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Aaron Fink


Oct 3rd, 2017

HSS-3 Pandit

How Knight Exposes the Subversive Purpose of Saint-Domingue’s Constitution of 1801

The Constitution of the French Colony of Saint Domingue, not unlike other post-

enlightenment constitutions, was an attempt by predominantly free white men to “rationally

engineer” (Knight, 104) their society. However, in Saint Domingue, African ex-slaves also

sought to engineer their governance structure in order to achieve freedom and equality. These

revolutionaries successfully led an insurrection and gained freedom in what Knight describes as

a “convulsing revolution,” (Knight, 104) despite France’s multiple attempts, including the

aforementioned constitution, to quell the revolt. “Convulsing” is an apt adjective which

encapsulates the tension between the rebellion led by formerly enslaved people, and the whites’

own politically engineered tactics to subvert it. By shedding light on the ex-slaves’ motivations

to create “social, political, intellectual, and economic” (Knight, 105) change and on the

constitution’s authors’ intentions to thwart this impending uprising, Knight’s The Haitian

Revolution puts the Constitution of the French Colony of Saint Domingue into historical context,

and reveals that its promises to protect the freedoms of African laborers were disingenuous

political ploys designed to pacify the revolutionaries and disguise sanctions which would

actually undermine the little freedom they already had in the name of agricultural profits.

Knight demonstrates that the constitution was part of the white planters’ attempt to

subvert ex-slaves’ efforts to alter the the socio-economic structure in Saint Domingue. African

laborers predominantly lived on Latifundia, large plantations where were coercion and
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exploitation by the white planters were commonplace. The laborers’ desire for freedom was

boiling over, and they began to forcefully demand an alternative that would improve their

conditions. In an attempt to pacify them, the writers of the constitution dictated that henceforth

Latifundia would resemble happy families. This is an example of how, as Knight puts, the white

people’s “concept of state remained rooted in the traditional Wester European social experience,

which did not accommodate itself easily to the current reality of the tropical American

World.” (Knight, 106) The authors of the constitution appealed to the Western European social

experience of family farms to justify exploitative labor, and nullify the arguments made by

rebellious slaves seeking freedom. The constitution mandated that Latifundia were to offer the

“peaceful refuge of an active and faithful family,” in Article 15. This assertion did not speak to

the horrible conditions on Latifundia, and is also a prime example of the “unconventional

thoughts about slavery”(Knight, 106) that Knight referred to. What seems to be a promise of

amicable labor conditions was actually the colonists’ attempt to avert a revolution by bolstering

the economic status quo.

Ultimately, the rebels didn’t buy this image of latifunda being like families. Instead, after

successfully taking control of the island, they reorganized the distribution of labor into

minifundia, farms which were smaller, more self-sufficient, and less dependent on the “export

sector,”(Knight, 103) therefore removing the profits which drove the French to occupy Saint

Domingue in the first place. This is precisely the economic scenario the French colony’s

constitution aimed to prevent. Article 17 of the constitution urged the kidnapping of more

laborers from Africa for the purpose of “the growth of crops,” and Article 18 establishes an

embargo on crop imports “Since the commerce of the colony consists entirely in the exchange of
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the commodities and products of its territories.” Both of these Articles serve the purpose of

reinforcing the plantation agriculture system which yielded high profits for the colony at the

expense of the African laborers. This historical context offered by Knight puts the motives of

these tenets of the constitution into perspective as methods to prevent the creation of minifundia.

The white French colonists had more tricks up their constitutional sleeves, and tried to

use the guise of protection of freedom and equality to pacify revolutionaries and protect their

own economic interests. Ex-slaves were seeking personal liberty through a revolution, but is

clear that the colonists would have preferred to avert this uprising as it would cut their profits

from agricultural exports and possibly end their lives. As a result, in order to pacify the ex-slaves

the colonists claimed the constitution would defend their freedom. In reality, the constitution

contained clauses which would facilitate the practices of coercion and exploitation. Article 3 says

“there can be no slaves in this territory,” and Article 16 says that “Each cultivator … receives a

portion of its revenues.” However, Article 16 also says “All change in residence on the part of

cultivators leads to the ruin of cultivation…” which implies that laborers aren't free to leave the

plantations on which they work. Knight’s argument reinforces that these clauses were merely a

political tactic rather than a true acknowledgment of equality by drawing attention to the fact that

Simón Bolívar said the best way to avoid an uprising “was to free all slaves”. (Knight, 105)

Furthermore, the white planters’ true motives are shown in their stated reason for the laborers’

moving restriction, preservation of exploitative “cultivation,” which is in direct conflict with the

freedom they purport to protect.

Ex-slaves demanded to see positions of power filled by those of African descent to ensure

their demands for freedom were heard and fulfilled, but white people wanted to prevent this. As
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Knight puts it, they would rather see “a hierarchical world eternally dominated by types

representative of their own somatic images,”(Knight, 105) because that would confirm their

racist belief that white people were intellectually superior. The white planer class in Saint

Domingue aimed to satisfy African laborers by naming Toussaint Louverture, a man of African

Descent, as governor-for-life in Article 28, “The Constitution names as governor the citizen

Toussaint Louverture… on the request of [Saint Domingue’s] thankful inhabitants.” However,

the very constitution which named him governor was primarily written by white landowners, and

was engineered to uphold precisely their interests, not those of Louverture. In fact, in 1802 the

French government imprisoned Louverture for inciting rebellion, and in 1803 he died in a French

jail. The constitution’s appointment of Louverture was a concession designed to pacify the

revolutionaries, not grant them political power.

In the Constitution of the French Colony of Saint Domingue, white French planters praise

Latifundia as peaceful, family-like refuges for African laborers, but in The Haitian Revolution,

Knight reveals that this was a false portrayal designed to maintain the system in which the

planters exploited laborers for profit. Similarly, the constitution promises to protect the ex-slaves’

freedom while explicitly undermining it through travel restrictions and justifications for the

importation of more kidnapped African laborers. The white landowners even go so far as to

appoint a rebellious ex-slave as the lifelong governor to satisfy the huge population of ex-slaves,

only to have him arrested the next year for inciting rebellion against them. For 21st century

readers of these documents, hindsight is 20/20. But apparently the African laborers of Saint

Domingue had pretty good eyesight too, as they saw through the subversive tactics of the

constitution and ultimately took agency over the future of their society.

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Works Cited

1. Constitution of the French Colony of Saint Domingue (1801), Moodle.

2. Franklin W. Knight. The Haitian Revolution. The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No.

1 (Feb., 2000), pp. 103-115, Oxford University Press.