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Jamaica and the Saint Domingue Slave Revolt, 1791-17931

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

David Geggus
David Geggus*
Affiliation:
Wolfson College, Oxford, England
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Extract

Once the two largest sugar colonies in the slave-owning Caribbean, Jamaica and Haiti trace their separate paths of development back to the revolutionary struggles of the 1790's. While the French colony of Saint Domingue was transformed in a way few societies have ever been, Jamaica remained seemingly untouched by the conflagration that consumed its neighbour. When the slaves and free coloureds of Saint Domingue rebelled in the autumn of 1791, Jamaican society faced the greatest challenge of its history. The dramatic spectacle of violent self-liberation was acted out almost before the eyes of its blacks and mulattoes, while the ruling white elite experienced a dilemma that seemed to oppose its prosperity to its survival. This paper looks at the reaction of different social groups in the island in an attempt to explain its continuing stability.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , October 1981 , pp. 219 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1981

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Footnotes

1

The research for this paper was made possible by grants from the Social Science Research Council and the Leverhulme Foundation. Its main sources are the Royal Gazette of Jamaica (hereafter: RG) and the Governor’s papers in the Public Record Office, CO 137/88-91. Footnotes have been kept to a minimum. Readers requiring more detailed documentation are referred to GeggusD., “Jamaica and the Saint Domingue Slave Revolt, 1791-17931”, D. Phil, thesis, York University, 1978, to be published by Oxford University Press as Slavery, War and Revolution, (1981).

References

2 This was not such a foolish choice for a mountainous colony as some have said. In the plains, where most of Jamaica lived, cavalry provided a mobility that was vital in holding down a large subject population. In Saint Domingue, perspiring white infantry wearing woollen jackets and carrying 12 lb. muskets were easily out-run by the black insurgents.

3 RG 1791, nos. 44–52; CO 137/89–90, passim.

4 CO 137/89 and 90, letters to Effingham, 21st April 1791 and 7th January 1792.

5 Journals of the Assembly (hereafter. JAJ) IX 1–5.

6 CO 137/89, Williamson to Dundas, 6th November 1791. Adam Williamson became Governor in November on the death of Lord Effingham.

7 Jamaica Archives, Council Minutes, 5th May 1792; RG 1792, no. 18 and 19.

8 P.R.O., CUST 17/15; CO 137/91, passim; J.A., Council Minutes, 7th August 1793; British Library, Additional Manuscript 12431, 24.

9 Curtin, P., The Atlantic Slave Trade: a Census (Madison: 1969) 159–162 Google Scholar; D. Geggus, “The Slaves of British-Occupied Saint Domingue”, to appear in Caribbean Studies, part II. The collapse of the French slave trade in 1792 probably also encouraged British slavers to move southwards.

10 West India Committee Library, London, Society of Merchants and Planters Minute Book III, 142; CO 137/90, the Assembly to Fuller 4th and 5th November 1791; CO 137/89, Williamson to Grenville 4th July 1791.

11 See below, note 14, and letter to Fuller, cited in note 10.

l2 CO 137/89, Williamson to Dundas, 6th November 1791 and anonymous letter extract of the same date.

13 CO 137/89, anonymous letter, 18th November 1791.

14 CO 137/90, report of the St. James committee of security, 13th January 1792, and Williamson to Dundas, 27th November 1791.

15 Ibid.; RG 1792, no. 2, 22.

16 See RG 1792, no. 42, 22.

17 See below, note 23.

l8 Custos, Chief Judge and Lieutenant-Colonel of militia for the parish of St. George, Shirley was a leader of the pro-government faction in the Assembly and one of the most active members of its Committee of Correspondence, frequently drawing up reports and, with Bryan Edwards, drafting its Addresses.

19 CO 137/89, letter of 18th November 1791.

20 See Historical Manuscripts Commission, Fortescue Mss. II, 29; CO 137/89, Effingham to Grenville, 19th March 1791.

21 P.R.O., ADM 1/244, Affleck to Stephens, 8th September 1791.

22 JAJ IX, 5–6.

23 This paragraph is based on RG 1792, nos. 16–18, and JAJ IX 50–102.

24 The supplies were to be purchased in Kingston, and the Island Assembly would anyway have had to buy commercial paper to pay its London debts, (which were mainly for arms). There was still an element of risk, of course, for the bills mights be repudiated in Paris.

25 The price of muscovado, though rising, was overtaken by that of coffee in 1792. Coffee exports, 3 million pounds in 1791, more than doubled in four years and sextupled in eleven.

26 See RG 1792, nos. 10 and 11.

27 Universidad Católica de Madre y Maestra, Dominican Republic, Documentos AGI-AGS 1750–99, II (typescripts), González to Vaillart, 15 de abril de 1792.

28 CO 137/50, Williamson to Nepean, 19th October 1793.

29 RG 1792, no. 36, 19.

30 See J.A., Vice-Admiralty Court Papers, 1793 and 1794; Archives Nationales, Paris, D. xxv 31/324, Reignier du Timat to Levy, I decembre 1793. It is not clear if they were connected with Turnbull, Forbes and Co. of London, who traded a good deal in France and, in the spring of 1793, began making substantial loans to Dominguan refugees in Britain. They definitely had relations with Thomas Forbes of Nassau, which port after July 1792 was allowed to admit French sugar.

31 See B.L., Add. Ms. 12431, 223–233; CO 137/91, correspondence for December 1792. The petitioned-for reforms were implemented five years later.

32 RG 1793, nos. 21, 25 and 35.

33 J. A., Council Minutes, 7th August 1793; RG 1793, no. 31, 22, which says that about 30,000 slaves were imported between October and July.

34 National Library of Scotland, Ms. 1075, Barry to Pitt, 25th August 1793.

35 See CO 137/90, Williamson to Dundas, 4th September 1793; RG 1793, no. 30.

36 J. A., Vice-Admiralty Court Papers 1793, papers of ‘La Margueritte’, ‘Peggy’, ‘Beaver’; Colville of Culross Papers, (courtesy of Lord Colville), St. Domingo notebook.

37 The St. Domingo Review (Kingston: n.d.), anon, (probably by John Rousselet), 47; CO 137/50, Atkinson to Nepean, 20th October 1793.

38 Geggus, D., “Yellow fever in the 1790s: the British Army in occupied Saint Domingue”, Medical History, 1979, no. 1, 38–58, pp. 43–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

39 Colville of Culross Papers, St. Domingo notebook; CO 137/91, Williamson to Dundas 31st July 1793. The Jamaica Station possessed three or four frigates and a 50 gun ship but they had to patrol from Honduras to the Bahamas.

40 See A.N., D. xxv 54/521, log of the “Jupiter”; Dr. Geggus, “The Volte-Face of Toussaint Louverture”, to appear in Revue française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer.

4l CO 137/92, 51–63.