Sacerdotal Subversion in Saint-Domingue

This chapter, “Sacerdotal Subversion in Saint-Domingue,” provides important historical, political, and religious context for understanding the relationship between the priest and the prophetess, between Romaine-la-Prophétesse and Abbé Ouvière. Based on extensive archival research, some of which is entirely original, it does so by first outlining the history of the Jesuit mission in Saint-Domingue and the reasons for which the Society of Jesus was banished from the colony; in a word, because they were perceived by local planters and colonial administrators as fomenting revolt among slaves. It proceeds by closely analyzing the activities of eight French Catholic priests during the 1791–1792 insurgencies, four among rebelling slaves in the North Province and four among insurgent free coloreds in the West. Though scholars have analyzed the four in the North previously, none of those in the West have ever before been the subjects of academic study.