The wars of Louis XIV of France in Europe finally convinced the Spaniards to give the western quarter of the island to the French under to the Treaty on Ryswick (1697).

As in New Orleans, a system of plaçage developed, in which white men had a kind of common-law marriage with slave or free mistresses, and provided for them with a dowry, sometimes freedom, and often education or apprenticeships for their children.

"[17]The Gens de couleur libres class was made up of affranchis (ex-slaves), free-born blacks, and mixed-race people, and they controlled much wealth and land in the same way as Petits blancs; they held full citizenship and civil equality with other French subjects.

Imperial French policy makers worried that future conflicts could test the loyalty of their Creole subjects, and as Saint-Domingue was the richest colony in the world, they couldn't afford to lose it.

[12] The Code Noir based on Roman laws also conferred affranchis (ex-slaves) full citizenship and gave complete civil equality with other French subjects.

Some slaves became skilled workmen, and they received privileges such as better food, the ability to go into town, and partake in liberté des savanes (savannah liberty), a sort of freedom with certain rules.

Their time was chiefly spent in eating wangoo (boiled Indian cornflour), fish, land-crabs, and yams; sleeping; beating the African drum, composed of a barrel covered with a goat's skin; dancing, quarrelling, and love-making after their own peculiar amusement.

When I die, I will go to my country, that's all.As African freedmen had full citizenship and civil equality with other French subjects, they took an interest in expanding the studies of each of their unique people's history.

It was a disaster, thanks to disease and shortages of food; a visiting French official reported: "The greatest criminal would have preferred the Galleys to a torture session in this plague-stricken place.

[12] Starting in the early 1760s, and gaining much impetus after 1769, Bourbon royalist authorities began attempts to cut Creoles of color out of Saint-Domingue society, banning them from working in positions of public trust or as respected professionals.

They began segregating theaters and other public spaces, and issued an edict preventing Creoles of color from dressing extravagantly and restricted their ability to ride in private carriages.

In 1784, Julien Raimond, a free Creole of color planter, traveled to France to lobby the naval administrator to reform racist colonial policy implemented by the Bourbon government.

Nevertheless, Saint-Domingue did increase its reliance on indentured servants (known as Petits blanchets or engagés) and by 1789 about 6 percent of all white Creoles were employed as labor on plantations along with slaves.

The elite planters intended to take control of the island and create favorable trade regulations to further their own wealth and power and to restore social & political equality granted to the Creoles.

[33] After Rebel Creole leaders defeated the Bourbon royalists, they lost control of the slave revolt, and to make matters worse, Britain and Spain began to invade the colony.

[11] "The rebellion was extremely violent ... the rich plain of the North was reduced to ruins and ashes ..."[34] After months of arson and murder, Toussaint Louverture, a planter and Jacobin from Saint-Domingue, took charge of the leaderless slave revolt; he formed an alliance with Spanish invasion forces.

For months, Louverture was in sole command of Saint-Domingue, except for a semi-autonomous state in the south, where general André Rigaud, a Creole of color, rejected the authority of the Republican Government.

After the civil war, in January 1801, Louverture invaded the Spanish territory of Santo Domingo, taking possession of it from the governor, Don Garcia, with few difficulties.

Toussaint Louverture, however, understood that they formed a vital part of the economy in Saint-Dommingue as a middle class, and in the hopes of slowing the impending economic collapse, he invited them to return.

He gave property settlements and indemnities for war time losses, and promised equal treatment in his new Saint-Domingue; a good number of white Creole refugees did return.

[46] Given the fact that France had signed a temporary truce with Great Britain in the Treaty of Amiens, Napoleon was able to plan this operation without the risk of his ships being intercepted by the Royal Navy.

He decreed that all those suspected of conspiring in the acts of the expeditionary army should be put to death, including Creoles of color and freed slaves deemed traitors to Dessalines' regime.

Dessalines demanded that all blacks work either as soldiers to defend the nation or return to the plantations as labourers, so as to raise commodity crops such as sugar and coffee for export to sustain his new empire.

Dessalines was assassinated on 17 October 1806 by rebels led by Haitian generals Henri Christophe and Alexandre Pétion; his body was found dismembered and mutilated.

The Creoles of Saint-Domingue fled to many places in the United States, other Antilles islands, New York City, Cuba, France, Jamaica, and especially New Orleans in Louisiana.

Moved by this speech that each of them expressed in his own way, and all in a manner that appeared natural to us, how could we have concealed from them the uncertainty clouding the attempt which we, acting out of gratitude, must make to bring them to Louisiana.

-Without a doubt, responded Mr.Melvil, if this emancipation, wisely calculated, and brought about progressively, furnished peaceful citizens and not more wrong-doers to our Southern States, so vast are they that, to populate them, we receive, without asking any show of papers, all fugitives, whether they be condemned by revenge from their rulers, or from the law of European councils.

The desire to satisfy them will open their eyes to the necessity of work, which perhaps shall bring them softly to the state of freedom rather than remaining in that of slavery, but more efficiently than these engagés (indentured servants) who arrive from Europe in boatloads, and of whom barely ten out of forty are capable of surviving the vexatious and often deadly influences of our climate.The large, rich families of old Saint-Domingue were almost nowhere to be found in Louisiana.

The evacuation of Saint-Domingue and lately that of the island of Cuba, coupled with the immigration of the people from the East Coast, have tripled in eight years the population of this rich colony, which has been elevated to the status of statehood by virtue of a governmental decree.

Some refugees from Saint-Domingue did attempt to perpetuate French Revolutionary ideas on their arrival into Louisiana and Cuba, which American and Spanish authorities feared:"...many adventurers who are daily coming into the Territory from every quarter, possess revolutionary principles and restless, turbulent dispositions..."[11]Their fears were eventually confirmed; in 1805, Grandjean, a white Creole from Saint-Domingue and his compatriot accomplices attempted to incite a slave rebellion aimed at overthrowing the American government in Louisiana.