Work on early nineteenth-century Haiti has leaned on the division between a mixed-race ancien libres caste and a black nouveaux libres caste. Gaffield does not dispute that the split shaped politics and daily life, but argues that reading the country's first constitutions systematically brings something else into view.

Four constitutions appeared between 1801 and 1807, each defining Haiti differently. What they hold in common is a portrayal of the new nation as cohesive — a single imagined community, articulated in the official language of the state rather than in the divided terms historians have stressed.

The Caribbean of these decades was already unsettling long-established European ideals in politics, society, and economy; the Haitian revolution emerged from that turbulence and generated further change. Gaffield presents the constitutional record as material for broader study of nineteenth-century nation-building in colonizing and colonized societies alike.