[Anonymous French Merchant].

Sur les traites de St Domingue.

Haiti, ca. 1804.

Folio (31.8 × 20.7 cm), 8 pp., manuscript in ink on laid paper.

Stitched with original pink silk ribbon, paper covers.

An impassioned formal appeal to Napoleon Bonaparte by a colonial merchant in Saint Domingue for the repayment of debts they are owed at the brink of the financial collapse of the colony during the Haitian Revolution and the final years of French rule in Saint-Domingue - today’s Haiti.

During the long Revolution (1791-1804), colonists were asked to turn over their belongings to colonial authorities in exchange for official financial compensation in the form of drafts drawn on the French treasury. But when the French were about to lose the Revolution, payment of these drafts was suspended, leaving the colony in complete financial ruin and chaos.

This elegantly written petition outlines how the merchant had surrendered his ship and cargo to colonial authorities in exchange for drafts. Initially these were honoured but later suspended, and in this letter he appeals to Napoleon for their reinstatement, describing the devastating effects of the payment freeze on colonial commerce, the morale of troops, and the livelihoods of displaced colonists. He directly attributes the decision to suspend payments as a contributing factor in the collapse of French control in Saint-Domingue, and describes the exiled colonists as ruined, scattered by poverty, and “no less destroyed by misery than by the Blacks.”

The present document is both a financial petition and a political plea, written at a turning point when France had lost its most valuable colony to revolution. It reflects the ongoing legal and moral struggles of former French merchants who sought compensation after the fall of Saint-Domingue and the establishment of Haiti as the first Black republic.

Condition:

In very good condition.