Former slaves sought land independence by buying small plots and leaving plantations

Evidence

In February 1801 Louverture issued another decree that further limited the possibilities open to former slaves. In various parts of the colony, the general noted, “one, two, or three cultivators” sometimes joined together to buy a few acres of uncultivated land, and abandoned their plantations to settle there. This practice was common in many postemancipation contexts as former slaves sought to gain what they saw as the ultimate guarantee of independence. Drawing on the traditions of small-scale farming on garden plots that had existed in slavery, they hoped to grow enough food and raise enough livestock to support themselves and sell the excess in local markets. Louverture, however, saw such settlements as a threat to his plan for the plantations. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 847

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Parallels the land-hunger pattern of freedpeople in the US South and other postemancipation societies.

Related

• Louverture’s decree barred poor former slaves from acquiring land (similarity 0.86)
• Most ex-slaves stayed laborers with no land claims after emancipation (similarity 0.84)
• Revolt empowered individual slaves to seize control of plantations (similarity 0.83)
• Former slaves refused to surrender land to returning planters. (similarity 0.83)
• Old planters exploited Louverture’s labor decree to threaten re-enslavement (similarity 0.82)
• Emancipated slaves kept control of plantations while former masters petitioned bureaucracies for return (similarity 0.82)
• Louverture forced freed people to stay working on the plantations, opposing their own aspirations (similarity 0.82)
• Ex-slave elites and officers resisted returning plantations to white owners. (similarity 0.81)
• Ex-slaves had to surrender freedom to work as cultivators to defend emancipation. (similarity 0.81)
• Former slaves revolted against Louverture fearing he would restore slavery. (similarity 0.80)
• Ex-slaves themselves registered that emancipation did not bring them the land (similarity 0.80)
• Louverture preserved emancipation by coercing ex-slaves to keep working plantations (similarity 0.80)
• Louverture forgave planters partly to rebuild the plantation economy. (similarity 0.79)
• Louverture ordered freed cultivators back to their former plantations (similarity 0.79)
• Ex-slaves’ subsistence farming on abandoned plantations built post-independence rural Haitian culture (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Black labourers resisted plantation dependence by pursuing peasant and artisan autonomy #corroborates (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1151
• Ex-slaves built a subsistence-based rural economy on former plantations #corroborates (0.70)
• Post-emancipation labor systems trapped former slaves by law and poverty. #complicates (0.40) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 642