Labor in Saint Domingue

 Saint Domingue grew to be the wealthiest colony in the Caribbean. The colony was considered the jewel in France’s Caribbean crown. What made the colony so profitable you might ask? It was the sweet, white stuff we put in all desserts and coffee, sugar. The tiny colony settled on just one-third of what used to be called Hispaniola came to be the world’s leading sugar and coffee exporter. Producing sugar was not easy. It took a large labor force and many long hours. To supply this need, plantation owners eventually turned to one of the world’s oldest solutions of cheap labor, slavery.

In the early years, plantation owners imported indentured servants from Europe to work the fields. These servants had their trip to the Caribbean paid for in exchange for a term of service to a plantation owner. This service could last from anywhere between three to seven years or longer. After their service was completed, they were given a small plot of land or money and sent on their way to make their own fortune. Many servants came to the island because they saw an easy fortune to be made. It was possible, although as the years went on the chance grew slimmer, that a servant who completed his term could become a plantation owner, but that was for the lucky ones who survived.  

Sugar was not an easy commodity to produce. Harvesting was a twenty-four hour a day job that occurred several times a year. The sugar canes themselves were very sharp and painful to work with. It was also a very hot climate on Saint Domingue, and many workers died their first year on the island. In light of these harsh conditions, many Europeans did not desire to go to the Caribbean and workers were scarce. Many of the servants who did come did not come by choice. Ship captains needing to meet their quota of servants roams the city streets of Europe looking for unlucky people, especially men, who they could snatch up and impress into service in the Caribbean.

Eventually the supply of servants grew smaller and smaller and the demand for sugar grew larger and larger. Europeans had an insatiable appetite for sugar. They put it on every type of food imaginable. They kept massive piles of it in storehouses as a symbol of their wealth. To keep the supply coming, a new source of workers had to be found and needed to be found quickly.

To solve this shortage of labor, the Saint Domingue plantation owners turned to African slaves. It was the perfect solution. They had a seemingly endless supply which was needed because the mortality rate was still astronomical, and they could keep them for life. At its peak, Saint Domingue would have over 800,000 slaves living on its plantations. In contrast there were only 30,000 whites living on the island. Before too much time had passed, owners would realize what a massive mistake they had created with this imbalance.

Sources:

Fick, Carolyn. The making of Haitian:the Saint Domingue revolution Revolution from below. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990, Chapter 1.

 Stanley L. Engerman (1983). Contract Labor, Sugar, and Technology in the Nineteenth Century. Journal of Economic History, 43 , pp 635-659 doi:10.1017/S002205070003028X