By 1797 Toussaint Louverture had forced out the French agent Hédouville, negotiated the British withdrawal on his own authority, imposed his own agrarian policy and begun restoring the colony's commerce. Thomas asks why, at that moment, he did not declare independence — a step that would have gratified his supporters and strengthened his hand against Rigaud.

The answer offered is strategic rather than sentimental. Toussaint was operating among predatory powers: a Directory determined to keep its most valuable possession, and a Britain and a United States that read a black liberator as a threat to their commerce and their own slave systems. Nominal dependence on France, on this reading, was what bought the concessions and protection he extracted from London and Washington, and the time needed to lay foundations for a state. The calculation held, Thomas concludes, until Napoleon, whom it had not allowed for.