‘Un jugement politique’: Race, Policy, and Punishment in Colonial Saint-Domingue before 1789

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses the trial of Félicité, an enslaved woman in Port-au-Prince, who was convicted of theft and arson in 1787 and sentenced to be executed. The case is of interest to historians, as it is one of the few complete surviving records of slave testimony from Saint-Domingue. By examining the testimony of Félicité and a number of her fellow slaves and free people of colour, the case sheds new light on the sociability and economic life of urban slaves, explores the meaning of marronage, questions the extent to which racial ­solidarity existed between slaves and free people of colour and probes the assertions of recent scholarship regarding the use of slave testimony as autobiographical narrative. In addition, the article advances the argument that the outcome of the trial revealed a number of fault-lines within the white governing classes, particularly over the question of the intersection between humanitarianism and judicial decision-making.