Girard narrates the last three years of the Haitian Revolution from the arrival of Bonaparte's fleet off Cape Sámana in 1802 to the expulsion of the final French survivors in 1809, working from military, commercial and administrative papers gathered in some twenty archives in France, Britain and the United States and written in four languages. His account turns on contingency. Louverture's 1801 constitution provoked an invasion that need not have followed; Leclerc's inexperience, a shortage of supplies and the yellow fever season did more to decide the outcome than any settled imperial plan; the restoration of slavery was a decision taken on the ground rather than a firm instruction from Paris. Girard treats colour as one axis among several, pointing to Polish and French defectors in the rebel ranks and to officers of colour who served France until the final months, and he identifies the appetite for the colony's wealth as the one motive shared across every faction.