Document Set B: Labor Systems and Economics
Document B1: A “Negress” and a “Mulatto” woman
in Saint Domingue (179?)
Document B2: Population of St. Domingue
Document B3: The French General Rochambeau describes St. Domingue in 1796
“Wanting to travel and to see the Africans for myself, with my own eyes, to determine whether it was possible to get them back to work after they had been so suddenly emancipated, I visited the provinces of the north and the west and I stopped for a while in Gonaives where I stayed with Toussaint Louverture. I conferred with him, he seemed to have some ideas about how to conduct military operations… He is religious, a friend of order, and submits to the new laws through which he obtains all the respect he desires. He certainly has his own little ambition which he carefully tries to hide… I don’t know if he will settle for a supporting role when he can or wants to play the leading one… The blacks in the North worship him and I fear… that he may overawe the agents of the Directory.” [The Directory was the French republican government set up after the end of the Reign of Terror; it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799].
Document B4: Toussaint Justifies His Forced-Labor Program (1800)
“In order to secure our liberties, which are indispensable to our happiness, every individual must be usefully employed, so as to contribute to the public good… Whereas, since the revolution, labourers of both sexes, then too young to be employed in the field, refuse to go to it now under pretext of freedom, spend their time in wandering about, and give a bad example to the other cultivators… I do most peremptorily order as follows: “Art. 1. All overseers, drivers, and field-negroes are bound to observe, with exactness, submission, and obedience, their duty in the same manner as soldiers…. Art. 3 “All field-labourers, men and women, now in a state of idleness, living in towns, villages, and on other plantations than those to which they belong… are required to return immediately to their respective plantations…” (G. Tyson, Toussaint L’Ouverture, 52-3)
Document B5: Slave Population in the US
Document B6: African Americans In The Revolutionary Period
When the British launched their southern campaign in 1780, one of their aims was to scare Americans back to the crown by raising the fear of massive slave revolts. The British encouraged slaves to flee to their strongholds, promising ultimate freedom. The strategy backfired, as slave owners rallied to the patriot cause as the best way to maintain order and the plantation system. Tens of thousands of African Americans sought refuge with the British, but fewer than 1,000 served as soldiers. The British made heavy use of the escapees as teamsters, cooks, nurses, and laborers. At the war's conclusion, some 20,000 blacks left with the British, preferring an uncertain future elsewhere to a return to their old masters. American blacks ended up in Canada, Britain, the West Indies, and Europe. Some were sold back into slavery. In 1792, 1,200 black loyalists who had settled in Nova Scotia left for Sierra Leone, a colony on the west coast of Africa established by Britain specifically for former slaves.
Source: National Park Service, http://www.nps.gov/revwar/about_the_revolution/african_americans.html
Source: National Park Service, http://www.nps.gov/revwar/about_the_revolution/african_americans.html
Document B7: Adapted from "Independence and Revolution in the Americas" by Anthony McFarlane
In Portuguese Brazil (and later in the Caribbean also), colonial society ... (was) divided between a dominant white minority and an exploited mass of people of color....
English North America was, by contrast, neither a conquest society, nor a slave society. In its origins, it was a colony of farmers, a predominantly white society of European immigrants who established a relatively egalitarian system of social and economic organization as small, independent laborers living in self-governing communities... blacks were a small minority within a predominantly white and fundamentally English culture.
In Portuguese Brazil (and later in the Caribbean also), colonial society ... (was) divided between a dominant white minority and an exploited mass of people of color....
English North America was, by contrast, neither a conquest society, nor a slave society. In its origins, it was a colony of farmers, a predominantly white society of European immigrants who established a relatively egalitarian system of social and economic organization as small, independent laborers living in self-governing communities... blacks were a small minority within a predominantly white and fundamentally English culture.
Discussion Questions:
1. What are some of the differences between the two women in Document B1? What do you think that the artist is trying to communicate with these differences?
2. What economic problem Rochambeau describe in Document B2?
3. What 'solution' is described in Document B3? What might be some problems with this solution?
4. What does Document B4 show about the type of labor used in the US?
5. How are the types of labor used in the two countries prior to the revolutions different? How were they similar?
6. How did the systems change after the revolutions? How did they remain the same?
7. How do these documents help us answer the essential question: "Why were British North American colonists better prepared for Independence than their Latin American neighbors to the south?”
2. What economic problem Rochambeau describe in Document B2?
3. What 'solution' is described in Document B3? What might be some problems with this solution?
4. What does Document B4 show about the type of labor used in the US?
5. How are the types of labor used in the two countries prior to the revolutions different? How were they similar?
6. How did the systems change after the revolutions? How did they remain the same?
7. How do these documents help us answer the essential question: "Why were British North American colonists better prepared for Independence than their Latin American neighbors to the south?”