Introduction

  • John D. Garrigus
Chapter
Part of the The Americas in the Early Modern Atlantic World book series (AEMAW)

Abstract

On the morning of May 15, 1766, Julien Raimond, a 22-year-old native of the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue, made his first surviving appearance before a colonial notary. The son and grandson of successful indigo planters, Raimond had probably just returned from Europe, where many wealthy colonists like his father sent their children for schooling.1 Two of his sisters had been in France before their 25th birthdays and both women eventually married well-to-do Frenchmen in Bordeaux and Toulouse and settled there.2 But sometime after 1763, when the end of the Seven Years’ War restored shipping, Julien Raimond returned to Saint-Domingue. There, with his three surviving brothers, he became an indigo planter like his father Pierre and maternal grandfather François Begasse. Eventually he owned hundreds of slaves and built an impressive plantation house. Profits from slave labor filled that residence, like his father’s, with books, sheet music, silver, and crystal. A slave trained as a pastry chef prepared delicacies for his table.3

Keywords

African Ancestry African Descent Late Eighteenth Century Racial Prejudice French Colonist 
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Notes

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© John D. Garrigus 2006

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