Cul de Sac: Patrimony, Capitalism, and Slavery in French Saint-Domingue

A plantation-scale microhistory following one absentee noble family, one plantation zone in the Cul-de-Sac plain, and one manager's correspondence to show how capitalism, aristocratic patrimony, slavery, irrigation, war, marriage, and indemnity actually fit together in colonial Saint-Domingue. Cheney's central intervention is that the colony was capitalist without ceasing to be patrimonial, and that the reform language of 'humanity and interest' — better provisioning, softer discipline — did not challenge slavery but tried to preserve the plantation by making violence more productive. The book's long afterlife chapters connecting revolutionary destruction to the 1825 indemnity and Restoration-era property claims make it uniquely useful for tracking colonial property across the revolutionary rupture.