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Unexploited Sources for the History of the Haitian Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

David P. Geggus
David P. Geggus*
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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One of the greatest servile rebellions and the sole successful slave revolt in world history, the insurrection that destroyed France's richest colony and led to the creation of Haiti has been the subject of a great deal of writing and controversy, but relatively little basic research. The destruction of Saint Domingue and the career of the black leader Toussaint Louverture have inspired innumerable popular and partisan works, but at the level of primary research, we have not progressed far beyond Ardouin's Études of 1853 and Pauléus Sannon's Histoire of the 1920s.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , 1983 , pp. 95 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. Beaubrun Ardouin, Études sur l'histoire d'Haiti (Paris, 1853–60). Horace Pauléus Sannon, Histoire de Toussaint-Louverture (Port-au-Prince, 1920–33).

2. Pierre Pluchon, Toussaint Louverture: de l'esclavage au pouvoir (Paris, 1979), which I reviewed in an article entitled “Haitian Divorce” in the Times Literary Supplement (London), 5 December 1980, p. 1381.

3. Definitive collections of Louverture correspondence are being compiled by Professors Joseph Boromé of The City College of New York and Michel Laguerre of the University of California, Berkeley. Many of the published versions of Toussaint's letters and related items contain substantial errors. See my article, “The Volte-Face of Toussaint Louverture,” Revue française d'histoire d'Outre-Mer 65, no. 241 (1978):483, 488–89, 494.

4. Gérard Laurent's pioneer work, Trois mois aux archives d'Espagne (Port-au-Prince, 1956), is extremely disappointing because it limits itself to printing two or three items of minor interest (one already published) from the AGI collection. Spanish material relating to the later stages of the Haitian revolution, albeit tangentially, has been published in great quantity by Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi in Invasiones haitianas de 1801, 1805, y 1822 (Ciudad Trujillo, 1955), La era de Francia en Santo Domingo (Ciudad Trujillo, 1955), and Cesió de Santo Domingo a Francia (Ciudad Trujillo, 1958).

5. Summaries of the Estado material can be found in Cristóbal Bermúdez Plata, Catálogo de documentos de la Sección Novena del Archivo General de Indias (Seville, 1949), vol. 1.

6. Documentos AGI-AGS 1750–99, vol. 2, Colección Incháustegui, Universidad Católica de Madre y Maestra, Santiago de los Caballeros.

7. Legajos 22/48-52, Archivo Real de Higüey, Archivo General de la Nación, Santo Domingo.

8. José Luciano Franco, Documentos para la historia de Haití en el Archivo Nacional (Havana, 1954).

9. Ardouin, Études 2:419–26.

10. In 1975 all that could be located in the archivo were photocopies of documents concerning a slave conspiracy in Hinche in March 1793. The originals were apparently in Cuba, although they do not appear in Franco's published collection.

11. Antonio del Monte y Tejada, Historia de Santo Domingo (Santo Domingo, 1890–92).

12. This collection's use is cited only in the brief article by H. B. L. Hughes, “British Policy towards Haiti, 1801–1805,” Canadian Historical Review 25, no. 4 (1944):397-408, and in Thomas Ott, The Haitian Revolution (Knoxville, 1973).

13. GD 193, boxes 2, 3, and 6, Steel/Maitland Papers, Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh. The Toussaint material is in box 2, dossier 12.

14. Peter Walne, A Guide to the Manuscript Sources for the History of Latin America and the Caribbean in the British Isles (London, 1973).

15. 0/boxes 10–21, Simcoe Papers, Devon Record Office, Exeter. Also at Exeter, the well-catalogued Addington Papers contain a few relevant items. The William Clements Library at the University of Michigan possesses five volumes of Simcoe papers covering the years 1770–1824.

16. OM dossiers 7–11, Spencer Bernard Papers, property of Mrs. Phyllis Spencer Bernard, Nether Winchendon, near Aylesbury.

17. GD 188/box 28, James Guthrie collection, Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh.

18. For a general study, see my book Slavery, War and Revolution: The British Occupation of Saint Domingue, 1793–1798 (London, 1982).

19. HCA 30/boxes 380–401, Public Records Office, London. Ships seized in the eastern Atlantic were sold in London. Because they had been sailing to Europe, they were likely to be carrying more mail than those seized nearer the West Indies, which were bound mostly for the United States and were sold locally.

20. Bernard Foubert, “Lettres de combattants aubois (1792-93) écrivant de Saint-Domingue,” La vie en Champagne 27, nos. 292 and 293 (Oct./Nov. 1979): These articles are an abridgement of a larger work which is to be published in Annales d'histoire de la Guadeloupe.

21. West Indies Mss. s. 7, Rhodes House, Oxford.

22. Egerton Ms. 1794, 255–328, British Library, London.

23. Gabriel Debien, Les esclaves aux Antilles françaises aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Basse Terre, Fort de France, 1974), pp. 56–65.

24. See the very useful bibliography in ibid., pp. 16–20.

25. Robert Richard, “Les minutes des notaires de Saint-Domingue,” Revue d'histoire des colonies 35, no. 135 (1951):281–338. See also the articles by Marie-Antoinette Menier on the Archives Nationales collections: “Dépôt des papiers publics des colonies: Saint-Domingue, notariat,” Revue d'histoire des colonies 35, no. 135 (1951):339-58; “Saint-Domingue, abornements, recensements des biens domaniaux et urbains,” Revue française d'histoire d'Outre-Mer 44, no. 155 (1957):223-50; “Les sources de l'histoire de la partie française de l'île de Saint-Domingue aux Archives Nationales de la France,” Conjonction 140 (Oct.–Nov. 1978):119-35; “Les sources de l'histoire des Antilles dans les Archives Nationales de la France,” Bulletin de la Société d'Histoire de la Guadeloupe 36, no. 2 (1978):7–39.

26. For a tantalizing case study, however, see Gabriel Debien, Etudes antillaises (Paris, 1956), pp. 143–73.

27. Manuscrits, Nouvelles acquisitions françaises 14878–79, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. See also my attempt to identify the author by using internal evidence: “Pélage-Marie Duboys, The Anonymous Author of the ‘Précis Historique’,” Archives Antillaises 3 (1975):5–10. The identification of Duboys would seem confirmed by the subsequent discovery in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Lk12 213) of a Paris publisher's prospectus entitled Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la révolution de Saint-Domingue par feu P. M. Duboys, publiés d'après les manuscrits autographes de l'auteur par M. P. Lacroix. Prospectus (Paris, 1826). The publisher, Jéhenne, was seeking subscribers for the first of three five-hundred-page octavo volumes. The work apparently never appeared. A manuscript introduction to it, now lost, was once held by the Institut Saint Louis de Gonzague in Port-au-Prince.

28. “Histoire de la révolution et des événements de Saint-Domingue, depuis 1786 jusqu'en 1812,” Ms. 1809, Bibliothèque de Nantes. The manuscript consists of 598 pages of extremely small and densely packed writing.

29. “Le paysan du Danube ou considérations … sur la révolution … de Saint Domingue par un colon de cette isle,” Ms. Montbret 574, 360 pp., Bibliothèque Municipale de Rouen.

30. “Récit du massacre arrivé au Fort Dauphin le 7 juillet 1794,” Ms. Leber 5847, Bibliothéque Municipale de Rouen.

31. Laura V. Monti, A Calendar of the Rochambeau Papers at the University of Florida Libraries (Gainesville, 1972).

32. I am told that these papers have scarcely been used, except by Zvi Loker, who has published a number of short pieces in the review Conjonction.

33. On the first collection, see my article, “The Slaves of British-Occupied Saint Domingue: An Analysis of the Workforces of 197 Absentee Plantations, 1796–97,” Caribbean Studies 18, no. 1–2 (1978): 5–43. On the second, see the articles by Menier, cited above in note 25.

34. “Journal of a Voyage to the West Indies,” anonymous manuscript known as “Lieutenant Howard's Journal,” 3 vols. of 86, 88, and 67 pp., Boston Public Library. The author can be identified as Thomas Phipps Howard, who served with the York Hussars.

35. Ibid., 3:55.