Housekeepers, Merchants, Rentières: Free Women of Color in the Port Cities of Colonial Saint-Domingue, 1750–1790

Rogers, Dominique; King, Stewart R.

doi:10.1163/9789004233195_016

Cited by 5 publications

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“…42 Rogers and King examine women in the port towns, though their primary focus is also Le Cap, with a secondary role for Port-auPrince. 43 While these two towns were by far the largest, Saint-Marc, the Artibonite Valley's port, and Les Cayes, the south's main entrepôt, grew in importance during the late 18th century. Léogane, the colony's initial center of sugar production and a one-time capital, was the epicenter of a major earthquake in 1770 that destroyed local aqueducts, hampering production.…”

Section: Saint-dominguementioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating Haiti's History: Saint‐Domingue and the Haitian Revolution

Taber

2015

History Compass

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The decade since the bicentennial of Haiti's independence has seen an outpouring of scholarship on its history, particularly on the course and impacts of the Haitian Revolution, which transformed the Atlantic world's most productive colony into the Americas' second independent state and involved one of history's most successful slave rebellions. This new historical research builds upon a long, albeit scattered, historiography on Saint-Domingue (colonial Haiti) and the Haitian Revolution. Haiti's colonial and revolutionary history has important implications for understanding the development of plantation society, Haiti's connections with the USA and the rest of Latin America, and current policy debates ranging from land use to education.Historians working in archives in the Americas and Europe have pushed our knowledge of Haiti well beyond the false story of "richest colony turned poorest nation" and the simple -though important -gloss "first successful slave rebellion; second independent state in the Americas." Examining the contours of this scholarship on Haiti's colonial history and debates on its revolution, with a particular focus on works in English and those using extensive material from the archives, illuminates trends across the early Americas and highlights the inter-woven nature of the Age of Revolutions.As Saint-Domingue (colonial Haiti) and the Haitian Revolution alike are part of the central narrative of the early Americas, the scholarship detailed below has implications for the Anglocentric world of Early America and its focus on trans-Atlantic encounters and inf luences; colonial Latin America with its explorations of labor, landholding, the environment, and Catholicism; France overseas, where Saint-Domingue and the rest of the circum-Caribbean have joined Canada and Louisiana in the ancien régime pantheon; and Atlantic slavery and abolition, where the Haitian Revolution looms large, as do questions about marronage (runaway slaves), cultural diffusion, religion, and plantation life. Finally, the Haitian Revolution is being recognized as a world-historical process in its own right, not just part of France's conf lagration, and pieces involving Saint-Domingue are now being included in edited volumes on early modern France. 1 This broad relevance means that papers on Haiti's colonial and revolutionary history are included in a range of conferences and journals and become books in different countries, each with discrete academic traditions and preferences. Unfortunately, because of this diffusion, many works approach Haiti's early modern history in a way that echoes Columbus' first approach to the island, a mix of terra incognita and Cipangu: Haiti's history is simultaneously a new area previously unexplored and something that is known and exists to be exploited for a predetermined end. This is why the works below, which examine the history of Saint-Domingue and the Haitian Revolution in a source-based way that transcends this inclination towards hasty propagandizing, have inf luenced specialists and s...

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Section: Saint-dominguementioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating Haiti's History: Saint‐Domingue and the Haitian Revolution

Taber

2015

History Compass

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The Atlantic World

Poska¹,

Amussen²

2020

A Companion to Global Gender History

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Street Food, Urban Space, and Gender: Working on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (1830–1870)

Teubner

2019

Int Rev of Soc His

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This article focuses on African women (Quitandeiras) who worked in the food sector of the fast-growing port city of Rio de Janeiro during the first half of the nineteenth century. The growing need to supply the harbour workers as well as the crews and captives on the slave ships stimulated the food economy in Rio de Janeiro. The absence of effective government food infrastructure offered opportunities for small businesses. The maritime world on a ship was, in many ways, male. However, there were a high number of female workers in the ports, especially in the informal food sector, frequently mentioned by contemporary authors. This article analyses the involvement of these women as part of a growing working class, who contributed to Rio de Janeiro's crucial role in global networks. The research also focuses on the formation of self-organized groups of female vendors. Thus, it provides further insights into strategies of local actors. By grouping together, the women gained some measure of protection, which empowered them to survive in a difficult and highly competitive market. Through their activities, they also changed the urban space of the port area, leaving their mark on it. They acted as crucial vectors for establishing different diaspora dishes, which met huge demand among many consumers. In doing so, they contributed to the formation of an African-American food culture on the streets of Rio de Janeiro.

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Housekeepers, Merchants, Rentières: Free Women of Color in the Port Cities of Colonial Saint-Domingue, 1750–1790

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Navigating Haiti's History: Saint‐Domingue and the Haitian Revolution

Navigating Haiti's History: Saint‐Domingue and the Haitian Revolution

The Atlantic World

Street Food, Urban Space, and Gender: Working on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (1830–1870)

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