Between 1806 and 1813 a Haitian state that no power would recognise sold coffee and other produce cheaply to British buyers on the understanding that they would lobby London for recognition. Pierre reads War Office files in the British national archives against Haitian commercial legislation and the complaints of English-speaking merchants, and argues that the missing diplomatic agreement is precisely what allowed the terms to tilt against Haiti. The traders Dessalines, Christophe and Petion dealt with could not be checked; the man who called himself John Downie and claimed East India Company connections turns out in the same correspondence to be a serving captain in a British West India regiment. The Aux Cayes laws of September 1806, listing hundreds of dutiable imports and fixing dock charges down to the interpreter's fee, show a government trying to capture revenue from a trade it could not control, while cultivators were pushed back toward colonial patterns of work.