| Blue Coat or Powdered Wig: Free People of Color in Pre-Revolutionary Saint Domingue Subjects: Saint-Domingue -- History -- 18th century; Free Blacks -- Saint-Domingue -- History; Free Blacks -- Saint-Domingue -- Economic conditions -- 18th century; Free Blacks -- Saint-Domingue -- Social conditions -- 18th century; By the late 1700s, half the free population of Saint Domingue was black. The French Caribbean colony offered a high degree of social, economic, and physical mobility to free people of color. Covering the period 1776-1791, this study offers the most comprehensive portrait to date of Saint Domingue's free black elites on the eve of the colony's transformation into the republic of Haiti. STEWART R. KING is an associate professor of history at Mount Angel Seminary, St. Benedict, Oregon. |