Even the hostile French general Leclerc praised Louverture’s harsh labor regime.

Evidence

And General Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc, who arrived in Saint-Domingue soon afterward with decidedly hostile intentions toward Louverture, noted that agriculture in the colony was at a “very high level.” In fact he claimed that on the plantations under the command of Louverture’s officers, the “blacks” were being worked harder than they ever had been under the whites. He found, furthermore, that he could fulfill the strict orders he had been given to restore order on the plantations and make sure the exslaves were working assiduously by using Louverture’s regulations, which he deemed were “very good.” They were, he noted, so “strong” that he would not have dared propose them himself. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 886

Categorization

• XREF: The irony of an invading general adopting his enemy’s labor code echoes how colonial powers and revolutionaries borrowed each other’s disciplinary tools.