El Código Rural de Haití: Santo Domingo’s Free Blacks under Haitian Colonization

This presentation analyzes labor contracts to articulate the extent and limits of freedom after emancipation in Santo Domingo during the Haitian Unification. Jean-Pierre Boyer’s Código Rural bound recently emancipated people to their former masters by requiring them to continue the domestic and agricultural work they had previously performed. During Unification, Boyer exported this model of labor to Spanish Santo Domingo. Urban and rural labor contracts formed between 1824 and 1831 demonstrate that the Código Rural shaped Unification-era labor beyond that which individuals performed under contract. In fact, the Haitian government’s interest in and policing of free Black people’s labor built upon Spanish colonial and Boba -era practices. The historical analysis of these contracts contributes to existing historiographical interest in the continuity of slavery’s institutions after emancipation. This Spanish-language data additionally promotes the conception of Haiti as the origin of Caribbean-wide change even after the Age of Revolutions.