Before the revolt, before the fire, before the speeches of Toussaint stitched together in the night—there was La Gazette de Saint-Domingue. Born in 1724 in Cap-Français, the so-called Paris of the Antilles, it bore the cadence of empire. In its pages, the colony talked to itself, assured itself that the sun would never set on its sugar, its civility, its dominion. But in every line—each notice, each edict, each whisper of trade routes and royal favors—there was the quiet hum of denial. The deadening comfort of order, printed weekly, blind to the volcano stirring in its own soil.
Key Facts:
• Founded: 1724
• Location: Cap-Français, the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan city in the colony at the time
• Language: French
• Purpose: Served as an official colonial gazette, mirroring La Gazette de France, providing notices from the French crown, colonial authorities, commercial advertisements, and social news.
• Circulation: Elite-focused; it catered to the colonial administrative class and wealthy planters.
⸻
Why It Matters:
La Gazette de Saint-Domingue predates Affiches Américaines by over 40 years, marking it as the first print media in the colony, and among the earliest newspapers in the Americas. It illustrates the transplantation of European communication networks to the Caribbean plantation world—a world powered by enslaved labor and European capital.
It is both a tool of colonial order and a window into the contradictions of empire—broadcasting royal decrees about morality and civility in a society underpinned by slavery and violence.
