The Condition of Workers in Saint Domingue

La condition des travailleurs à Saint-Domingue by Hénock Trouillot is yet another study of Haitian history exploring a specific topic or theme, that of labor and workers. While brief and often relying on the works of Debien as well as the usual primary source materials from the 18th century (Labat, d'Auberteuil, Moreau de Saint-Mery, etc.), Trouillot actually raised a few interesting questions about the future leadership of Haiti and its origins among the artisans and skilled workers of the affranchis and black slave populations of Saint Domingue. It is a topic Trouillot also explored in another work we have not yet found, but is raised occasionally in La condition des travailleurs à Saint-Domingue. Most of the text is really an overview of white, free people of color, and enslaved workers of various types, including the white petit blancs, free people of color who worked in a variety of trades and occupations, and enslaved people who were "skilled" or domestics who were often able to flout the colonial/slave system. In some ways, it was rather paradoxical since rich free people of color and some "privileged" slaves sought to emulate whites. However, their very position and the contempt of the petit blancs for such people (particularly as blacks were favored for labor, even in skilled positions, while free people of color who became wealthy could become objects of scorn for less successful whites) display how unstable the system was. The degree to which a nègre à talent and other enslaved people working as domestics of various sorts or in all the trades could similarly live as "free" people in towns and cities through a number of means represented another blow to the colonial system's strict racial hierarchy.