ABSTRACT

This chapter analyzes the rich notarial archives of Saint-Domingue to explore the social networks of petits blancs, immigrant French artisans, workers and shopkeepers who migrated in increasing numbers to Saint-Domingue in the three decades between the Seven Years’ War and the Haitian Revolution. This demographic group has remained a relatively understudied component of French colonial society, as much of the historiography has been preoccupied with large plantation owners, slaves and free people of color. Poorer whites had been induced to emigrate from France on the promise of quick wealth and rapid social advancement. In uncovering circuits of credit and debt, this chapter illuminates the wider process of the construction of increasingly more inflexible racial boundaries between this group of white immigrants and free people of color.