Saint-Domingue Refugees (Atlantic History)

Introduction

From the onset of the Haitian Revolution in 1791 to the proclamation of the Republic of Haiti in January 1804, inhabitants of the former French colony of Saint-Domingue, on the island of Hispaniola, left the island and found refuge throughout the Caribbean basin and in North America. Some did return to metropolitan France, although they were not the majority. The refugees included whites and free people of color, together with some of their slaves. Although all the territories of the greater Caribbean basin did receive some small contingents of refugees, the territories that most attracted the refugees were the Spanish part of Hispaniola, Santo Domingo—for obvious reasons of proximity—as well as Jamaica—where many refugees followed the British troops after their evacuation from the island—and Cuba—whose Oriente was within sight of the northwestern coast of Saint-Domingue. The eastern United States was another common destination for the refugees, as was the Gulf Coast, although in smaller numbers. For two decades, the refugees constituted a diaspora that remained in close epistolary contact, due to the relocation of acquaintances in several refuges of the Americas. Although many refugees remained in these original asylums, a second movement occurred in the first decades of the 19th century, this time a movement of convergence of the diaspora to Louisiana, more specifically to New Orleans. Because of the Napoleonic wars, non-naturalized French citizens were expelled from Jamaica (in 1803–1804) and from Cuba (1809–1810), and many settled in Louisiana. For cultural and linguistic reasons, many of those who had initially found refuge in the United States also came to Louisiana. Although Louisiana had received only a few hundred refugees in the last decade of the 18th century, it came to host about 15,000 former inhabitants of Saint-Domingue, the last wave from Cuba (in 1809–1810) being by far the largest. Almost equally distributed among the three categories of population (whites, free people of color, and slaves), more than 10,000 refugees proceeded to swarm into the city of New Orleans over a period of about six months, 90% of whom stayed in the city. Their arrival doubled the population of the city, where refugees from other waves already resided. Their influence on the city at the crucial time of its integration within the United States is only starting to be understood.

General Overviews

No comprehensive study of the refugee diaspora in general is available, and this overview of the experience of the refugees in the Americas remains to be written. It would be an extraordinary task to undertake, although it would probably require a team of researchers, considering the variety of asylums and refugee experiences. Because the refugees brought similar influences to all their asylums, it would prove to be of extreme value. A few books and a dissertation, however, may be included in this category because of the large scope and because the studies encompass several of the refugees’ asylums. The first one is most certainly Brasseaux and Conrad 1992. Although, as its title indicates, this book focuses largely on Louisiana, it also contains one of the pioneer articles on the refugees in Cuba. At the time it was published, it broke new ground in being the first attempt at gathering scattered studies on the refugees. Another book that takes into consideration several asylums is Geggus 2001, although it does not deal directly and solely with the refugees. It contains information connected to the refugees, due to its focus on the political repercussions of the revolution itself, repercussions many of which the refugees were the vectors. Meadows 2004 is the most up-to-date study that encompasses several refuges. Recently, researchers have begun to examine specific families with origins in Saint-Domingue, working on their itineraries between Saint-Domingue and New Orleans and on their lives after their settlement in New Orleans. Sullivan-Holleman and Cobb 1995 constitutes a treasure of information on the epic stories of many refugees connected to the family in several relocations (Jamaica, Cuba, and the United States, including Louisiana). Other recent studies focus on the complex web of family relationships in the Atlantic world, showing how distant refugees could use family network to boost the economic weight of the family in the Atlantic world and demonstrating the porosity of this Atlantic world. Research is ongoing on these specific cases and, no doubt, many more studies on the topic will appear in the incoming years. Rebecca Scott, both as a single author and in collaboration with Jean Hébrard, has already published several excellent articles on the Tinchant family, which originated from Saint-Domingue and was also racially mixed. Scott and Hébrard 2007, Scott and Hébrard 2008, Scott 2009, and Scott 2011 constitute a few examples. Finally Scott and Hébrard 2012 is the complete version of the in-depth research carried out by the authors over the past years. This excellent book recounts the story of an enslaved woman, Rosalie, and the tribulations of the family during the Haitian Revolution and then in Santiago de Cuba, New Orleans, Paris, Veracruz, and Antwerp, Belgium.

Brasseaux, Carl A., and Glenn R. Conrad, eds. The Road to Louisiana: The Saint-Domingue Refugees, 1792–1809. Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1992.
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This anthology was the very precious “first attempt to fill comprehensively one of the most enduring lacunae in Louisiana historiography” (p. vii). Although the central topic of the book is the Louisiana asylum (where the refugees converged), the book presents the advantage of considering several refuges and several experiences and of addressing, albeit often indirectly, the diaspora’s experience.
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Geggus, David P., ed. The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
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This collection of fifteen articles is not concerned exclusively with the refugee experience. The authors study the influences of the Haitian Revolution on political philosophy, politics, and slave resistance. Only the last three articles deal directly with the refugees (in Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Charleston) but the others focus on their influence on Puerto Rico, the United States, Guadeloupe, Cuba, and Colombia.
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Meadows, Darrell. “The Planters of Saint-Domingue, 1750–1804: Migration and Exile in the French Revolutionary Atlantic.” Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 2004.
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Meadows’s dissertation examines the assistance given to refugee planters in Jamaica, the United States, and France within the framework of a study of the interconnections between the revolutions in France and Haiti. The author adopts an Atlantic perspective in showing, in particular, the strong links between the metropole and its colonies through transatlantic families.
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Scott, Rebecca J. “Reinventar la esclavitud, garantizar la libertad: De Saint-Domingue a Santiago a Nueva Orleáns, 1803–1809.” Caminos 52 (2009): 2–13.
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This article is a more succinct version of Scott and Hébrard 2007 and Scott and Hébrard 2008 but should be mentioned for those who might prefer reading in Spanish.
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Scott, Rebecca J. “Paper Thin: Freedom and Re-enslavement in the Diaspora of the Haitian Revolution.” Law and History Review 29.4 (2011): 1061–1087.
DOI: 10.1017/S0738248011000538Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is the most recent publication (in English, this time) of the research conducted by Rebecca Scott (with Jean Hébrard) on the fluidity of the definitions of slavery and freedom in the Atlantic world in the late 18th century through the study of the Saint-Domingue refugee diaspora.
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Scott, Rebecca J. and Jean M. Hébrard. “Les papiers de la liberté: Une mère africaine et ses enfants à l’époque de la révolution haïtienne.” Genèses 66 (2007): 4–29.
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This article places the refugees in a wide Atlantic perspective, posing very clearly the question of the status of the refugees in this Atlantic world. It shows that, upon leaving Saint-Domingue, although they were theoretically free, their relocation in slave societies jeopardized this status.
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Scott, Rebecca J., and Jean M. Hébrard. “Servitude, liberté et citoyenneté dans le monde atlantique des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles: Rosalie de Nation Poulard.” Revue de la société haïtienne d’histoire et de géographie 83.234 (2008): 1–52.
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This extremely detailed article also problematizes the question of status of the refugees of color, showing the fluidity, in the Atlantic world of the late 18th century, of the boundaries between slavery and freedom and the way in which the refugees of color saw their identity constantly redefined all along their itinerary in this Atlantic world.
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Scott, Rebecca J., and Jean M. Hébrard. Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674065161Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This is the extraordinary Atlantic narrative of a family whose members were spread over Latin America, North America, and Europe, and who used this network to develop their economic and political potential. This fascinating book revises some stale assumptions on people of color in the Atlantic world but also shows the complexity of legal rights and legal limitations they had to face in their odyssey.
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Sullivan-Holleman, Elizabeth, and Isabel Hillery Cobb. The Saint Domingue Epic: The de Rossignol des Dunes and Family Alliances. Bay St. Louis, MS: Nightingale Press, 1995.
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Written by descendants of the Rossignol des Dunes, the book is based on painstaking genealogical research and rich in information on the tribulations of the family, from France to Saint-Domingue to Jamaica, Cuba, and the United States. The focus goes beyond the family and about one thousand names are cited in this 623-page book, although the index references them by chapter instead of page number.
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Published Primary Sources

A few direct testimonies by refugees have been published. Some of them, such as Aquin Allain 1883, Lee 1854, Parham 1959, and Goguet and Goguet 1996, are exclusive narrations of the testimonies of individual refugees. Desdunes 1973 (originally published in 1911) focuses on the influential free people of color in New Orleans in general, many of whom were descendants of Saint-Domingue refugees.

Aquin Allain, Hélène d’. Souvenirs d’Amérique par une Créole. Paris: Périsses Frères, 1883.
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This is the story of a Saint-Domingue Creole who had to flee the island. Through her narrative, we catch glimpses at her life on the island and at her flight and life as a refugee, first in Jamaica, then in Louisiana, and finally in Toulouse, France. Although research is currently underway on the manuscript (by Karen Cossé Bell, among others), there is as yet no translation of the book.
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Desdunes, Rodolphe Lucien. Our People and Our History: Fifty Creole Portraits. Translated and edited by Sister Dorothea Olga McCants. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973.
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This book, originally published as Nos hommes et notre histoire (Montreal: Arbour & Dupont, 1911), is not about the refugees per se. It is of interest in that it deals with famous 19th-century New Orleans Creoles of color, almost all of Saint-Domingue descent. It helps assess the weight of the refugees in the economic and cultural fabric of New Orleans.
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Goguet, Antoine, and Marie Goguet. Lettres d’amour créoles. Paris: Karthala, 1996.
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This is the correspondence of Marie Renault, a Saint-Domingue Creole refugee in Curaçao, and her husband, Antoine Goguet, an officer and colonist in the colony who later resided in Santo Domingo (1809), Toulon (1816), and Guadeloupe (1819). The letters inform on the fate of the refugees and the book opens with a very good introduction to the family’s background and history.
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Lee, Hannah Farnham Sawyer. Memoir of Pierre Toussaint, Born a Slave in St. Domingo. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, 1854.
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The stories of the slaves who followed their masters in exile are almost never heard. This memoir, written in the third person, is the single exception and narrates the life of a former slave from Saint-Domingue who followed his mistress into exile in New York.
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Parham, Althéa de Puech, trans. My Odyssey: Experiences of a Young Refugee from Two Revolutions, by a Creole of Saint Domingue. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959.
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This is the partial translation of the memoirs, originally written in French, of a Creole born in Saint-Domingue in which he recounts his flight from the island and later tribulations in the United States. The English version has suppressed many of the epic poetry passages contained in the narration and altered the text in many ways. Further research is under way by Anja Brandau and Jeremy Popkins.
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General Archival Material

One of the best ways to track down the refugees is through the requests they filed in the late 1820s to the French government for indemnities, claiming compensation for their lost property in Saint-Domingue. The source is certainly not comprehensive since these requests were placed only by still living, property-holding refugees who had proof of property. They provide information on the persons lodging the requests, the property they had owned in Saint-Domingue, and the place where they had found refuge. The files are not all complete, but they generally contain letters, proofs of property, detailed listings of property, addresses where the refugees or their descendants had relocated, etc. This information can be found at the Centre d’Archives d’Outre-Mer (CAOM) in Aix-en-Provence, France. In lieu of a visit to Aix-en-Provence, however, published versions of the index of those indemnifications exist in six volumes, each volume basically covering one year of indemnification records (Ministère des Finances 1828–1834). Although less comprehensive than the Aix archives, they give the names of owners, details of property, amount of the compensation received (10 percent of original value of the property), and names of the beneficiaries (refugees when still alive, their descendants when the original owners have died).

Indemnités de Saint-Domingue. Centre d’Archives d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, France.
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This archive contains the claims filed with the French government. The researcher needs to master the original index but can then access any of the files (although some, present in the index, have been lost or at least misplaced). They are easier to use when researching a specific family, but a comprehensive study would enable a better understanding of the diaspora.
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Ministère des Finances. État détaillé des liquidations opérées, Par la Commission chargée de répartir l’Indemnité attribuée aux anciens Colons de Saint-Domingue, en exécution de la Loi du 30 avril 1826, et conformément aux dispositions de l’Ordonnance du 9 mai suivant. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1828–1834.
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This compilation of the compensation requests filed by the refugees is in French but is presented as tables and thus is accessible to anyone with a minimal understanding of French. Hard copies can be found at the University of New Orleans, the University of Florida (Gainesville), and the Library of Congress. The Louisiana Collection at the Tulane library has microfilmed versions of four volumes.
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Refugees in Metropolitan France

Although the Haitian Revolution has been the object of innumerable historical studies, the refugees from that revolution with reference to metropolitan France have been forgotten by historians. Only two very short articles deal directly with the topic of the refugees, Adher 1915 and Grandière 1977. Their importance and brevity suggest that further research is called for.

Adher, M. J. “Les colons réfugiés d’Amérique pendant la Révolution.” Bulletin de la société de géographie de Toulouse 34.2 (1915): 152–168.
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A very short article that gives an overview of the refugees. It indicates some sources that may be useful to researchers interested in the topic.
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Grandière, Marcel. “Les réfugiés et les déportés des Antilles à Nantes sous la Révolution.” Bulletin de la société d’histoire de la Guadeloupe 33–34 (3rd–4th quarter, 1977): 3–171.
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A few short notes on the refugees in Nantes. It is not of a very general scope but suggests directions to take for further research.
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Refugees in the Caribbean

If general studies are still missing, several scholars have studied the refugees in specific locations. The Caribbean, in its diversity, was a place of refuge for many of the former inhabitants of Saint-Domingue, and, thus, it is logical that several studies bear on this region. Since most of the greater Caribbean basin welcomed refugees, from the Windward to the Leeward Islands, from the Bahamas to Cuba to Jamaica to Puerto Rico, from Curaçao to Belize to Venezuela and Mexico, some partial studies exist on several refuges. They are mostly brief overview articles on the refugees. The colonies that welcomed the largest contingents of refugees were Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba, the last two being the main refugee asylums in the Caribbean. Although some notes attesting to the presence of refugees in other Caribbean colonies exist, their presence has not been specifically studied, except for Trinidad (Brereton 2006).

Cuba

Although works on the refugees in Cuba are still rare, Cuba is probably the best documented of the Caribbean asylums of the refugees, thanks to the pioneering works of Gabriel Debien (Debien 1964, Debien 1979, Debien 1992), to two books published in the Hispanic Caribbean (Deive 1989 and Padrón 1997), to a recent article (Childs 2010), and to two unpublished dissertations (Yacou 1975 and Renault 2007). The works of the pioneers, both Debien and Yacou, have opened new paths in facilitating study of migrations in hemispheric perspective. Renault 2007 goes one step further in exploring new archival material.

Childs, Matt. “‘The Revolution against the French’: Race and Patriotism in the 1809 Race Riots in Havana.” In Napoleon’s Atlantic: The Impact of Napoleonic Empire in the Atlantic World. Edited by Christophe Belaubre, Jordana Dym, and John Savage, 119–138. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
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This article examines the anti-French riots in Havana and other Cuban cities. It shows how, from a policy that initially welcomed the refugees, the Cubans turned to reject them, following issuance of an expulsion order by the Spanish authorities. The article offers a fascinating study of the race factor through the involvement of the free people of color in the riots.
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Debien, Gabriel. De Saint-Domingue à Cuba avec une famille de réfugiés, les Tornézy (1800–1809). Notes d’histoire coloniale 74. Port-au-Prince: Revue de la Faculté d’Ethnologie, 1964.
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Based on the study of correspondence between members of the Tornézy family, this article illustrates the later studies by Debien on the refugee diaspora. Compared with Debien’s other works, more genealogical and demographical and more general in scope, this article has the merit of helping readers to acquire a less disembodied picture of the diaspora experience. This work is published in French, as are most of Debien’s works.
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Debien, Gabriel. “Réfugiés de Saint-Domingue expulsés de la Havane en 1809.” Anuario de estudios americanos 35 (1979): 555–610.
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This is an article on the refugees expelled from Cuba after Napoleon put his brother on the Spanish throne. It focuses on the departures from the island of refugees who were headed, for the most part, to Louisiana. Although this article is probably more appropriate for researchers working on Louisiana, it gives some insight into the experience of refugees in Cuba.
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Debien, Gabriel. “The Saint-Domingue Refugees in Cuba, 1793–1815.” In The Road to Louisiana: The Saint-Domingue Refugees, 1792–1809. Edited by Carl A. Brasseaux and Glenn R. Conrad, 31–112. Translated by David Cheramie. Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1992.
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This translation of the original article in French—Les colonos de Saint-Domingue réfugiés à Cuba, 1793–1815,” published in Revista de Indias in 1953 (13:559–605; 14:11–36)—is the pioneer study on the refugees in Cuba. The author borrows extensively from archival primary material and, in delving into several individual examples, he makes history come to life. The article has proved an inspiration to many subsequent researchers.
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Deive, Carlos Esteban. Las emigraciones Dominicanas a Cuba, 1795–1808. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 1989.
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After the author completed a first work on the refugees in Santo Domingo (see Deive 1984 cited under Santo Domingo), he follows some of them to Cuba in this work. The book gives references to many archival sources. The focus of the book is not entirely on the French refugees, since it also deals with Spanish migrants from Santo Domingo to Cuba, but it contains much interesting material.
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Padrón, Carlos. Franceses en el suroriente de Cuba. Havana, Cuba: Ediciones Unión, 1997.
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This is a short overview of the refugees in the Cuban Oriente written in Spanish. It is especially valuable for its sources in Spanish and for its list of two thousand names of the refugee community.
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Renault, Agnès. “La communauté française de Santiago de Cuba entre 1791 et 1825.” PhD diss., Université du Havre, 2007.
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Using new archival material, Renault studies the refugee community in Cuba during a period of more than three decades, even after the departure of most of them in 1810. The study shows how this community, which was both economically integrated and culturally close-knit, launched French immigration to Cuba, developed the coffee plantation network of the Sierra Maestra, and permanently influenced Cuban economy and culture.
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Yacou, Alain. “L’émigration à Cuba des colons français de Saint-Domingue au cours de la révolution.” PhD diss., Université de Bordeaux, 1975.
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This is the first comprehensive study of the refugees in Cuba. Totally groundbreaking when written in the mid-1970s, it might be usefully complemented by Renault’s dissertation (whose doctoral work was codirected by Yacou) to grasp both the originality of Yacou’s work and the more recent advances in research on the topic. It might be a challenge for readers in the United States to access this pre-digitization era work written in French.
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Jamaica

Because the refugee community in Jamaica was numerically important, at least until the non-naturalized French were expelled in 1803–1804, Jamaica is the Caribbean asylum of the former Inhabitants of Saint-Domingue that is most often studied after Cuba. No book-length work on refugees in Jamaica is available, but there are three interesting articles on the topic (Bryan 1973, Cauna 1994, Debien and Wright 1975).

Bryan, Patrick. “Émigrés: Conflict and Reconciliation; The French Émigrés in Nineteenth Century Jamaica.” Jamaica Journal 7.3 (September 1973): 13–19.
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This short article has the distinction of being the first study written on the refugees in Jamaica. It may be used as an introduction to the topic. Its interest, however, lays in opening new grounds and suggesting that this topic deserves further research. It gives an indication of the bibliographical and archival materials that should be further explored.
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Cauna, Jacques de. “La diaspora des anciens colons de Saint-Domingue et le monde créole: Le cas de la Jamaïque.” Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer 304 (1994): 333–359.
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This article is a much more recent, expanded version of the previous article. It offers further insight into the migration experience of the refugees and their contribution to early-19th-century Jamaican economy and society. Although it goes further than the previous article, it definitely shows that further research is called for.
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Debien, Gabriel, and Philippe Wright. “Les colons de Saint-Domingue passés à la Jamaïque, 1792–1835.” Bulletin de la société d’histoire de la Guadeloupe 26 (4th quarter, 1975): 3–217.
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This very long article is almost a book in itself. It gives much information on the refugees, although it is not a general overview. It contains gems that require careful mining by the researcher, and it is full of very minute demographical and genealogical material that may serve as a substratum to more general studies.
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Santo Domingo

The only work existing on the Santo Domingo asylum is Deive 1984. It has the advantage of being the only book-length work on the refugees. It is important because of the numerical size of the migration to Santo Domingo, which, because of its geographical location, was the only refuge accessible by land. From Santo Domingo, many of the initial refugees went on to Cuba, in particular, and, therefore, their presence in the Spanish colony was only temporary.

Deive, Carlos Esteban. Los refugiados franceses en Santo Domingo, 1789–1801. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: Universidad Nacional Pedro Henriquez Ureña, 1984.
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This book is important for a comprehensive (and comparative) study of the refugee diaspora, and it provides a good list of Spanish archival material. It is relatively rare (and has been out of print for a very long time), but it is available in the catalogue of the Library of Congress.
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Puerto Rico

As in the case of Santo Domingo, there is little available on the refugees in Puerto Rico beyond a short article in French (Luque de Sanchez 1989) and part of a much wider study of migrations in 19th-century Puerto Rico (Cifre de Loubiel 1964).

Cifre de Loubiel, Estela. La inmigración a Puerto Rico durante el siglo XIX. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1964.
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The book has a much wider scope than concentrating solely on the Saint-Domingue refugees, but some pages are specifically dedicated to the refugees and identify valuable sources. The book contains the list of 13,217 names of migrants, which can serve to help locate specific refugees on the island and thus document the refugee networks.
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Luque de Sanchez, Maria Dolores. “Colons Français réfugiés à Porto Rico au cours de la periode revolutionnaire.” In De la Révolution française aux révolutions créoles et nègres. Edited by Michel L. Martin and Alain Yacou, 41–48. Paris: Editions Caribéennes, 1989.
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Although not a primary destination, Puerto Rico welcomed small contingents of refugees who chose to stay in the Caribbean, expecting an eventual return to their homeland. This brief overview helps in acquiring a full understanding of the common destiny of the members of the diaspora as well as their relative commonality of experience and the influences they left on their various places of refuge.
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Trinidad

The refugees were numerically smaller in Trinidad than in Puerto Rico, but they played their part in the island’s society, economy, and political life. Brereton 2006 is a brief article on them, revelatory of the importance of studying them in secondary places of refuge.

Brereton, Bridget. “‘Hé St Domingo, songé St Domingo’: Haiti and the Haitian Revolution in the Political Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Trinidad.” In Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and Its Cultural Aftershocks. Edited by Martin Munro and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, 201–233. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2006.
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This study of the influences of the Haitian Revolution on the political discourse focuses on refugees who integrated into the island’s elite and contributed to the development of the “Haytian Fear.” This short but extremely rich article suggests that further research would help draw firmer conclusions on the interactions between the refugees and their various asylums.
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Refugees in the United States

Thousands of refugees headed for the eastern seaboard states of the young American republic. For obvious geographical reasons, they flocked to the seaports on the East Coast from New York to Savannah. New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston proved attractive as places that had already welcomed French communities from earlier flights (the Huguenots in Charleston) or were then welcoming numerous émigrés exiled by the French Revolution. Several works, of unequal scope, on the refugees in the United States can be cited. Two book-length overviews of the experiences of the refugees in the United States are Hunt 1988 and White 2010. Although Hunt 1988 is over two decades old, it still serves as an excellent introduction to the general subject. White 2010 reflects the historiographical evolutions on the topic during the past twenty years. Debien 1950, Houdaille 1963, Meadows 2000, and Jones 2011 are also dedicated to the topic, and Childs 1940, a more general treatment, devotes some space to the issue of the refugees. See also the separate section dedicated to Refugees in Louisiana.

Childs, Frances Sergeant. French Refugee Life in the United States, 1790–1800: An American Chapter of the French Revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1940.
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The topic of Childs’s book is larger than the refugee community since she also tackles the émigrés from the French Revolution. The author focuses on the cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and she depicts the complex web of social, political, and economic relationships among the members of the various Francophone communities.
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Debien, Gabriel. “Réfugiés de Saint-Domingue aux États-Unis.” Notes d’Histoire Coloniale 27 (1950): 2–138.
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In Debien’s usual style, this is a very long article full of detailed genealogical and biographical information on the refugees. Again, it is relatively loose on general conclusions but contains treasures gleaned from minute research. Although written six decades ago, it is still worth reading by any researcher working on the refugee diaspora. It primarily focuses on the northeastern cities (mostly Philadelphia, but also New York and Baltimore).
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Houdaille, Jacques. “French Refugees in the United States, 1790–1810.” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 51.4 (December 1963): 209–213.
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This is a short overview of refugee life in the United States. A good read for anyone needing a brief background presentation.
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Hunt, Alfred N. Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988.
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After listing their relocations in the United States and addressing the welcome of the various authorities and populations, Hunt examines the life of the refugees before examining their influence on the debate over slavery. He aptly shows that their presence in the United States reinforced both the proslavery and the abolitionist discourses.
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Jones, Martha S. “Time, Space, and Jurisdiction in Atlantic World Slavery: The Volunbrun Household in Gradual Emancipation New York.” In Special Issue: Law, Slavery, and Justice: Edited by David S. Tanenhaus. Law and History Review 29.4 (November 2011): 1031–1060.
DOI: 10.1017/S0738248011000575Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This article recounts the journey of the household of widow Drouillard de Volunbrun from Saint-Domingue to New York City and then to Baltimore. The household contained about twenty slaves and the article raises the issue of the questioned status of these enslaved persons and investigates the questions of jurisdiction in this matter. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Meadows, R. Darrell. “Engineering Exile: Social Networks and the French Atlantic Community, 1789–1809.” French Historical Studies 23.1 (2000): 67–102.
DOI: 10.1215/00161071-23-1-67Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The great merit of this article is to show the connections among the refugees established through social networks with the aim of proving that the refugees did not choose their asylums randomly but were instead involved in a phenomenon of chain migration. It also contains an interesting reflection on the personal, intimate consequences of exile for the individuals. Available online by subscription.
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White, Ashli. Encountering Revolution: Haiti, and the Making of the Early Republic. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
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White’s book also deals with the influence of the refugees on the political debates of the young republic. New sources are used and more individual examples are followed. More importantly, the perspective is novel, showing how the refugees made Americans face the paradoxes of their system, and the self-definition of the young republic is set in a broader Atlantic perspective.
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Refugees in the South

The American South constituted a preferential place of settlement for the refugees because it was a slave society that bore some resemblance to what the refugees had known in Saint-Domingue. There is one unpublished comprehensive study of the refugees in the South, Babb 1954. There are also several other geographically limited studies focusing on a single city or community where the refugees were especially present, Hartridge 1943 on Baltimore, Gardien 1988 on Alabama, Garesché Holland 1965 on Saint-Louis, and Haggy and Van Ruymbeke 1996 on Charleston.

Babb, Winston C. “French Refugees from Saint Domingue to the Southern United States, 1791–1810.” PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1954.
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Babb’s unpublished dissertation is relatively old but nothing as comprehensive has been written since and it contains much information on the refugees in the South. Although it sometimes lacks nuances and tends to generalize without sufficiently distinguishing between the various asylums, it ably demonstrates the commonality of experience of the refugees.
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Gardien, Kent. “The Domingan Kettle: Philadelphian-Emigré Planters in Alabama.” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 76.3 (September 1988): 173–187.
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This is a short, but interesting article on the short-lived Vine-and-Olive colony of Alabama and the place of the refugees in this ultimately unsuccessful venture.
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Garesché Holland, Dorothy. “St. Louis Families from the French West Indies.” In The French in the Mississippi Valley. Edited by John Francis McDermott, 41–58. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965.
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A brief presentation of the refugee family networks in Saint Louis, Missouri. It indicates valuable archival sources for the study of these networks.
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Haggy, James W., and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke. “The French Refugee Newspapers of Charleston.” South Carolina Historical Magazine 97.2 (April 1996): 139–148.
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A short article that has the merit of examining the role of the refugees in the Charleston press, allowing researchers to track refugees in their sometimes complex itineraries. Some of the individuals mentioned in the article were later found running newspapers in Philadelphia and New Orleans. Available online by subscription.
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Hartridge, Walter Charlton. “The Refugees from the Island of St. Domingo in Maryland.” Maryland Historical Magazine 38 (1943): 103–122.
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This short overview of the experience of refugees in Maryland is the only one dealing with Baltimore, which received a relatively important contingent of refugees. The bibliography indicates further primary sources that will be useful for an in-depth study of the Maryland refuge.
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Refugees in Louisiana

New Orleans housed the largest permanent concentration of refugees, which logically makes the city the place most studied by historians. For a long time, the New Orleans refugees were ignored, mostly because their arrival at the very moment when jurisdiction of the colony was transferred to the United States led to their disappearance within the Francophone community (also composed of Creoles and metropolitan French). It was nearly a century after their arrival that historians rescued them from oblivion, mostly in the wake of the pioneering works of Gabriel Debien and René Le Gardeur. Since then, several historians have dedicated considerable time and energy to the refugees, although much remains to be done, as the wealth of the New Orleans Archival Material suggests. Dessens 2007 provides the most general overview on refugee life in New Orleans, apart from Brasseaux and Conrad 1992 (cited in General Overviews). Brasseaux and Conrad 1992 contains the pioneering works of the best scholars on the issue.

Dessens, Nathalie. From Saint-Domingue to New Orleans: Migration and Influences. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007.
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The book examines the conditions of the refugees’ flight to, and relocation in, New Orleans before turning to their enduring influence on the economic, social, and political fabric of the city and before studying their cultural legacy. It examines not only the contributions that every subgroup (whites, free people of color, and enslaved blacks) brought to Louisiana, but also the impact they had as a group.
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Archival Material

It would be impossible to cite here all the archival material that bears on the refugees or contains information on the refugees in New Orleans. Only three major sources have been selected for the extraordinary amount of information they provide on the refugees. The Augustin and Wogan Families Papers, 1803–1936 is a large collection of letters and documents on a prominent family of refugees. Similarly, the Lambert Family Papers, 1798–1905 collects documents connected with the Lambert family, who came from Saint-Domingue to New Orleans by way of Cuba. The Ste-Gême Family Papers archive contains, among other invaluable items, a long correspondence from Jean Boze to Henri de Ste-Gême.

Augustin and Wogan Families Papers, 1803–1936. Louisiana Research Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans.
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The collection provides information on family connections, economic and political matters, and many little details on a relatively vast group of refugees.
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Lambert Family Papers, 1798–1905. Louisiana Research Collection. Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans.
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The collection contains documents related to Pierre-Antoine Lambert, pharmacist, physician, and professor at the Collège d’Orléans, and his son Pierre, physician and administrator of the Charity Hospital. It contains letters sent to Lambert by other refugees scattered throughout the diaspora, showing the variety of their relocations and experiences and giving insight into their thoughts and hopes for the future.
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Ste-Gême Family Papers. Historic New Orleans Collection. MSS 100. Williams Research Center, New Orleans.
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Drafted between 1818 and 1839, these 158 letters handwritten in French and covering some 1,200 pages, are probably the best source on the refugees. Focusing on the family relations, economic roles, cultural traditions, and political presence of the refugees and full of gossip and more serious information, they should be read by anyone wishing to study the refugees in New Orleans.
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The Pioneers

Although, for a long time, the historiography of Louisiana forgot the refugees, or at least included them in the Francophone group without differentiation (sometimes even in the Creole group), a few pioneering works are found relatively early in the 20th century. The earliest, although very sketchy, deserves special credit (Perez 1905). Later, Gabriel Debien, with the help of René Le Gardeur, himself descended from refugees, went on clearing the field (Le Gardeur 1963, Debien 1980, Debien and Le Gardeur 1992).

Debien, Gabriel. “Les vaincus de la révolution haïtienne en quête d’un refuge: De Saint-Domingue à Cuba (1803), de Cuba à la Nouvelle Orléans (1809).” Revue de la société haïtienne d’histoire, de géographie et de géologie 38.126 (March 1980): 15–30.
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This is a first version of the article published the same year in Louisiana Review. It establishes the connection between Saint-Domingue, Cuba, and Louisiana. It can be considered an introduction to Debien and Le Gardeur 1992.
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Debien, Gabriel, and René J. Le Gardeur. “The Saint-Domingue Refugees in Louisiana, 1792–1804.” In The Road to Louisiana: The Saint-Domingue Refugees, 1792–1809. Edited by Carl A. Brasseaux and Glenn R. Conrad, 113–243. Translated by David Cheramie. Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana Press, 1992.
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This is a translated version of the original articles in French published in 1980 and 1981 in Louisiana Review (9:101–140; 10:11–49, 97–141). It was the first comprehensive study of the refugees in New Orleans. It is worth reading because it contains extremely detailed studies of the various waves of refugees to Louisiana.
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Le Gardeur, René J. “The Refugees from Saint-Domingue.” New Orleans Genesis 2.6 (March 1963): 175–176.
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In this extremely brief note, Le Gardeur went one step further toward unearthing the history of the refugee presence in Louisiana.
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Perez, Luis M. “French Refugees to New Orleans in 1809 (With Documents).” Publications of the Southern History Association 9.5 (September 1905): 293–310.
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This very short article is the first known specific study on the refugees in New Orleans. It acknowledges their arrival and their numerical importance, providing a few primary sources (extracts from the correspondence of Governor Claiborne, for the most part) now available in print. At the time of publication, it proved groundbreaking and remained, for a very long time, the only such work uniquely dedicated to the refugees.
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Demographical Studies

After Gabriel Debien, Paul Lachance is the historian who has written the most extensively about the refugees. As a demographer, he has produced the best studies on the refugees, based on sacramental records, notarial archives, apprentice contracts, and all kinds of such archival sources. He has produced many studies that still contain conclusions of unparalleled quality. Although he never wrote a book that encompassed all aspects of the refugee community, he has left us with many excellent articles that should be among the first reading of any scholar interested in the refugees in New Orleans (Lachance 1982, Lachance 1992a, Lachance 1992b, Lachance 1994).

Lachance, Paul F. “Intermarriage and French Cultural Persistence in Late Spanish and Early American New Orleans.” Histoire sociale/Social History 15.29 (May 1982): 47–81.
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This article covers more than only the refugee community but it is the first step of Lachance’s attempt to grasp the reasons for the persistence of French culture in New Orleans at the turn of the 19th century. He studies the patterns of intermarriage between the various Francophone communities to show the solidification of the Gallic community during a period when it began to find itself culturally besieged by the incoming Anglo-Saxon migrants from the United States.
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Lachance, Paul F. “The 1809 Immigration of Saint-Domingue Refugees to New Orleans: Reception, Integration and Impact.” In The Road to Louisiana: The Saint-Domingue Refugees, 1792–1809. Edited by Carl A. Brasseaux and Glenn R. Conrad, 245–284. Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1992a.
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Originally published in Louisiana History 29.2 (Spring 1988): 109–141 (available online by subscription), this article focuses on the reception of the refugees belonging to the largest wave, which came to New Orleans by way of Cuba. Showing the initial perplexity of the authorities and inhabitants when confronted with this wave of unprecedented numbers of refugees coming with very few financial means but with some of their slaves at a crucial moment when New Orleans was first subject to rule by the United States, Lachance also studies the solidarity displayed by the French speakers, with the complicity of the American authorities, to the refugees.
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Lachance, Paul F. “The Foreign French.” In Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization. Edited by Arnold R. Hirsh and Joseph Logsdon, 101–130. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992b.
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Lachance’s article includes more than the refugees since he also discusses the immigrants from France to Louisiana. His article, however, presents the originality of challenging the usual representation of the Creole versus American competition for mastery of New Orleans, which centers on the main question of races and race relations.
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Lachance, Paul F. “The Formation of a Three-Caste Society: Evidence from Wills in Antebellum New Orleans.” Social Science History 18.2 (Summer 1994): 211–242.
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This article focuses on the development of a real social group of free people of color, characterized by its endogamy, in antebellum Louisiana and the transformation of the three-tiered order of the New Orleans society into something that more closely resembled a three-caste society. It tackles the role the refugees played in this transformation. Available online by subscription.
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The Refugees’ Politics

As with Demographical Studies, Paul Lachance is the historian who wrote most about the political consequences of the arrival of the refugees in New Orleans. He carefully studied, over several articles, the weight of the refugees’ presence in the political life of the city. From their influence over the slave trade (Lachance 1979) to the enduring memory of the Haitian Revolution they brought to New Orleans (Lachance 1994, Lachance 2001), he devoted much time and energy pinpointing their influence on the main political debates connected with the institution of slavery in the early 19th century. Recent works have also focused on the role of the refugees in the political life of New Orleans. Among them, Scott 2009 examines the issue of their influence on the 1808 Civil Code. A special issue of the South Atlantic Review, containing articles by Caryn Cossé Bell, Nathalie Dessens, Connie Eble, and Laura V. Rouzan, is dedicated to the study of the Roudanez, a family of free people of color, whose journey started in Saint-Domingue and ended in New Orleans (and France), giving Louisiana one of its greatest 19th-century civil-rights leaders.

Lachance, Paul F. “The Politics of Fear: French Louisianans and the Slave Trade, 1786–1809.” Plantation Society in America 1.2 (June 1979): 162–197.
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The article deals with the debate on the slave trade in New Orleans. Although it is not devoted exclusively to the refugees, it includes a discussion of the first waves of refugees and prior to the arrival of the last wave from Cuba. Available online as part of In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience.
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Lachance, Paul F. “La révolution haïtienne dans la mémoire des réfugiés de la Nouvelle Orléans.” In Mémoire privée, mémoire collective dans l’Amérique pré-industrielle. Edited by Elise Marienstras and Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, 25–33. Paris: Berg International, 1994.
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The importance of the Haitian Revolution in the Louisiana psyche is now largely acknowledged. This article is one of the first, however, to study it so precisely.
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Lachance, Paul F. “Repercussions of the Haitian Revolution in Louisiana.” In The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World. Edited by David P. Geggus, 209–230. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
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This is a later, more elaborate version of Lachance 1994.
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Scott, Rebecca J. “‘She . . . Refuses to Deliver Up Herself as the Slave of Your Petitioner’: Emigrés, Enslavement, and the 1808 Louisiana Digest of the Civil Laws.” Tulane European and Civil Law Forum 24 (2009): 115–136.
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This presents a very challenging discussion of the question of the status of the enslaved Saint-Domingans, with specific focus on New Orleans. It also raises the question of the role of the refugees in the shaping of the 1808 civil code of Louisiana.
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Special Issue: Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez: The Revolutionary Atlantic’s Creole Visionary. South Atlantic Review 73.2 (Spring 2008).
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This special issue contains an introduction (by Mark Charles Roudané) and three articles (by Caryn Cossé Bell, Nathalie Dessens, and Laura V. Rouzan) bearing exclusively on the Roudanez brothers. It highlights the importance of Saint-Domingue connections and weight of the refugees in New Orleans. The Roudanez brothers, in particular Louis Charles, led the first crusade for blacks’ civil rights during the Civil War and Reconstruction, and their action constitutes another example of the singularity of those refugees and their descendants.
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Cultural Influences

The issue of the cultural influences brought by this large community of newcomers to New Orleans, at the crucial moment when it became the capital of the new US state of Louisiana (in 1812), has been addressed by an increasing number of scholars in the past two decades. Following the works of Debien and Lachance, Thomas Fiehrer is the first to address this question. He formulated his first hypothesis in the late 1970s (Fiehrer 1979), and he elaborated on his findings in two later versions of Fiehrer 1979 (Fiehrer 1989 and Fiehrer 1992). In the 21st century, more scholars have started addressing the question, although articles bearing solely on the question of the influence of the refugees in New Orleans are still relatively rare (Lachance 1999, Cossé Bell 2005, Dessens 2008).

Cossé Bell, Caryn. “Haitian Immigration to Louisiana in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” In In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience. New York: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, 2005.
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Cossé Bell dealt with free refugees of color in her dissertation (and her subsequent work, Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718–1868 [Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997]), but she overlooked the importance of these Caribbean origins in their cultural and ideological evolution. She rectifies this gap in the present article, which testifies to the evolution of the historiography.
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Dessens, Nathalie. “Saint-Domingue Refugees in New Orleans: Identity and Cultural Influences.” In Echoes of the Haitian Revolution, 1804–2004. Edited by Martin Munroe and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, 28–40. Kingston, Jamaica: University of West Indies Press, 2008.
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The topic of the refugees’ cultural influence had already been tackled in an earlier article by Dessens (“From Saint-Domingue to Louisiana: West Indian Refugees in the Lower Mississippi Region.” In French Colonial Louisiana and the Atlantic World. Edited by Bradley Bond, 244–264 [Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005]), which might be easier to find for North American readers. This article, however, is a longer, more detailed version of the earlier article.
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Fiehrer, Thomas. “The African Presence in Colonial Louisiana: An Essay on the Continuity of Caribbean Culture.” In Louisiana’s Black Heritage. Edited by Robert R. Macdonald, John R. Kemp, and Edward F. Hass, 3–31. Papers presented at Louisiana State Museum’s Louisiana Black Heritage Symposium, held 15–16 April 1977. New Orleans: Louisiana State Museum, 1979.
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This is Fiehrer’s earliest mention of the refugees’ cultural influence. Although it was still to be completed it deserves special credit for showing that the links between Saint-Domingue and New Orleans had started long before the Haitian Revolution and for launching the idea of the important role played by the refugees in shaping a new Creole identity in the 19th century.
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Fiehrer, Thomas. “Saint-Domingue/Haiti: Louisiana’s Caribbean Connection.” Louisiana History 30.4 (Autumn 1989): 419–437.
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Louisiana’s Caribbean cultural connections are now well publicized. This expanded version of Fiehrer’s original hypothesis is worth reading for some discoveries it brought to the public’s attention. Available online by subscription.
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Fiehrer, Thomas. “From La Tortue to La Louisiane: An Unfathomed Legacy.” In The Road to Louisiana: The Saint-Domingue Refugees, 1792–1809. Edited by Carl A. Brasseaux and Glenn R. Conrad, 1–30. Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1992.
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This is an almost exact reproduction of Fiehrer 1989, although Brasseaux and Conrad do not mention the initial publication in Louisiana History, which they do for the other three articles of the book. There are a few rare alterations in this later version and it might be easier to find in libraries than the previous one.
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Lachance, Paul F. “Were Saint-Domingue Refugees a Distinctive Cultural Group in Antebellum New Orleans? Evidence from Patterns and Strategies of Property Holding.” Revista/Review Interamericana 29.1–4 (1999): 171–192.
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Because they have been so long included among the Creoles in the historiography of Louisiana, the question of whether or not the refugees were a distinct group, thus capable of imprinting a durable cultural influence in New Orleans, is a topic of importance to historians in the 21st century. This is an excellent first attempt to answer the question from demographical data.
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