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This essay surveys the appropriations and transformations of the modern concept of citizenship by the actors of the Haitian Revolution, analyzed through the intertwining of race, plantation labor, and the postcolonial state. The concept of citizenship is interpreted as an instrument of emancipative struggles as well as of practices of government. The reconstruction is focused around four moments: the liberal critique by free people of color of the racial boundaries of French citizenship; the strategic uses of citizenship by the insurgent slaves to secure their freedom; the inclusion of former slaves into citizenship to preserve the plantation system within the republican order; and postcolonial Haitian citizenship. By analyzing the constitutional shifts and the political thinking of different figures, such as Julien Raimond, Georges Biassou, Jean-François, Toussaint Louverture, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the essay shows the conceptual originality of Haitian political thought and its relevance for the history of modern political concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay surveys the proposals of slavery reform advanced by two important figures of British and French imperial developments between the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries: the administrators, planters, and proslavery thinkers Edward Long and Pierre-Victor Malouet. Long and Malouet applied modern political theory to the government of plantation society in Jamaica and Saint-Domingue. Their concerns about the practical difficulties of plantation management in an age of increasingly recurring revolts by the enslaved led them to formulate schemes of slavery amelioration which, by transforming the slaves into perpetual servants, would preserve the order of colonial society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]