Girard follows a young Sephardic merchant from Saint-Domingue, Isaac Sasportas, who in 1799 proposed to the French agent Roume an invasion of Jamaica that would free the island's slaves, and who was hanged in Kingston that December. Working from British War Office and Colonial Office papers, Jamaican and Scottish manuscripts, United States consular records and French colonial archives that earlier accounts of the plot never reached, he traces the family's route from Spain through Oran, Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Curacao and Charleston, and shows Isaac absorbing revolutionary politics from his uncle Abraham. The plan reached the stage of contacts with Blue Mountain Maroons and privateer recruitment before it collapsed. Toussaint Louverture, who had just signed trade agreements with Jamaica and the United States and was fighting Rigaud, appeared to back the scheme while quietly betraying it. Haiti's later rulers cited that betrayal to reassure their slaveholding neighbours.