ABSTRACT
The Saint Do mingue slave insurrection of August 1791 was by no means a spontaneous or unmediated event, and in the context of the anti-colonial and anti-slavery struggles of the late eighteenth and nineteenth-century Atlantic world in which it occurred, its importance is paramount. The slave insurrection of August 1791 broke out in the midst of a colonial revolt against the metropolis, whose political foundations themselves were being challenged. As a political leader, Jean-Francois was ambitious; as a general, he was outwardly pompous and unabashedly flaunted his ego by decorating his uniform with an abundant assortment of medals and other impressive military trinkets, not the least among them being the Cross of Saint-Louis. In the course of their collective struggle against slavery, however, Jean-Francois eventually gave himself over to sheer political opportunism, shamelessly betraying the cause of a people he was initially supposed to have been leading.
