European indentured laborers initially worked alongside African slaves

Evidence

Having gained official status as a French colony, Saint-Domingue—one of the last colonies founded in the Americas—would soon outshine all others. The earliest plantations in Saint-Domingue were worked by both African slaves and European engagés, or indentured laborers. The latter worked alongside the slaves, but for limited terms—in the French case for three years—after which they became free. Along with the remaining flibustiers and boucaniers, many of these former indentured laborers started farming small plots of land, notably with tobacco, a crop that required little initial investment and could quickly turn a modest profit. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 73

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• QUESTION: The early coexistence of white indentured labor and black slavery is a useful baseline against which the later total racialization of plantation labor can be measured in the revolution’s narrative.

Related

• Caribbean plantation labor was deliberately and obsessively racialized (similarity 0.82)
• Racialized slavery replaced indentured labor by deliberate policy within decades (similarity 0.82)
• Plantations mixed slaves from a bewildering array of African nations. (similarity 0.80)
• Saint-Domingue’s workforce became violently racialized within a century (similarity 0.79)
• White indentured servitude persisted in the colonies even as African slavery grew (similarity 0.78)
• African slaves replaced white indentured peasants as the sugar labor force (similarity 0.78)