Cases Nègres

The Coffee Planter of Saint Domingo: With an Appendix, Containing Some Hints on the Improvement of Distillery, a Description of the Taste of Coffee, and Cursory Remarks upon the State of Saint Domingo in 1797-98 is especially useful because it describes the quarters as a management problem. Laborie specifies size, ventilation, room division, and even the advisability of masonry hearths, not out of humanitarian concern but because housing affected health, fire risk, and labor preservation. In his account, every two people are assigned a measured space divided into cooking and sleeping rooms, with the whole arrangement subordinated to plantation order.