Toussaint keeps the plantation economy by renaming the labour

Mocombe writes that by 1801 Toussaint governed the entire island, proclaimed himself governor general, and had a constitution drawn up that same year by the white planter class under his directives, declaring the colony an autonomous French black possession in which slavery was abolished. He then makes the qualification that carries his argument. Building on the work of the French administrators, Toussaint kept the export-oriented agricultural system of slavery under a new share-cropping arrangement between the African population and their former masters, who became overseers of cultivators. Maroons rebelled against this because they were against anything resembling slavery, while mulatto elites rebelled because of the rise of a new class of black landowning generals and the continuing role of white planters. Defeated in the war of knives, Rigaud, Petion and Boyer left for France.

Citing the nineteenth century historian Thomas Madiou, Le Glaunec fixes the opening of hostilities against the French expedition to the evening of 4 February 1802, when Fort Picolet fired a cannonball at the arriving squadron and by doing so gave the signal that fighting had begun. The same fort closes the story. From its walls the last surviving French soldiers and the fighters of the indigenous army exchanged their final words and looks during the evacuation of the city, which the author dates to eleven days after the Battle of Vertieres. Picolet therefore brackets the whole war of independence in the north, opening it in February 1802 and witnessing its end in late November 1803. The author notes that the Atlantic below the fort is the same water that carried enslaved Africans to the colony in the eighteenth century and then carried Bonaparte's troops.

Louverture had pressed Roume for months to authorise a takeover of the Spanish half of the island, accusing his neighbours of kidnapping black Dominguians and staging public demonstrations to manufacture outrage. When the Spanish governor investigated and gave assurances, Roume withdrew his earlier decree. Louverture then imprisoned the French agent and invaded anyway, on hearing that Paris was about to forbid it. Girard's finding concerns what did not happen next. The documents Louverture published to justify the invasion say nothing about the fate of Dominican slaves, and the proclamations he issued on the march promised to respect his neighbours' religion, lives and property. During the handover negotiations he complained that Dominican exiles were leaving with their slaves, on the ground that this stripped the territory of workers. He treats the silence of the record as the finding, since a governor eager to be seen abolishing slavery would have said so in print. Where this account departs from the standard one: Girard says the record is far from clear that Louverture abolished slavery in Santo Domingo after invading, contradicting the common assertion that he did so at once.

Girard traces the genesis of the expedition to an order to prepare a force of three thousand six hundred troops at Brest. Coming shortly after Bonaparte had turned against Louverture, the squadron was most likely intended as the first instalment of a force that would grow once peace with England was secured. He is explicit that earlier orders do not count as the beginning. A first instruction to ship out had come as early as December 1799, countermanded within days; new orders followed in January 1800; the fleet was repeatedly delayed, rerouted to Egypt when Bonaparte chose alliance instead, and then held up at Toulon. Once the peace preliminaries were signed, six thousand men were ordered ready to sail from Brest by 20 October with five thousand six hundred to follow from four other ports. Where this account departs from the standard one: Girard dates the decision to invade six months before the meeting at Malmaison that other histories treat as the turning point.