Reading Haiti's first four constitutions as ideological texts rather than failed legal instruments, Gaffield works through their articles one by one and applies Benedict Anderson's notion of an imagined community to documents written between 1801 and 1807. Toussaint Louverture's charter abolished slavery while declaring everyone born there free and French and reserving public worship to Catholicism, a bid for continuity with the metropole. Dessalines in 1805 recognised no dominant religion, which left room for Vodou, confiscated the property of white French owners for the state, and fixed festivals for independence, agriculture and the emperor. Pétion's southern republic praised commerce; Christophe's north restored public Catholicism, obliged Haitians aged ten to fifty to serve the army, and let the president suspend the constitution wherever troops were sent. Across the differences Gaffield finds a shared pattern of militarised authority, agricultural policy and religious signalling aimed abroad, and argues that colour conflict alone cannot account for these texts.