Haiti and Jamaica in the Remaking of the Early Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
In June 1803 Dessalines wrote to George Nugent, lieutenant governor of Jamaica, declaring the ties with France broken and offering open ports to British ships in exchange for arms and manufactures. Working in the National Library of Jamaica, the Jamaica Archives, the Centre for Kentish Studies, the National Army Museum and the National Archives in London, Gaffield reconstructs three years of exchanges and asks why no treaty resulted. Her answer shifts weight away from horror at a state governed by former slaves. Nugent aided the rebels against the French army and blockaded Cap Français, and ministers drafted successive commercial conventions; the massacres of French whites in early 1804 made Nugent break off contact while London kept drafting. What emerged in 1806 was a licensing system granting Britain regulated trade without recognition, a policy sustained until 1826, at a moment when Dutch, Danish and American governments were prohibiting commerce with Haiti outright.
Gaffield, J. (2012). Haiti and Jamaica in the Remaking of the Early Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World. The William and Mary Quarterly, 69(3), 583-614.