In Stella, Bergeaud describes the attack of the expeditionary forces against Saint-Domingue as that of “an unnatural mother who desires the destruction of her child.” In May 1802, French troops captured Louverture, and he and his family were sent to France. There the famous general died in a dungeon near the Swiss border, a secret prisoner of the state.
Stella’s account of this period of the Revolution involves describing divisions between the brothers initiated by the machinations of the evil Colonist. Eventually Stella and a figure known as the “Spirit of the Nation” convince Romulus and Remus that they can succeed in their mission only once they are reunited. After a long struggle, the brothers and their united force of Indigènes are victorious over the French, and they proclaim the birth of an independent Republic of Haiti. Indeed, after Louverture’s ouster, the black and gens de couleur forces—led by Dessalines and Christophe on the one hand, and Rigaud and Pétion on the other—combined to form the Army of the Indigènes, or the Indigenous Army.31 Dessalines and Rigaud led this united force against the invading troops from France, and, at the Battle of Vertières on November 18, 1803, the Indigènes prevailed against the French. Dessalines proclaimed independence on January 1, 1804.
Under the Old Regime
Although Stella’s story of the two founders of Haiti ends with the establishment of their new nation on January 1, 1804, its final chapter refers to the long history of colonization in the area and thereby places the novel and its subject within the wider context of Atlantic exploration, expropriation, and exploitation. The novel thus locates Haiti’s origins at a much earlier moment. As a consequence of Europeans’ arrival on Ayiti in 1492, many of the island’s Arawak-speaking Taíno inhabitants perished from disease, warfare, or the rigors of forced labor. Although the entire island, now called Hispaniola, was nominally claimed by Spain, a small colony of European pirates and adventurers (called boucaniers) who had settled in northern parts of Hispaniola and on the coastal island of Tortuga provided France with the grounds to make a claim to part of Hispaniola in 1665. The French called their new colony “Saint-Domingue,” a version of the name given the Spanish settlement at the eastern end of the island, “Santo Domingo” (now the Dominican Republic). At times, both designations have been used to refer to the island in its entirety. Thus by 1665, the French laid claim to five colonies in the Caribbean—Saint Christopher (now St. Kitts), Guadeloupe, Saint Lucia, Martinique, and Saint-Domingue—in addition to French settlements on the Atlantic coast of South America and the North American mainland.32
France’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade, which led to the conditions that incited the Haitian Revolution, was well underway by the end of the seventeenth century. In 1685, King Louis XIV signed le Code noir (the Black Code), which stipulated restrictions on the rights of the African population in the French colonies, and effectively legalized the institution of slavery in the French-speaking world.33 It was one of the first sets of laws concerning slavery established by a European colonial power, even though its stipulations were infrequently implemented.34 When France officially assumed control of the western half of Hispaniola in 1697 as a condition of the Treaty of Ryswick that ended the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697) between France, England, Spain, and the United Provinces, the population of French settlers on the island multiplied. With the influx of settlers and the organization of large-scale sugar plantations also came a demand for labor that was fulfilled by the importation of more and more enslaved Africans. Le Code noir outlined the social differences that would increase as the colony of Saint-Domingue became France’s most profitable in the years to come. Thus, by the turn of the eighteenth century, the foundation for the country that would later become Haiti was already established.
In eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue, wealthy French planters were known as grands blancs; they, along with a group of colonists consisting of artisans, laborers, and former indentured servants known as petits blancs, made up the colony’s population of European and European-descended colonists. Communities of escaped slaves or maroons, known as nèg mawon, and small pockets of indigenous people—both of whom often lived together in the mountainous areas—made up another part of colonial society.35 Under the Old Regime, the African and African-descended communities in the French Antilles were categorized according to place of origin and cultural affinities; proof of these divisions and the way that they were used to designate individual members of communities can be found in records of advertisements for runaway slaves.36 This population was also divided according to who had—or had not—endured the Middle Passage. The most recently arrived Africans were called bossales, while those who were born in the colony were referred to as nègres créoles. Due to the incredibly harsh conditions of the slave system, the créole community stayed much smaller than the population who had been forced to traverse—and had survived—the Middle Passage from Africa.37
A small number of Africans were able to purchase or otherwise obtain their freedom; these free black people were known as affranchis (although this term was sometimes used to refer to all free people of color). The African and Euro-African partners and children of French colonists comprised the majority of the free population of gens de couleur in eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue, but colonists did not always recognize or free their offspring of African heritage. In some instances, however, gens de couleur children were sent to France to receive an education or to live with their extended French family.38 At the end of the century, gens de couleur became known as anciens libres, distinguishing this group from the rest of the population that became free in 1793. The population of late Saint-Domingue was thus complex and multifaceted, and its diversity continued to influence the world in which Bergeaud wrote. Divisions based on longstanding colonial-era ethnic categorizations factored in his exile; countering these separations became a central focus of Stella’s promotion of a sense of national unity.
Bergeaud’s notorious antagonist, the Colonist, is a member of the grands blancs of late Saint-Domingue. These white colonists, most of whom were absentee planters living off of their riches in Europe, owned large plantations on which grew sugar, coffee, cacao, indigo, and cotton. These owners formed the most powerful group—and the group most dependent on maintaining the exploitative system of plantation slavery—as they controlled the distribution and reinvestment of the colony’s wealth. Their dependence on economic exploitation trumped their national allegiance to France, a trait that Bergeaud sternly criticizes in his novel. Colonial goods, meanwhile, had become important commodities. This was especially true of sugar, the export of which reached its height in the late eighteenth century. Stella occasionally insists on separating its criticism of the Colonist from its criticism of France in general, but a significant portion of the French population benefited from the economic profits of slave labor by the time of the Haitian Revolution.
This overseas demand drove the plantation industry in Saint-Domingue, which absorbed the energies of most of the people on the island; while sugarcane was grown and processed into sugar by enslaved African workers, petits blancs often worked as plantation managers or slave drivers. In some instances, the plantations themselves (as well as slaves) were owned by wealthy gens de couleur or even affranchis. Much of the capital generated from the colonial trade was used by the planters to construct lavish mansions on the island as well as to build up the elaborate port cities of Cap-Français in Saint-Domingue, and Nantes and Bordeaux in France. By the end of the eighteenth century, one out of eight French people lived—in some manner or another—on the products of Saint-Domingue.39
