Their Most Valuable and Most Vulnerable Asset Slaves on the Early Sugar Plantations of Saint-Domingue (1697-1715)

From 1698, colonial officers and investors from France forged a conglomerate of companies for transforming Saint-Domingue into a sugar colony, thus augmenting incomes of tax farmers and of the crown. Capital was also captured from enemy colonies and generated through trade with Spanish possessions. The most important capital were slaves, both as laborers and mortgageable property-crucial during the War of Spanish Succession, which brought price volatility and speculation in land and sugar. In order to secure the colony's development, authorities restricted rights of owners over their slaves, preventing their sale or abuse. Only around 1715 was such protection of slaves suppressed.