Also known as: Paul Cheney, Cul de Sac, Cul de Sac: Patrimony, Capitalism, and Slavery in French Saint-Domingue
Last updated: April 16, 2026
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.
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Chicago
Paul Cheney. "Cul de Sac: Patrimony, Capitalism, and Slavery in French Saint-Domingue." University of Chicago Press, 2017. Rasin.ai, https://rasin.ai/connections/sources/cheney-cul-de-sac. Accessed 2026-05-05.