Cul de Sac: Patrimony, Capitalism, and Slavery in French Saint-Domingue by Paul Cheney (review)

It is only fitting that an historical account of French Saint-Domingue (current-day Haiti) during the eighteenth century would emerge in epistolary form. Cheney draws upon the papers of one family to render a tale of opportunism, scandal, and survival that sometimes reads more like fiction than fact. By means of the correspondence between absentee owner and on-site managers, Cheney chronicles the economic aspirations of the Ferron de la Ferronnays from their purchase of a sugar plantation on Cul de Sac plain through and following Haitian independence (1804). Étienne-Louis Ferron de la Ferronnays, sent to the island as a royal official, took the opportunity to improve his waning landholder fortune through the acquisition of the plantation and the arrangement of an advantageous marriage. Yet when Étienne-Louis returned to France in 1793, he left his Creole wife on the island. Letters between owner and manager reveal "the mésalliance between the marquis and marquise" (159) and bring to light both differences between the sexual mores of the cultures and similarities in the (pre-French Revolution) debate on cultural decadence. This vignette and others enliven an already unique and intimate portrayal of colonialism and the slave economy of Saint-Domingue. Lawyer and manager of the Ferronnays' plantations, Jean-Baptiste Corbier, whose letters are a principal source for the book, was able to grow his employer's land holdings and profitability by means of (pre-Wealth of Nations) specialization techniques and cautious investment. Corbier fils, sent to join his father at the age of 15, would eventually take over management of the plantation until his evacuation from the island in 1803. The book details production methods, challenges to production (war, water, and infrastructure), and the handling of up to 300 slaves. With regard to the economic structure, the author demonstrates that, despite the nearly 5000 miles separating the island from its French capital, by subsuming industrial capitalism under an overarching patriarchal ideology, "the peopling and development of Saint- Domingue were," in large part, "an extension of the social collaborations and political structures characteristic of Old Regime France" (8). Interestingly, Corbier père endeavored to integrate Enlightenment ideas, to "reconcil[e] humanity and interest" (73), in the treatment of the slaves—and this, the author notes, "far in advance of any widespread moral criticism of slavery in France and [...] its colonies" (74). Letters to his employer, nevertheless, including one expressing "fear that his son would grow into another of those 'human monsters'" (98), betray some of the heinousness of human bondage. The book excels in its ability to narrate this microhistory, a microcosm of the fading French aristocracy, in light of ideological currents and social history. The author integrates ideas and literary passages from Rousseau, Hume, Montesquieu, Hobbes, and others. His own writing, imitative of the literary quality of the letters he brings to life, is rich, scholarly, and allusive. The work, replete with historical maps, charts and graphs, as well as an extensive bibliography, will be of interest to scholars of Haiti, colonialism, and eighteenth-century intellectual history.