Dessens examines the legacy of approximately 15,000 Saint-Domingue refugees--whites, slaves, and free people of color--who settled in Louisiana between 1791 and 1815. Forced to flee their French Caribbean colony following a slave rebellion that gave birth to the Haitian Republic in January 1804, they spread throughout the Caribbean and along the North American Atlantic coast.Forming a relatively coherent diaspora for at least two decades, they concentrated in New Orleans. In this first comprehensive study of the Saint-Domingue influence, Dessens brings to light a refugee community composed in...

"Provides fresh insights into the ways that New Orleans was tied to the larger Atlantic world and how the city and its inhabitants weathered their incorporation into the United States."--Ashli White, author of Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic

"Dessens reveals a vanished world of transatlantic circuits, interracial families, politics and property, even ethnic rivalries--but most of all, the resilience, adaptability, and hard times of Saint-Domingue exiles whom revolution and war on two continents had cast ashore in New Orleans."--Lawrence N....