Between the British evacuation of 1798 and the Leclerc expedition of 1802, Toussaint Louverture ran what amounted to his own foreign policy, and Girard reconstructs it from British Colonial Office and War Office files, Spanish and Cuban documents, United States naval records and French archives rather than the American diplomatic papers historians usually rely on. What emerges is a Creole planter pursuing free trade and autonomy while stopping short of independence. Louverture warned the governor of Jamaica of a French plan to raise that island's slaves, sought guns from Britain and Spain at the same time, negotiated with Jamaican slave traders about importing African workers, and used a United States squadron to blockade Rigaud at Jacmel. His seizure of Santo Domingo looks less like a crusade against Spanish slaveholding than a move to close the door through which a French expedition might arrive. Peace in Europe finally exposed him.