the environs of Santiago de los Caballeros, a town in the north-central valley of Santo Domingo on eastern Hispaniola (today, the Dominican Republic). Over a three-week period, Derieux traveled with a team of witnesses and assessors to properties as far away as coastal Puerto Plata in order to assess the value of Rodríguez's cloth store, home, cabins, pasture land, livestock, cane and foodstuff fields, and sugar-processing equipment. Two of the three plantations also included a different kind of asset. At the sugar estate Gourave, Derieux wrote down the names of the 35 cultivateurs, cultivatrices, and enfants, that is, male and female agricultural workers and their children.

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Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 76 , Issue 2 , April 2019 , pp. 241 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2019 

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Footnotes

Research for this article was made possible by support from a grant at the Nanovic Center for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame. This study benefited from the help of staff at the Archives Nationales d'Outre-Mer (France), the Archivo del Arzobispado de Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), and the Archivo General de la Nación (Dominican Republic). The author wishes to thank Karen Graubart, Richard Turits, Antonio Jesús Pinto Tortosa, David Sartorius and members of the board at The Americas, members of the Latin American History Working Group at the University of Notre Dame, members of the Slavery, Memory, and African Diasporas Working Group at Howard University, participants in the 2016 Emancipation of Bound Laborers in the Americas before the Abolition of Slavery Conference (Montpellier, France), and two anonymous reviewers for The Americas for their suggestions. Translations are by the author.

References

1. Saint Domingue's revolutionary leaders described freed, formerly enslaved people as cultivateur s. The term appears, for example, in Louverture's October 12, 1800, “Règlement relatif a la culture,” cited in Schoelcher, Victor, Vie de Toussaint Louverture (Paris: Karthala, 1982), 427–430Google Scholar. I translate the term as “cultivator,” and not as one of the more familiar terms, “farmer” or “laborer,” in order to communicate its unusual character. In Santo Domingo, the term cultivateur began to circulate only upon the entrance of Louverture and was used almost exclusively to describe laborers in an emancipation and post-emancipation context. The term circulated again following the colony's final emancipation in 1822 under Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer, and at this point it acquired a more general meaning.

2. Inventory of Dominique Rodríguez estate, January-February 1803/Nivôse-Pluviôse an 11, Archives Nationales d'Outre-Mer [hereafter ANOM], Dépôt des papiers publics des colonies [hereafter DPPC], Notariat, Saint-Domingue 485.

3. See the pronouncement by Donatien de Rochambeau establishing Derieux as notary in Fort Dauphin. “Arrête,” January 20, 1803/Nivôse 30 an 11, Art. VII, published in Affiches Américaines de Saint-Domingue, https://gallica.bnf.fr [hereafter BNF Gallica].

4. Julius Sherrard, “The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution” (PhD diss.: Duke University, 1986).

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6. Inventory of Dominique de la Mota estate, March 22, 1803/Germinal 1 an 11, ANOM DPPC, Notariat, Saint-Domingue 485; Inventory of Pichardo estate, April 4, 1803, ANOM DPPC, Notariat, Saint-Domingue 485; Land sale by Joseph Cabiro to Manuel del Moya, May 18, 1803/Floréal 28 an 11, ANOM DPPC, Notariat, Saint-Domingue 485; Inventory of Manuel Almonte estate, June 6, 1803/Prairial 21 an 11, ANOM DPPC, Notariat, Saint-Domingue 485. Not all domestiques were enslaved; in the only other instance Derieux recorded this term in his notarial book, he described a free, likely formerly enslaved, domestic servant, the citoyenne Guerece, as attached to the service of a person, rather than a place. The notary clearly described Guerece as a free woman with rights to property and free movement. See the donation of land to the “citoyenne Guerece ma fidelle domestique pour les bons et agreables service quelle m‘a rendu tant en sante qu‘en maladie depuis 16 ans qu‘elle est attachée a mon service,” in Testament of Jean Menil, May 28, 1803/Prairial 8 1803, ANOM DPPC, Notariat, Saint-Domingue 485.

7. Inventory of Dominique Rodríguez estate, January-February 1803/Nivôse-Pluviôse an 11, ANOM DPPC, Notariat, Saint-Domingue 485; Inventory of Dominique de la Mota estate, March 22, 1803/Germinal 1 an 11, ANOM DPPC, Notariat, Saint-Domingue 485; Inventory of Pichardo estate, April 4, 1803/Germinal 14 an 11, ANOM DPPC, Notariat, Saint-Domingue 485; Land sale by Joseph Cabiro to Manuel del Moya, May 18, 1803/Floréal 28 an 11, ANOM DPPC, Notariat, Saint-Domingue 485; Inventory of Manuel Almonte estate, June 6, 1803/Prairial 21 an 11, ANOM DPPC, Notariat, Saint-Domingue 485.

8. Notarial records for an 11– an 12 (1803), ANOM DPPC, Notariat, Saint Domingue 485. One of the wills that Derieux notarized referenced a manumission in the past. See the testament of Charles Agustin Gerard, October 28, 1803/Brumaire 5 an 12, ANOM DPPC, Notariat, Saint Domingue 485.

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15. Franco, Franklin J., Los negros, los mulatos y la nación dominicana, 2nd ed. (Santo Domingo: Editora Nacional, 1970)Google Scholar; Michel, Emilio Cordero, La Revolución Haitiana y Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Editora Nacional, 1968)Google Scholar. See also Carlos Larrazábal Blanco, whose new wave scholarship on Afro-Dominicans also countered Trujillo rhetoric even if did not consider Louverturean emancipation. Blanco, Larrazábal, Los negros y la esclavitud en Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo: Julio Postigo e Hijos, 1967)Google Scholar.

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17. For scholarship that presumes that Louverture did emancipate the colony of Santo Domingo, see José Luis Belmonte Postigo, “Bajo el negro velo de la ilegalidad. Un análisis del mercado de esclavos dominicano 1746–1821,” Nuevo Mundo, Mundos Nuevos, 2016, https://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/69481, accessed January 5, 2019; Regino, Francisco Bernardo y Espinal, , “El Tratado de Paz de Basilea, Toussaint Louverture y Napoleón Bonaparte, 1795–1803,” in La era de Francia en Santo Domingo (1795–1808), edición bilingüe Beauregard, Efraín Baldrich, ed. (Santo Domingo: Quinta Dominicana, 2015), 58–98Google Scholar; Michel, Emilio Cordero, “Toussaint en Saint-Domingue Espagnol,” in Saint-Domingue espagnol et la révolution nègre d'Haïti. commémoration du bicentenaire de la naissance de l’état d'Haïti (1804–2004), Yacou, Alain, ed. (Paris: Karthala, 2007), 251–257Google Scholar; Ferrer, Ada, Freedom's Mirror (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 238Google Scholar; and Fischer, Sibylle, Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. For scholarship arguing that Louverture did not extend emancipation or did not successfully emancipate in Santo Domingo, see Tortosa, Antonio Jesús Pinto, “‘No habrá de sufrirse que los negros abandonen las plantaciones’:Toussaint Louverture ante la esclavitud,” Boletín del Archivo General de La Nación 37:132 (2012), 63–89Google Scholar; Girard, Philippe R., “Black Talleyrand: Toussaint Louverture's Diplomacy, 1798–1802,” William and Mary Quarterly 66:1 (2009): 87–124Google Scholar; and Nessler, Graham T., An Islandwide Struggle for Freedom: Revolution, Emancipation, and Reenslavement in Hispaniola, 1789–1809 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. A second Spanish-speaking notary, Denis de la Rocha, also worked in Santiago's Plaza de Armas during the French period, but his notarial records have not survived.

20. No notarial ledgers from Santo Domingo city survive from before the year 1814. For the earliest notarial records of Santo Domingo city, see José Troncoso, Antonio Abad Solano, Martín de Mueses, and Tomás Bobadilla, Protocolos Notariales, Archivo General de la Nación [hereafter AGN].

21. Scott, Rebecca J., “Paper Thin: Freedom and Re-Enslavement in the Diaspora of the Haitian Revolution,” Law and History Review 29:4 (2011): 1061–1087CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. Premo, Bianca, “An Equity against the Law: Slave Rights and Creole Jurisprudence in Spanish America,” Slavery & Abolition 32:4 (2011): 495–517CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scott, Rebecca J. and Hébrard, Jean M., Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dubois, Laurent, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution & Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804 (Williamsburg, VA: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2004)Google Scholar; Nessler, Graham T., “‘They Always Knew Her to Be Free’: Emancipation and Re-Enslavement in French Santo Domingo, 1804–1809,” Slavery & Abolition 33:1 (2012): 87–103Google Scholar.

23. Letter from Duque de la Alcudia to Governor President don Joaquín García, September 8, 1795, cited in Documentos para estudio: marco de la época y problemas del Tratado de Basilea de 1795, en la parte española de Santo Domingo, Joaquín Marino Inchaustegui Cabral, ed. (Buenos Aires: Academía Dominicana de la Historia, 1957), 49. On the impact of the Treaty of Basel on east Hispaniola's one major slave rebellion, in the late eighteenth century, see Pinto, Antonio J., “Santo Domingo's Slaves in the Context of the Peace of Basel: Boca Nigua's Black Insurrection, 1796,” Journal of Early American History 3 (2013): 131–153CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Regino y Espinal, “El Tratado de Paz de Basilea.”

24. Popkin, Jeremy D., You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Blackburn, Robin, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (London and New York: Verso, 1988)Google Scholar.

25. Approximately 4,000 inhabitants, including enslaved persons, left for Havana following the Treaty of Basel. Informe of José María de Acebal, April 28, 1814, Archivo Nacional de Cuba: Asuntos Políticos, leg. 15, exp. 19. See also Deive, Carlos Esteban, Las emigraciones dominicanas a Cuba: 1795–1808 (Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 1989)Google Scholar; Deive, Carlos Esteban, La esclavitud del negro en Santo Domingo, 1492–1844, vol. 2 (Santo Domingo: Museo del Hombre Dominicano, 1980), 246Google Scholar.

26. Emilio Cordero Michel, “Toussaint en Saint-Domingue espagnol,” in Saint-Domingue espagnol et la révolution nègre d'Haïti, Alain Yacou, ed., 251.

27. Popkin, You Are All Free, chapt. 8; Louverture, Memoir, 95. These emancipations did not immediately or universally free Saint Domingue's slaves. As late as 1802, Saint Domingue residents held people in their households whom they considered their personal property. It is unclear whether these would-be owners also continued to exercise other property rights over these bound individuals. Letter from Lecun to Père Luc? [illeg], July 21, 1802, Archivio Storico de Propaganda Fide, Scritture Rif. nei Congressi, America Antille 3 (1790–1819), exp. 343–344.

28. Pierre Pluchon, Toussaint Louverture, fils noir de la révolution française. Bibliothèque documentaire, 9 (Paris: Bibliothèque documentaire de l’école des loisirs, 1980), 49.

29. Semley, Lorelle D., “To Live and Die, Free and French: Toussaint Louverture's 1801 Consitution and the Original Challenge of Black Citizenship,” Radical History Review 115 (Winter 2013): 65–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. Napoleon's instructions on Santo Domingo, October 29, 1801, CARAN Colonies CC/9a/28, cited in Nessler, An Islandwide Struggle for Freedom, 133. See also Girard, Philippe R., “Napoléon Bonaparte and the Emancipation Issue in Saint-Domingue, 1799–1803,” French Historical Studies 32:4 (2009): 599CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. Louverture, Memoir.

32. For Leclerc's circular to Cap Français residents promising to uphold emancipation and Paul Louverture's surrender of Santo Domingo city stipulating the same, see Toussaint Louverture, Memoir, 65, 75.

33. The May 20, 1802/Floréal 30 an 10, decree re-established the institution of slavery in Martinique, St. Lucia, and (in the Indian Ocean) Île de France and La Réunion. These were all colonies where reversing France's 1794 emancipation would be a relatively easy task. Jean-Marcel Champion argues that where expedient and where possible, Napoleon protected and reinstituted slavery. Re-enslavement in Saint Domingue was not thought to be easy enough to merit inclusion in the legislation. Champion, Jean-Marcel, “30 Floréal an X: Le rétablissement de l'esclavage par Bonaparte,” in Abolitions de l'esclavage: de L. F. Sonthonax à Victor Schoelcher, 1793, 1794, 1848: Actes du colloque international tenu à l'Université de Paris VIII les 3, 4, et 5 février 1994, Dorigny, Marcel, ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes/UNESCO, 1995), 267Google Scholar.

34. Leclerc suggested so in private correspondence in mid 1802: “Ne pensez pas rétablir l'esclavage ici avant quelque temps. Je cois pouvoir tout faire pour que mon successeur n'air plus que l'arrêté du gouvernement à faire exécuter, mais après les proclamations sans nombre que j'ai faites ici pour assurer aux Noirs leurs liberté, je ne veux pas être en contradiction avec moi même, mais assurez le Premier consul que mon successeur trouvera tout disposé.” Leclerc to Admiral Decrès, July 24, 1802/Thermidor 5 an 10, cited in Champion, “30 Floréal an X,” 269.

35. François-Marie-Périchou Kerverseau, Toussaint Louverture d'après le Général de Kerverseau, Pierre Pluchon, ed. (Paris: Editions le Natal, n.d.), 8.

36. Proclamation of François Kerverseau, October 10, 1802, CARAN 135 AP 2, dossier 18, cited in Nessler, An Islandwide Struggle for Freedom, 136. Kerverseau to Merck, commandant of the Department of Cibao, October 22, 1802, CARAN Colonies CC/9b/23, cited in Nessler, An Islandwide Struggle for Freedom, 153.

37. List of baptisms for 1801, Baptisms Book 22 (1798–1802), AHASD Santo Domingo, Santa María de la Encarnación, 136, https://www.familysearch.org [hereafter Family Search]. Family Search is an online repository of digitized historical sources provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The website hosts digitized sacramental and civil records from local archives across the world. The website's digitized colonial-era records from the Dominican Republic were originally captured on microfilm. On the website, they are organized according to town and parish. The original records remain in local archives in the Dominican Republic.

38. In addition to its position as administrative capital of the colony, the city also sat on a Caribbean port and at the center of several underutilized but functional overland trade routes. By foot or horse, a traveler could reach the cattle regions of the east, Santiago and its neighboring port cities to the north, and the colony of Saint Domingue by the west or the north.

39. On plans for the evacuation of women from the city under British protection, see Correspondencia de D. Joaquín García y Moreno, January 1801, Archivo Nacional de Cuba, Asuntos Políticos, leg. 8, no. 28, cited in Prieto, Gerardo Cabrera, Documentos para la historia colonial de la Republica Dominicana (Santo Domingo: Archivo General de la Nación, 2015), 42–45Google Scholar. See also the account of 1,803 political refugees who took flight to Maracaybo after Louverture's entrance, cited in Nessler, An Islandwide Struggle for Freedom, 130. As a point of reference, the city of Santo Domingo had over 25,000 residents, 20 years earlier. Valverde, Antonio Sánchez, Idea del valor de la isla española y utilidades, que de ella puede sacar su monarquia (Santo Domingo [Ciudad Trujillo]: Editora Montalvo, 1947), 147Google Scholar.

40. Interruptions in ecclesiastical recordkeeping in the capital city region correspond exactly with the period of direct Napoleonic rule in the colony and the nationalization of the Catholic Church's property under Napoleon's ministers. On the daily practice of religion under Leclerc, see Debrien, Gabriel, Guillaume Mauviel, évêque constitutionnel de Saint-Domingue, 1801–1805) (Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe: Société d'histoire de la Guadeloupe, 1981)Google Scholar.

41. See Representación elevada a SM por el prelado y religiosos del Convento de Predicadores, September 29, 1802, AGI, Estado, Santo Domingo, 11, cited in Inchaustegui Cabral, Documentos para estudio: marco de la época, 433–442.

42. Burial of Francisco, October 7, 1801, AHASD, Santo Domingo, Santa María de la Encarnación Burial Book 8 (1798–1802); Burial of Juan, January 11, 1802, AHASD, Santo Domingo, Santa María de la Encarnación Burial Book 8 (1798–1802), Family Search.

43. Larrazábal Blanco, Los negros y la esclavitud en Santo Domingo, 153–154.

44. San Cristóbal Parish Records, Libro de Bautismos 1 y 2, 1784–1816: Baptism of Narciso, 90; Baptism of Domingo, 91; Baptism of María Dolores; Baptism of Casimiro; Baptism of Aniano, (June 10, 1803), Family Search.

45. Baptism of Bernardo, May 5, 1803, Peravía: Bani: Nuestra Señora de Regla parish records, Libro de Bautismos 1A 1795–1812, 21b, Family Search.

46. Carte routière de l‘île de Saint-Domingue, 1780, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Dépôt de la Marine [Service hydrographique de la marine consacrée à Saint Domingue], portfolio 146 division 1, 27/1; La Española, 1790, Archivo General de Indias, Mapas y Planos, 552; P. L. Griwtonn, Carte de l'ile de Saint-Domingue avec les routes, 1801, Bibliothèque nationale de France, département, Cartes et plans, GE C-9249.

47. See Sánchez Valverde, Idea del valor de la isla española, 150; and Pons, Frank Moya, “Haiti and Santo Domingo, 1790–c. 1870,” in Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 3, Bethell, Leslie, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 257Google Scholar.

48. Despite their isolation, these towns certainly felt the colony's incorporation into France. Surviving Spanish-language notarial records produced between 1802 and 1809 were marked with either the handwritten words, “ Livertad, Ygualdad, Republica Francesa” or a stamp of the République Français. For changes in notarial documentation, see the testament of Juan Portalatín Sorrillas, October 10, 1802, AGN, Archivo Real de El Seibo [hereafter ARS], leg. 1700064, exp. 121; and Donación hecha por Manuel Mejía a Lucía Suárez, January 3, 1803, AGN, Archivo Real de Bayaguana [hereafter ARB], leg. 1700040, exp. 45.

49. Marriage of Antonio Guerrero, esclavo, and María de Vivas, February 24, 1801, Monte Plata, Bayaguana, San Juan Bautista parish records, Matrimonios 1797–1899, 9, Family Search.

50. On the law of the enslaved mother's womb in written records, and on the limits of manumission at the baptismal font, see McKinley, Michelle A., Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600–1700 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51. Baptism of Siprian, October 21, 1801, El Seibo, Santa Cruz Parish, Baptisms Book 3 (January 26, 1802, to January 19, 1813), 235; Baptism of Manuela, October 10 1801, El Seibo, Santa Cruz Parish: Baptisms Book 3 (January 26, 1802, to January 19, 1813), Family Search. The Santa Cruz parish priest Ygnacio Morillas baptized approximately 75 people, all infants, in 1801.

52. Baptism of Lianara, March 28, 1802, El Seibo, Santa Cruz Parish, Baptisms Book 3 (January 26, 1802 to January, 19, 1813), 245, Family Search.

53. See for example Baptism of Juliana, February 16, 1803, El Seibo, Santa Cruz Parish, Baptisms Book 3 (January 26, 1802 to January, 19, 1813), 11, Family Search.

54. Sale of Julián by Gabriela Nicacio to Nicolás Ortiz, March 14, 1801, AGN, ARB, leg. 1700035, exp. 25.

55. Testament of George Herrera, municipal official, September 12, 1802, AGN, ARS, leg. 1700064, exp. 118.

56. Testament of María García, October 18, 1802, AGN, ARS, leg. 1700064, exp. 117.

57. Sorrillas's will did not mention the child Lianara, so her fate is unknown. Testament of Juan Portalatín Sorrillas, October 10, 1802, AGN, ARS, leg. 1700064, exp. 121.

58. See for example the gift of a filly and a heifer by Juan Marcos Peguero “al negrito Jose mi esclavo.” Testament of Juan Marcos Peguero, December 13, 1803, AGN, ARB, leg. 1700040, exp. 58.

59. Baptism of Pedro, May 9, 1801, AHASD, Santo Domingo, Santa María de la Encarnación Baptisms Book 22 (1798–1802), 144, Family Search.

60. Because baptismal font manumissions involved children who were dependents of enslaved mothers, they often did not result in actual freedom. On the contested legal ground of these manumissions, see McKinley, Fractional Freedoms.

61. de la Fuente, Alejandro, “Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights in Cuba: Coartacion and Papel,” Hispanic American Historical Review 87:4 (2007): 659–692CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62. Among more than 150 extant records of slave sales officiated by French-speaking notaries in eastern Hispaniola spanning the years 1803–1808, only one enslaved person claimed the right to coartación, and the notary specifically identified her as a Spanish-speaking creole slave. See ANOM, DPPC NOT SDOM, 121, 133, 134, 699, 702, 703, 704, 705, 706, 707, 735, 1697, 1698, 1699, 1700, and 1701.

63. Baptism of Francisco, May 20, 1801, AHASD, Santo Domingo, Santa María de la Encarnación Baptisms Book 22 (1798–1802), 146; Baptism of Maria Nicolasa, September 12, 1801, AHASD, Santo Domingo, Santa María de la Encarnación Baptisms Book 22 (1798–1802), 147, Family Search.

64. One of the adult slave baptisms in 1801 was probably occasioned not by any slave trade, but by the recent immigration of a slave owner. Francisco's owner was “French,” likely from Saint Domingue. His owner could have been a recent immigrant.

65. A year later in 1803, El Seibo's justice of the peace notarized six slave sales and one self-purchase. Testament of George Herrera, municipal official, September 12, 1802, AGN, ARS, leg 1700064, exp. 118; Testament of Juan Portalatín Sorrilla, October 10, 1802, AGN, ARS, leg 1700064, exp. 121; Testament of María García, October 18, 1802, AGN, ARS, leg 1700064, exp. 117. In addition, see Index of notarial acts, 1803, AGN, ARS, leg. 1700082, exp. 162; and Self-purchase of Juan López from Juan Rodríguez, April 6, 1803, AGN, ARS, leg. 1700064, exp. 114.

66. No notarial data for the town of Bayaguana survives from the year 1802.

67. Marriage of Andres Rosario and Dominga Mexia, May 18, 1801, Monte Plata: Bayaguana: San Juan Bautista, Matrimonios 1797–1899, 10; Marriage of Juan Peguero and Ysidora Geraldo, May 23, 1801, Monte Plata, Bayaguana, San Juan Bautista, Matrimonios 1797–1899, 10, Family Search. The word esclavo also appears in the margin of Peguero/Geraldo's entry. I suspect this margin note was a later addition, but if it is a contemporary note, it would suggest that the parish priest found Louverturean emancipation confusing or that he, like many other persons invested in the institution of slavery, was content to blur the exact meaning of what an esclavo was.

68. 1802–1803, Monte Plata: Bayaguana: San Juan Bautista Parish Records, Libro de Matrimonios 1797–1899, 10–13. Accessed on Family Search. See also multiple examples of slave sales found in Index of Notarial Acts, April 8, 1803, AGN, ARS, leg. 1700082, exp. 162.

69. For example, in April 1803, a Juan López appeared before the notary Sogreras in an act of manumission, purchasing his freedom from his owner Juan Rodríguez. Sogreras referred to the freed López first as Juan Rodríguez's esclavo and later, as Rodríguez's cultivador. Self-purchase of Juan López from Juan Rodríguez, April 6, 1803, AGN, ARS, leg. 1700064, exp. 114.

70. Baptism registries usually recorded the infants’ parentage, their legitimate or illegitimate status, and the free or enslaved status of their parents. Baptism of Narciso, May 31, 1803, San Cristóbal Parish Records, Libro de Bautismos 1 y 2, 1784–1816, Family Search.

71. In the sixteenth century, the town had produced sugar, as did towns in the south and north of eastern Hispaniola. By the end of the nineteenth century, Higüey had only 500 inhabitants, and produced mostly cattle. Sánchez Valverde, Idea del valor, 104, 150.

72. Higüey's town council records are missing for the years 1801 through 1810.

73. The town's local archives contain complementary records of newborns. These are the parish's baptism register, which ran from the colonial period until mid 1802 and began again in 1813, and a French- and Spanish-language secular register produced by the notary Fernando Oliver and other municipal officers between 1801 and 1806.

74. Birth of Marie Lucrece [Martina], July 18, 1802/ Messidor 29 an 10, AGN, Archivo Real de Higüey [hereafter ARH], leg. 1700130, Exp 2/31.

75. Fernando Oliver, Birth register, 1801–1802, AGN, ARH, leg. 1700130, Exp 2. For the esclavos in Higüey's baptismal registry in 1800, see the following baptismal records, all from La Altagracia: Salvaleón de Higüey, San Dionisio de Higüey Baptisms Book 2 (1785–1828), and all found at Family Search: Juan Antonio, February 11, 1800, 117; Josef de Leon, April 26, 1800, 121; Josef Congo, October 16, 1800, 127; Secundo, July 14, 1801, 133; Josefa, October 3, 1801, 135; Patricia, March 28, 1802, 145; Juan, April 12, 1802, 145; Josef Pablo, June 7, 1802, 147; Maria Lucresia, July 18, 1802, 150.

76. Birth of Patricia Columna, March 28, 1802/Germinal 7 an 11, AGN, ARH, leg. 1700130, exp. 2/21.

77. Baptism of Patricia, March 28, 1802, La Altagracia, Salvaleón de Higüey, San Dionisio de Higüey Baptisms Book 2 (1785–1828), 145, Family Search.

78. In Higüey's secular birth register, “cultivator” never stood on its own as a description of occupation. It was always a mark of attachment to another person, even when cultivators other than the newborn or new parents appeared in the record. See for example the registration of his godchild made when the cultivator Santiago Yrizarri registered the birth: “The cultivator Santiago Yrizarri, belonging to the citizen Jose Villaviencio … declared that fifteen days earlier was born a cultivator, legitimate daughter of the cultivators Jose Columna and Petronila his legitimate spouse, belonging to the citizen Matheo Sánchez.” Birth of Petrona Alcantaria Irisarri, November 2, 1802/Brumaire 11 an 11, AGN, ARH, leg. 1700130, exp. 2/40.

79. Race and racial identification conferred status in the colonial Americas. Both Ramírez and Oliver identified unfree laborers using racial terms, as did notaries and priests elsewhere in eastern Hispaniola. The racial terms in their records maintained pre-emancipation racial differences and lent stability to new terminology and new systems of unfree labor.

80. Birth of Petrona Alcantaria Irisarri, November 2, 1802/Brumaire 11 an 1, AGN, ARH, leg. 1700130, exp. 2/40; Birth of Tomasina Sedano, March 20, 1803/Ventôse 29 an 11, AGN, ARH, leg. 1700130, exp. 2/60. Neither Petrona nor Tomasina had redundant birth records in the ecclesiastical record.

81. Birth of Paula Yrisarri, March 4, 1804/Ventôse 13 an 12, AGN, ARH, leg. 1700130, exp. 2/100.

82. See a letter from Ferrand to the commandant of Higüey in February 1804 concerning the re-enslavement of shipwrecked blacks from Puerto Rico, cited in Nessler, An Islandwide Struggle for Freedom, 165.

83. See the deliberate use of the vague term domestique by a would-be slave owner to protect her murky legal claim over enslaved people. Jones, Martha S., “Time, Space, and Jurisdiction in Atlantic World Slavery: The Volunbrun Household in Gradual Emancipation New York,” Law and History Review 29:4 (2011): 1056CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84. Literature on post-emancipation labor in Latin America and the Caribbean emphasizes continuities after emancipation, as the features that made apprentices’ labor “free” were often more advantageous to former slave owners than to the formerly enslaved. Holt, The Problem of Freedom. Race, Labor, and Politics; Cooper, Frederick, Holt, Thomas C., and Scott, Rebecca J., eds., Beyond Slavery: Explorations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba; Scott, Rebecca J., Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Flory, Céline, De l'esclavage à la liberté forcée: histoire des travailleurs africains engagés dans la caraïbe française au XIXe siecle (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2015)Google Scholar; Tyson, George F., “‘Our Side’: Caribbean Immigrant Labourers and the Transition to Free Labour on St. Croix, 1849–79,” in Small Islands, Large Question:. Society, Culture and Resistance in the Post-Emancipation Caribbean, Olwig, Karen Fog, ed. (London and New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 1995), 135–160Google Scholar; Andrews, George Reid, “Black and White Workers: São Paulo, Brazil, 1888–1938,” in The Abolition of Slavery and the Aftermath of Emancipation in Brazil, Scott, Rebecca Jarvis, ed. (Durham: Duke University Press, n.d.), 85–118Google Scholar; Figueroa, Luis Antonio, Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Blanchard, Peter, Under the Flags of Freedom: Slave Soldiers and the Wars of Independence in Spanish South America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85. Contract between Tejada and Otero, May 19, 1803/Floréal 29 an 11, ANOM DPPC, Notariat, Saint-Domingue 485.

86. Nazzari, Muriel, “Transition toward Slavery: Changing Legal Practice Regarding Indians in Seventeenth- Century São Paulo,” The Americas 49:2 (1992): 131–155CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Monteiro, John M., “From Indian to Slave: Forced Native Labour and Colonial Society in São Paulo During the Seventeenth Century,” Slavery & Abolition 9:2 (1988): 105–127CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87. Proclamation of Toussaint to all of the inhabitants of the former Spanish part of the island, February 8, 1801, CARAN Colonies CC/9b/18, cited in Nessler, An Islandwide Struggle for Freedom, 231.

88. For a discussion of the word used for estate, glèbe, in Leclerc's agricultural law, see Johnhenry Gonzalez, “The War on Sugar: Forced Labor, Commodity Production, and the Origins of the Haitian Peasantry, 1791–1843” (PhD diss.: University of Chicago, 2012), 64.

89. See for example Arrêté sur les journées de travail, March 13, 1795/ventôse 23 an III, ANOM/C 7A, 48, 8, cited in Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution & Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804, 210. Dubois has identified one testament from post-emancipation Guadeloupe in which a former slave owner attempted to bequeath emancipated cultivators under the conditions of formal, enforced emancipation. The 1796 emancipation of Guadeloupe received state and military support, unlike emancipation in Santiago in 1803. Testament of Bourgade, November 4, 1796/Brumaire 14 an 5, ADG, Serane eE2/158, cited in Dubois, A Colony of Citizens, 218.

90. “Attachment” also defined the unfree state of Russian serfs. Russia's early modern system of serfdom grew out of restrictions on free movement. This characteristic persisted into the nineteenth century and required serfs to request, and sometimes pay for, movement passes. Serfs who owed monetary dues to their landlords could expect more seigniorial support for their movement, especially as they traveled in and out of towns to sell artisanal products. In contrast, Atlantic slaveholders, especially in urban spheres, might permit their slaves a great deal of free movement. Unlike a Russian landholder's rights over a serf, a slaveholder's right to enslaved property was not undergirded by land access or the government's interest in harvests, both of which presumed a serf's stable geography. The slaveholder's right was a right to their enslaved property's labor and progeny. Bush, M. L., ed., Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage (London and New York: Longman, 1996)Google Scholar; Moon, David, Abolition of Serfdom in Russia, 1762–1907 (Essex, UK: Pearson Education Limited, 2001)Google Scholar; Kolchin, Peter, Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

91. Garrigus, John D., Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92. Mémoire et lettre du conseil de marine, au sujet du droit d'aubaine et de la nature mobilière des esclaves, et ordonnances des administrateurs sur le même sujet des 20 octobre 1717 et 6 avril 1718, cited in de Saint-Méry, M. L. E. Moreau, Loix et constitutions des colonies françoises de l'Amérique sous le vent, vol. 2 (Paris: Quillau, 1784)Google Scholar; Palmer, Jennifer L., Intimate Bonds: Family and Slavery in the French Atlantic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 215CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93. For the paper trail left by commerce across the coast, see Succession de Marie Bolte, habitante de Monte-Christ, February 14, 1803/Pluviôse 25 an 11, Affiches Américaines de Saint Domingue, no. 16; Déclaration de départ de M. Luis Herna, habitant de Sant-Yago, June 29, 1803/Messidor 10 an 11, Affiches Américaines de Saint Domingue, No. 52, BNF Gallica.

94. Nessler, An Islandwide Struggle for Freedom, 146.

95. Archives Nationales (France), Colonies, CC 9 a 40, cahier 3, February 12, 1804 Pluviôse 22 an 12, cited in Picó, Fernando, One Frenchman, Four Revolutions: General Ferrand and the Peoples of the Caribbean (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2011)Google Scholar; de Arredondo, Gaspar y Pichardo, , “Historia de mi salida de la Isla de Santo Domingo el 28 de abril de 1805,” Revista Clío 82 (1948)Google Scholar, chapt. 8.

96. Franco, Los negros, los mulatos y la nación dominicana.

97. A 1798 law threatened imprisonment and remedial work for any “vagabond” found without work in Saint Domingue colony. See the 1798 Arrêté concernant la police des habitations et les obligations réciproques des propriétaires, ou fermiers, et des cultivateurs, cited in Mackenzie, Charles, Notes on Haiti, Made during a Residence in That Republic, Volume II (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830)Google Scholar, Appendix CC, 290.

98. Lora Hugi, Transición de la esclavitud al trabajo libre en Santo Domingo. See also chapter 5 of Maria Cecilia Ulrickson, “Esclavos que fueron in Santo Domingo, 1768–1844” (PhD diss.: University of Notre Dame, 2018).