Abstract
In 1701, the Dominican missionary Jean-Baptiste Labat found himself in a lush valley in Saint-Domingue, where the two highest mountain-chains in the Antilles overlapped. Though he had spent seven years in Martinique and Guadeloupe, Labat found this colony, France’s newest Caribbean possession, to be like nothing like the Lesser Antilles. Western Santo Domingo had been a base for French-speaking hunters and pirates since the beginning of the seventeenth century, but Spain had only just formally recognized French claims. As the priest toured its coastal setdements, grizzled ex-buccaneers served him on looted Spanish silver and swore loudly as he celebrated mass in the open air. The Dominican felt that he “hads fallen from the clouds and been transported into a new world,” one in which he had no desire to remain, though Saint-Domingue desperately needed priests.1
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Notes
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© 2006 John D. Garrigus
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Garrigus, J.D. (2006). The Development of Creole Society on the Colonial Frontier. In: Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue. The Americas in the Early Modern Atlantic World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403984432_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403984432_2
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