Lettre de l'Assemblée Provinciale permanent du Nord de Saint-Domingue, a Monsieur le Gouveneur General ...

£3,000 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A very good copy of this eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue imprint, concerning one of the most important events prior to, and contributing toward, the Haitian Revolution . In addition to simmering tensions of Saint-Domingue’s enslaved workforce, the free coloured population and Creoles were advocating for full citizenship rights. The convocation at Saint-Marc, which was exclusively composed of whites, convened in Saint-Marc on March 25th, 1790. This led to a second Colonial Assembly on April 14th, which began “issuing radical decrees and reforms, pushing the colony further toward autonomy from France and creating conflict between the colony’s royalists and patriots. Saint Marc planters also vowed that they will never grant political rights to mulattoes … and expressly exclude them from the primary assemblies. Mulattoes continue to be frustrated in their attempts to secure their rights and a new Colonial Assembly is elected without a single mulatto or free black vote” (Shen). Addressed to the governor Louis-Antoine Thomassin de Peynier, the Provincial Assembly of Saint-Domingue here demand that he dissolves the legislative assembly at Saint-Marc. The text argues that considering “the latest acts of sovereignty that the assembly sitting in Saint-Marc has just allowed itself, in particular […] the so-called decree by which the troops have just been declared discharged, the opening of the ports” and “considering that all these acts being so many punishable offences, the the first

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.