Bequests from white fathers created a property-owning free class of color

Evidence

“These first whites,” Raimond explained, “lived with these women as if they were married” and had children with them. Some freed the women and married them, as the Code Noir stipulated whites who had children with slaves should do. Many whites left land and slaves to their partners and children. Indeed it was generally expected that they would do so, and Saint-Domingue whites resisted royal attempts to institute laws outlawing such bequests. As a result, a class of property-owning free people of color emerged in the colony. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 220

Categorization

• SEED: White colonists actively resisting crown efforts to ban bequests to mixed-race offspring shows creole elites defusing imperial law — a crisp example of colony-versus-metropole tension that could anchor an essay on early modern ‘rights from property’ communities.