Between 1767 and 1789 coffee exports from Saint-Domingue quadrupled while sugar rose more slowly, and Trouillot takes that shift as a test case for world-system analysis. Dependency models, he argues, flatten the periphery and lose sight of what particular people did in particular places, which is where movement in the system actually originates. Coffee suited mid-altitude land that cane planters had passed over and required far less capital to start, so the opening went to those with little to lose, among them gens de couleur whose exclusion from towns and plantations had already pushed them onto exactly those mountain plots. Their success gave a legally ambiguous group real economic weight, sharpened conflicts over colour, and loosened France's grip on the colony even while coffee profits strengthened France against rival core states. Working down from the world economy to the individual caféterie, Trouillot proposes a method holding local initiative and world-historical forces in one frame.