Racial Categories

The terminology itself reveals the system's contradictions. As Malick Ghachem notes, by 1789 Saint-Domingue's official population consisted of "about 465,000 slaves, 30,000 whites, and at least 28,000 (and probably many more) free blacks and gens de couleur libres." Yet "these racial categories and the terms used to describe these communities ought not to be taken at face value. There were significant divisions within all three groups, and the labels 'slave' and 'white' are convenient shorthands for groups that themselves encompassed a broad range of persons."