Coffee, slavery and peasantry: from colonial Saint-Domingue to independent Haiti (1789-1804)

• Grant number: 17/18156-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2017
• End date: November 30, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of America
• Principal Investigator: Rafael de Bivar Marquese
• Grantee: Isabela Rodrigues de Souza
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Saint-Domingue, characterized as the largest producer of sugar and coffee from the Atlantic system of northwestern Europe, played a fundamental role in the development of Europe, especially in the last quarter of eighteenth century. This was the period that the island experienced the production peak of both crops. The development of coffee, in particular, has brought profound transformations to the colony, whose most important repercussion is the formation of the revolutionary process of 1790-1791. This project intends to analyze the place of the coffee cultivation in the dynamics of the Haitian Revolution, using for this purpose the dominican and urban censuses of the colony of Saint-Domingue, composed between 1797 and 1803. The project also seeks to identify the general lines of the geographical distribution of coffee plantations in the pre-revolutionary period, as well as presenting a first exploration of the nature of the transition from coffee cultivation under the plantation regime to production based on small peasant property in independent Haiti. (AU)