French Merchant Capital and Slavery in Saint-Domingue

Abstract

This article argues three points: First, during the eighteenth century French merchant capital transformed Saint-Domingue into an exportoriented economy and played an important role in the accumulation of capital in France. Second, it is asserted slavery was not the inevitable outcome of the establishment of colonies, colonial production and trade; it resulted from the contradictions and class conflicts generated by the colonization process dominated by merchant capital. And third, it will be shown that the combined effects of French merchant capital's monopoly control over the colonial economy and of the slave social relations of production caused the underdevelopment and dependence of Saint-Domingue.The argument is presented in three parts. The first part consists of a brief discussion of current approaches to capitalism and slavery in the New World, followed by an outline of my own perspective. The second section analyzes the transformation of Saint-Domingue by French merchant capital and the processes that led to the establishment of slavery.And the third part looks at the effects of the slave social relations on the underdevelopment of Saint-Domingue's economy. APPROACHES TO CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY IN THE NEW WORLDDuring the last 20 years Marxist and neo-Marxist theorists have shown a renewed interest in the nature and consequences of slavery in the New World. Among the most influencial contemporary analyses of Caribbean slavery are those of Moreno Fraginals (1976), Eugene Genovese

Governance, value-added and rents in plantation slavery-based value-chains

“…12 Profits were similar on the sugar plantations on the French island of Saint-Domingue, where the returns have been estimated to at 8-12% per year. 13 Profits on Brazilian sugar plantations were of a similar magnitude. 14 The profitability of various slave plantations in the United States (primarily growing cotton as well as some commodities not grown extensively on Caribbean plantations) during the nineteenth century might have been somewhat lower: estimates suggest a return on investment of about 6-8% per year.…”

Migration and the historical formation of Latin America in a global perspective

“…Indeed, the only places in the tropics to receive significant numbers of Europeans were in Latin America: Cuba and central Brazil. Sugar and slavery had turned Saint-Domingue and Barbados into some of the richest colonies in the world, worth many times more to the French and British than Quebec or the future United States (Dupuy, 1985;Eltis, 1995).…”

“…Homicide rates in the countries and regions that received mass European immigration in the nineteenth and early twentieth century -Argentina, Uruguay, and Cuba -are today four times lower than the Latin American average and as much as twenty-eight times lower than in the countries with the highest rates. 25 The relative smooth integration of European immigrants, however, often came at the expense of nonwhite minorities. As in the United States, later internal and international nonwhite migrations pushed the earlier European arrivals and their descendants out of the lowest socioeconomic and occupational rungs.…”