Thursday, October 31, 2024

A Snapshot of Bainet's Slave Population in 1739


Though only data from the Notariat covering part of Bainet, the breakdown in African "nations" may be illustrative of broader patterns in Bainet. The first table, with numbers from an act of retrocession by Julien Pierre Perronneau in 1739, lists slaves from the estate of the deceased Dumas. While only involving 17 slaves, 11 of them adults, this may have been representative of the enslaved workforce of small-scale indigo planters in Bainet. One is struck by the tiny Igbo and Congo presence, with no group enjoying an overwhelming majority. The children, some of whom were definitely born in the colony, would bump up the Creole population. One would imagine that on an estate like this, some of the Creoles and children may have inherited or been drawn to an already established slave culture in this part of Saint Domingue. This likely reflected earlier patterns in the slave trade for this part of the colony.

The other "snapshot" of what the origins of slaves in Bainet is derived from a bail of several to Perronneau, also from 1739. Louis Le Roy leased 21 adult slaves and 7 children to Perronneau, and the majority were Creoles. And after Creoles, the only African group who numbered more than one were Creoles. Again, we see in this Creole preponderance a similar pattern with the slaves of the estate of Robert Fleuret or Alexis Saugrain. Part of this surely reflects the longer length of time some planters had owned slaves in the colony. But it may also be related to the less destructive impact of indigo and coffee on slave mortality rates, leading to a larger Creole population in some cases. Indeed, another list of slaves owned by a Perronneau near the end of the century also possessed a Creole majority.

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