Abstract

The work that has been done on free people of color in French Saint-Domingue in the last twenty years has confidently demonstrated the tremendous economic mobility of these people in both the city and countryside at the end of the eighteenth century. However, research remains to be done on the degree to which free people of color were able to assimilate into the society of Saint-Domingue; in particular, whether this group was able to enjoy the rights and privileges of free persons of the same social level. This article seeks to participate in the debate by exploring, from an exceptional infra-judiciary source, the manner in which they established themselves in a rural area in the southern region of French Saint-Domingue. Complaints and compensation claims, especially in cases involving physical violence, are understood to be signs of the assimilation lived, refused or claimed daily by these people of color on the eve of the French and Haitian revolutions.