Gallifet plantations were a proverbially sweet and happy ideal before 1791

Evidence

Founded in the early eighteenth century by a colonial governor, the Gallifet plantations were so famous by the second half of the century that to describe something sweet, people in Saint-Domingue said “as sweet as Gallifet sugar.” And to describe utmost happiness, they said “as happy as a Gallifet negro” (although the question remains: “Who said this, the planters or the slaves?”). One visitor to Gallifet’s three main plantations in 1779 described hygienic slave quarters built with masonry and tile roofs (in contrast to the typical mud and thatch huts). Aqueducts brought water not only to the sugar mills but also to the hospitals, gardens, and slave quarters. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 312

Categorization

• CANDY: The proverb ‘as happy as a Gallifet negro’ for utmost happiness, with the author’s parenthetical doubt about who coined it, is a light, self-contained conversation piece about plantation mythology.