Jean Kina was a Black military commander whose career moved through the fractured southern war zone of the 1790s, showing how enslaved and formerly enslaved fighters could be armed by colonists, drawn into British service, and still reshape the political field by their very military usefulness.
Originally enslaved as the slave of a white man named Laraque (Page's agent) at Tiburon, colonists entrusted their armed enslaved to him; he later became famous under the English occupation. In the January 1793 Harty expedition against the Platons insurgents he led a contingent of 200 enslaved fighters armed by their masters, then later joined the Legion of Equality, and by the mid-1790s was a talented Black commander on the British side leading a unit that included free people of color and enslaved people purchased from Jamaica.
In the ScholarshipHow historians have read this figure.
How historians and scholars have interpreted this figure across different analytical traditions.
Dubois's Avengers of the New World situates figures like Jean Kina within the complex military landscape of the South Province's British occupation period — Black officers who served the British occupation forces and whose careers raise the questions about loyalty, pragmatism, and revolutionary politics that the South's multi-sided conflict produced. Jean Kina's service under the British occupation places him in the category of military actors whose choices were structured by the available options in a war where multiple powers were offering different forms of freedom and security to different categories of the population. Dubois's account situates these figures within the broader argument that the revolution's participants were making rational calculations about survival and advancement in conditions of extreme uncertainty.
Jean Kina's British service exemplifies how the South Province's multi-sided war structured military actors' choices — pragmatic calculations about survival and advancement in conditions where multiple powers offered different forms of freedom.
TimelineAcross the historical record.
- 1791
The Suisses
Part of the broader South Province military mobilization of Black and free-colored fighters.
- 1791
Platons Revolt
Led a contingent of 200 enslaved fighters in the January 1793 Harty expedition against the Platons insurgents.
- 1792-04
Council of Peace and Union
Connected to the broader South Province political network of concordats and alliances.
- 1793
British Occupation of Saint-Domingue
Became famous under the English occupation; served as a talented Black commander on the British side in the mid-1790s.
RelationshipsPeople connected to this life.
- Allied withHarty
Served under Harty in the January 1793 colonial expedition against the Platons insurgency.