Saint-Domingue’s prosperity flowed from defying metropolitan trade regulation

Evidence

Saint-Domingue survived and thrived because its settlers flouted the regulations imposed on them from Paris, trading consistently with their British and Spanish neighbors— especially during times of war. Colonists had different interests from those of the royal governments that controlled them and the metropolitan merchants with whom they traded. They had more in common with British sugar planters in Jamaica than with their cousins in Paris or Bordeaux. The term “creole”—a descriptor that referred to something that was born in the Americas, and could be applied as much to animals and plants as to people, and as well to those of European descent as to those of African descent—captures this difference. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 128

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that ‘creole’ in the colonial era meant born-in-the-Americas and applied broadly to plants, animals, and people of either European or African descent — not the later racialized meaning.
• XREF: This broad use of ‘creole’ parallels its use for Louisiana and Latin American contexts, and foreshadows a distinct planter identity that the reader’s understanding of the revolution’s colonial backdrop depends on.