| This work investigates the demands made in negotiations between white colonists, gens de couleurs, and insurgents in the opening months of the Haitian Revolution. It argues that, at least initially, demands for general emancipation were not made, but instead that insurgents sought the amelioration of working conditions on plantations and gens de couleur asked for political rights. It explores the role of on the ground interlocutors in order to explore the aims and motivations of each group, and finds that military leaders of each group were willing to make important compromises. By looking at the pragmatism, contingency, and compromise of these early negotiations, the paper seeks to complicate the trajectory toward emancipation and republicanism emphasized in the historiography. These early negotiations allow for a deeper exploration of the goals of the parties involved, one that emphasizes contingency and transformation. |
