Caribbean Smuggling and Plantation Management

The economic dynamics of Saint-Domingue in the late eighteenth century were defined by both extraordinary wealth and systemic contradictions. The colony’s production far exceeded the capacities of legal trade under the exclusif, the French mercantilist policy that restricted colonial commerce to exchanges with the metropole.Footnote ¹³While this system enriched French merchants and maintained the colonial hierarchy, it created severe bottlenecks in the local economy, leaving planters and plantation managers with surplus goods that could not be sold legally. This imbalance provided fertile ground for developing a hidden economy, as surplus sugar, coffee, and indigo were smuggled to foreign markets in exchange for scarce or expensive goods through official channels.Footnote ¹⁴Yet such hidden economies generated profits and played a significant role in the wealth and success of Saint-Domingue. For instance, in 1789, the export of goods from the island was approximately 161 million francs, while the estimated amount of illicit trade was around 17 million francs, representing 10 per cent of the colony’s trade.Footnote ¹⁵In a summary table of exports from Saint-Domingue, it is stated that “it is well known that smuggling in Saint-Domingue, especially in 1789, took almost all the cotton and indigo from Artibonite and exported them to Jamaica.”Footnote ¹⁶

As Garrigus notes, “Throughout the eighteenth century, indigo brought an international smuggling network to Saint-Domingue’s southern coast,” underscoring how these clandestine activities became deeply embedded in the colony’s economy.Footnote ¹⁷This embeddedness is further illustrated in the demographic distribution of plantation managers. According to the 1788 census, the south of Saint-Domingue hosted a significantly higher number of gérants and économes (bursar) than the north, with 797 gérants and 1,244 économes in the south compared to 472 gérants and 588 économes in the north.Footnote ¹⁸This disparity highlights the south’s prominence in smuggling networks and its reliance on skilled intermediaries to navigate the demands of plantation management alongside the opportunities presented by contraband. Positioned between absentee owners and enslaved labourers, gérants and économes in the south were likely key actors in facilitating the movement of surplus goods to clandestine markets, leveraging their proximity to production sites and the flexibility afforded by their roles.

The position of gérants as intermediaries within the plantation hierarchy was crucial to their ability to participate in the hidden economy. Situated between absentee planters in France and the enslaved labourers under their management, gérants operated with significant autonomy in the daily operations of the plantation. This autonomy was amplified by the physical and administrative distance from their employers, allowing them to exercise control over production outputs and logistical arrangements with minimal oversight. As scholar Van den Eeckhout demonstrates, the position of foremen occupied a “middle range of discretion” that granted them a relative autonomy vis-à-vis both employers and workers. This ambiguous status, neither fully subordinate nor entirely managerial, created a grey zone of accountability in which managers like gérants could navigate between official responsibilities and illicit practices, blending technical expertise with personal initiative.Footnote ¹⁹

Their dual position, bound to the planters yet embedded in local contexts, provided gérants with unique opportunities to exploit the plantation system for personal or unofficial gains. Garrigus highlights how intermediaries in Saint-Domingue were often the first point of contact for foreign traders operating outside the legal framework of the exclusif. By controlling access to surplus goods and negotiating their sales, gérants became indispensable figures in smuggling networks, leveraging their knowledge of plantation inventories and local markets to navigate the hidden economy effectively.Footnote ²⁰

The absence of planters from the colonies further enhanced the gérants’ capacity to engage in these activities. As described in Supervisors and Authority, the lack of direct oversight created “an asymmetry of information” that empowered managers to make decisions unchallenged, particularly in remote regions such as the southern coast of Saint-Domingue. This asymmetry not only facilitated routine plantation management but also provided the latitude for gérants to establish and maintain connections with illicit traders.Footnote ²¹Garrigus adds that in regions dominated by contraband, like Saint-Domingue’s southern coast, intermediaries frequently acted as brokers between plantation surpluses and international markets, ensuring the flow of goods beyond official channels.Footnote ²²Among these intermediaries, gérants thrived as brokers, leveraging their autonomy—afforded by the absenteeism of plantation owners—to manage daily operations and navigate opportunities in both legal and illicit trade.

Delegated Power: Absenteeism and the Rise of the Gérants

Jean-Jacques Brossard de la Poupardière and Aimé-Benjamin Fleuriau were two slave owners who, after making their fortune, decided to leave Saint-Domingue to return to France. These two planters, in their destinies and successes, exemplify the path taken by many French families who made a name for themselves in the West Indies. Their respective long-distance relationships with their gérants after their departure allow us to observe the practices of absenteeism and the establishment of legal and communication structures in Saint-Domingue.

Jean-Jacques Brossard de la Poupardière seems to have been one of the colonists forgotten by the world despite his status among his contemporaries and his economic success. In a memoir published in 1738, Brossard de la Poupardière states that he settled in Saint-Domingue at the age of seventeen or eighteen and quickly developed several plantations of “some consequence.”Footnote ²³The total value of Brossard de la Poupardière’s properties in Saint-Domingue was estimated at 1,332,000 francs in 1828.Footnote ²⁴Yet, his return to France proved difficult, as he chose to establish a sugar refinery and a cotton textile factory in the city of Le Havre, Normandy, where his Protestant faith prevented him from settling for several years due to the region’s predominantly Catholic population.Footnote ²⁵Only with the help of his contacts, such as M. Derchigny, an intendant of the navy in Le Havre, was he able to carry out his enterprise successfully.Footnote ²⁶Derchigny noted, “This merchant, who is known in Cap-Français, the island of Saint-Domingue, holds assets of 600,000 pounds in Negroes and in houses and makes considerable trade there.”Footnote ²⁷After his departure, he left one of his plantations, which was located near the city of Cap-Français, in the hands of his gérant, M. Binet, and an économe (bursar), M. Sollicoffre.Footnote ²⁸

Aimé-Benjamin Fleuriau (1709–1787) had a similar background. The two men even originated from the same city, La Rochelle. François Fleuriau, Aimé-Benjamin’s father, was a refiner who went bankrupt in 1729, leaving his two children with unpayable debts. As a result, at the age of twenty, Aimé-Benjamin, the elder son, decided to try and make his fortune in Saint-Domingue, where his uncle owned a plantation. By 1747, Aimé-Benjamin was in a position to buy the Bellevue plantation in the parish of La Croix-des-Bouquets from Mr Mathieu.Footnote ²⁹Less than ten years later, this had become one of the most important plantations in the region. After assuring the financial success of his enterprise, Aimé-Benjamin decided in 1755 to return to France. Aimé-Benjamin’s policy was to keep his property within his family network. Hence, when he left Saint-Domingue, he placed his plantation in the care of a distant cousin on his mother’s side, Jacques Rasseteau, who became his gérant.Footnote ³⁰Four years into his stewardship, Pierre Rasseteau passed away in 1776, reportedly poisoned by enslaved domestics.Footnote ³¹His replacement was Jean-Baptiste Arnaudeau, another distant cousin, who had been living on the plantation since 1775 and ran it until its final loss in 1804 with the proclamation of Haiti’s independence.

By settling in La Rochelle and Le Havre as wealthy planters from Saint-Domingue, the Fleuriau and Brossard de la Poupardière families permanently changed the landscape of their respective cities.Footnote ³²Their return to France was facilitated by legal and communication structures that enabled absentee owners to maintain a presence in colonies like Saint-Domingue, where the number of absentee owners exceeded that of those who resided on the island.Footnote ³³Thus, the role of the gérant changed; he was no longer a simple “helper” for the master but became the embodiment of the owner’s power over his property.

The employment of blancs à gage, French men working on the plantations for low wages, made it possible for these owners to return to France. Contemporaries, like modern scholars, were almost unanimous in perceiving owner absenteeism to be a “disengagement from all activity” or even a “flight from work” in favour of a life of luxury, leisure, and idleness.Footnote ³⁴A travelogue about Saint-Domingue, published in 1797, contains a passage by Alexandre-Stanislas de Wimpffen who states that “out of ten Europeans who settle in Saint-Domingue, at least seven will return to their homeland as soon as they believe they can live there comfortably. Those whose characters or tastes are so repugnant to colonial manners as to desire to have nothing more in common with the colonies.”Footnote ³⁵This widespread absenteeism not only shaped perceptions of the planter class but also redefined the structure of plantation management in Saint-Domingue. With owners departing for metropolitan France, the responsibility for maintaining plantation operations fell increasingly to gérants and other managerial figures. These intermediaries became the physical embodiment of the owner’s authority, navigating the delicate balance between enforcing the master’s will and adapting to the realities of colonial life. The absence of direct oversight created a space where gérants could exercise considerable autonomy, a condition that would later prove pivotal in their integration into the hidden economy.

“Men without a Life of Their Own”: From Marginalised Colonists to Plantation Managers

The variety of terms used in French Saint-Domingue—gérants, régisseurs, and économes—highlights the fluid and often imprecise nature of plantation management terminology.Footnote ³⁶Frequently appearing in archival records, these titles were sometimes used interchangeably, blurring the distinctions between their respective responsibilities. This variation reflects not only the inherent complexity of plantation management but also the adaptability of these roles to the specific needs and structures of individual estates. Understanding the role of the gérant is essential to grasping the unique position they occupy within the plantation economy. The Dictionnaire Universel du Commerce defines the gérant as “A name referring particularly to the person in charge of the economy of a plantation and the government of the Negroes in the French colonies.”Footnote ³⁷This definition firmly places the gérant within the context of slavery, emphasising their financial responsibilities even before their role in managing the enslaved population. According to Tristan Stubbs, overseers—the American equivalent of the gérants—were “faced with twin responsibilities for economic success and societal order.”Footnote ³⁸The contra mayors in Spanish colonies fulfilled a similar role. In French, British, and Spanish colonies, therefore, the stewardship of the plantations was linked to a colonial practice of slavery. However, as the French settler Ducoeurjoly stated in his Manuel des habitants de Saint-Domingue, “The gérant is a person chosen and appointed by the owner to represent him on his estate,” implying that the landlord’s absence was an integral aspect of plantation administration in Saint-Domingue.Footnote ³⁹The search for suitable candidates was a primary concern for plantation owners, prompting the creation of numerous manuals offering detailed advice on selecting a gérant. These texts not only guided recruitment practices but also provided valuable insights into the expectations, responsibilities, and daily realities of the gérant’s role within the plantation system.

Recruitment could go both ways, with a landlord who was leaving the island or a gérant who was looking for a job both being able to advertise in the local newspapers.Footnote ⁴⁰However, as was customary in the eighteenth century, management was rarely entrusted to a stranger to the plantation. Instead, placement—the practice of using social or family connections to secure positions—remained the most common method.Footnote ⁴¹For instance, Madame Fleuriau tried to place her cousin on the Fleuriau plantation in Saint-Domingue, a move met with scepticism by the gérant, Jean-Baptiste Arnaudeau, who doubted the cousin’s experience and competence.Footnote ⁴²The position of gérant was highly coveted not only for the authority it granted but also for the social status it conferred. Ducoeurjoly observed that the role brought significant prestige, but he also noted that reputation was essential for securing such a position.Footnote ⁴³

The initial step in this process involved determining the type of individual suitable for this kind of employment. Alexandre de Wimpffen advised planters not to nominate their gérant from among their peers: “If you take him from the class of your equals, that is to say, among the class of property owners, his own affairs will only allow him to give yours very superficial attention.”Footnote ⁴⁴The selection of a gérant was not a mere formality but a cornerstone of plantation administration. As Alexandre de Wimpffen emphasised, the ideal gérant needed to devote himself entirely to the owner’s estate, free from distractions such as personal wealth or property. This requirement effectively excluded grands planteurs (wealthy planters) and rooted the role of the gérant within the socio-economic category of the petits blancs (poor whites). Tasked with overseeing the plantation’s economy, labour force, and daily operations, the gérant functioned as an indispensable intermediary in a system reliant on absentee ownership. In Saint-Domingue, only a third of plantation owners lived on the island, while the remaining two-thirds relied on gérants to manage their estates.Footnote ⁴⁵

Despite their crucial responsibilities, they had a particularly negative reputation, and defenders and detractors of slavery alike were unanimous in their view of the petits blancs: “They are men without a life of their own, who sometimes fled from Europe because of their crimes, and who, thanks to their white skin, were astonished to find under the skies of the West Indies the consideration they no longer deserved. The generic term ‘petits blancs’ was used to describe all these individuals.”Footnote ⁴⁶This perception closely mirrors the experience of American overseers, who, as Tristan Stubbs observes, “might be given wages, food, and lodging, but with them he received prejudice, mistrust, and dishonour.”Footnote ⁴⁷Both groups occupied a paradoxical position: indispensable to the functioning of the plantation system yet marginalised within the broader colonial hierarchy.

This did not diminish the desire or necessity of acquiring such a position, and such a position was not easily acquired. One usually becomes a gérant only after years of work on the plantation as an économe and after gaining the owner’s confidence. Charles Marie François Malenfant, always referred to as Colonel Malenfant,Footnote ⁴⁸is one of the few contemporaries to speak out about this upwardly mobile mentality and the ambition of white plantation workers. He criticises their mindset: “The économe wants to become a gérant; the gérant, a procureur [attorney]; the latter wants to earn the trust of his owner, to make more income than the one he replaced, and thus to earn the reputation of a great planter.”Footnote ⁴⁹For the petits blancs, becoming a gérant was one of the most viable paths to acquiring wealth and eventually achieving property ownership. The position not only offered steady wages but also provided experience in plantation management and access to networks of influence, both of which were crucial for aspiring landowners. This professional trajectory highlights how the gérants balanced their roles as employees with long-term personal ambitions, using the plantation system as a platform for social mobility.

Regarding the remuneration of gérants, determining an accurate estimate of their average annual salary is a challenging task. However, it is widely acknowledged that plantation overseers were compensated on a commission basis, which entailed receiving a percentage of the plantation’s profits based on their performance. Footnote ⁵⁰Colonel Malenfant mentions an annual salary ranging between 400 and 500 pounds, while Jean-Jacques de la Poupardière claims to pay Mr Binet, his gérant, between 1,000 and 1,500 pounds monthly. As for Jean-Baptiste Arnaudeau, the Fleuriau family paid him 800 pounds during his time as an économe; his salary was certainly higher when he became the gérant.Footnote ⁵¹The salary inevitably varied according to numerous factors, such as the plantation’s size, the specific remuneration offered by the owners, and the manager’s skills. Consequently, the gérants were paid as much as qualified workers in France during the late eighteenth century, and their annual salaries ranged between 300 and 1,000 pounds.

The accounts of the Foäche family further illustrate this variability. For example, Ladouay, the gérant of the Santo plantation, earned a substantial 12,000 pounds annually, while Seignoret, the procureur of the same estate, received 20,000 pounds. However, not all gérants were so highly compensated. Gauvain, the gérant of the Trou plantation, earned only 545 pounds in a year.Footnote ⁵²These disparities suggest that a gérant’s earnings were closely tied to the profitability of the plantation they managed and to the specific terms negotiated with their employers. Therefore, while gérants were compensated similarly to skilled workers, their role as heads of the plantation suggests that their salaries may not always have been commensurate with the level of responsibility and complexity their duties entailed.

In addition to their salary, the gérants had access to other benefits, such as using the owner’s house and even the servants. Indeed, his installation in the master’s house after the owner’s departure was not an insignificant act. With this installation, a gérant visually asserted power in the plantation space, as the house was generally located at the top of a hill, visible to all and seemingly omniscient.Footnote ⁵³Thus, the move from an annexe to the owner’s house gave the gérant legitimacy in his management.

This visible assertion of authority contrasts sharply with Malenfant’s sarcastic depiction of gérants as idle and detached from the realities of plantation life. Malenfant remarked that gérants “took care of the accounting and correspondence” but spent most of their time at leisure, contrasting this with the six days a week enslaved workers toiled from dawn to dusk.Footnote ⁵⁴However, an examination of the sources reveals a starkly different reality: the gérants’ responsibilities were not only multifaceted and intricate but also demanding, contradicting Malenfant’s depiction of their role as one of ease and leisure. This complexity of the gérant’s duties, as outlined in contemporary sources, finds further validation in official regulations.

The ordinance of 3 December 1784, addressing procureurs and économes-gérants, required that “every procureur or économe-gérant shall keep six specific plantation registers.”Footnote ⁵⁵This directive raises a critical question: Was it a response to complaints from absentee landlords about mismanagement, or did it signal the growing professionalisation of the gérant’s role? While the motivations behind the regulation remain unclear, its detailed prescriptions suggest a broader shift in how plantation management was perceived. By the late eighteenth century, the gérant’s role was no longer an informal arrangement but a structured position with codified responsibilities. This formalisation not only reinforced the authority of absentee owners over distant estates but also exposed the tension between the owners’ expectations and the realities of the gérants’ day-to-day challenges.

Plantation management is, therefore, not just a matter of riding around the plantation on one’s horse and enjoying the “sweetness” that comes with a position of authority, as Malenfant might have claimed. As the central organ of the coercive system, the gérant played a repressive role, as described by Michael Zeuske, aiming to control and prevent revolts.Footnote ⁵⁶His duties, however, went far beyond the mere exercise of violence. Ducoeurjoly devotes seven pages to the responsibilities of the gérant, and his list is, according to him, not exhaustive. A gérant would need mathematical knowledge for the construction and repair of buildings, medical knowledge to provide the necessary assistance in the absence of a doctor, and agricultural knowledge to grow food for the enslaved people and himself. Keeping the plantation in good condition by trimming the hedges and allowing access to water is also imperative. Managing livestock and husbandry add to these basic skills every gérant needs to master.Footnote ⁵⁷Given the complexity and importance of his tasks, Caitlin Rosenthal argues that the existence of the gérant shows the introduction of “scientific management” to the homesteads, which involved calculating productivity, knowing the work strengths of the enslaved, and improving farming techniques to obtain better yields, all in order to guarantee the plantation remained operational and profitable.Footnote ⁵⁸This complexity in management illustrates the evolution of the gérant’s function from a simple contract worker to an experienced and highly qualified employee.

From this perspective, the gérant was thus the mainstay of the plantation’s economic success, with no other single figure holding a more important position in the management of the plantation system.Footnote ⁵⁹Nevertheless, the gérants, like “nine-tenths of the whites … considered the colony only ‘as an inn’ where they were only passing through and where they did not expect to die.”Footnote ⁶⁰Consequently, their only way out of their “gérant-ial” condition was to set up a hidden economy for their own benefit.

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Illegal Activities of the Gérants on the Plantation

The gérants as petits blancs had a reputation for being masters of violenceFootnote ⁶¹and for poor administration of plantations, primarily due to their involvement in smuggling and illegal activities, which contributed to this negative image. Despite this, Saint-Domingue was one of the wealthiest and most productive colonies in the world. Through the correspondence of the Fleuriau and Brossard de la Poupardière families, the actions of two plantation gérants, Jean-Baptiste Arnaudeau and Binet, come to light, revealing how they navigated the hidden economy of Saint-Domingue. Their experiences illustrate the complex interplay of authority, distance, and ambition, showcasing the ways gérants leveraged their roles to engage in informal economic networks that significantly shaped the colony’s prosperity.

The gérants Binet (whose first name is unknown) and Jean-Baptiste Arnaudeau, who managed the plantations of the Brossard de la Poupardière and Fleuriau families, respectively, serve as examples of the role and conditions of gérants in Saint-Domingue. While their relationships with their employers differed, they were united in their involvement in illicit activities on their respective plantations. The limited information available about these gérants can be gleaned from the correspondence they maintained with the owner, which provides insight into their education, character, and handwriting. The only information available about Binet comes from letters written by Jean-Jacques Brossard de la Poupardière. In an 1824 exchange with his mother, Brossard mentions an orphan living on his property whom he considers to be his godson and plans to pay a yearly salary of 1,000 to 1,500 pounds.Footnote ⁶²Brossard’s brief description of the orphan suggests that he took him in while he was still a minor and trained him as a bursar in the hopes of leaving him in charge of his plantation. It is possible to speculate that Binet was an illegitimate child of a white father and a Black mother who was either enslaved or free, or of two free people of colour. In either case, it seems likely that Binet himself was Black or of mixed race.Footnote ⁶³Brossard does not mention the skin colour of his gérant, but he does state that he “tamed” him and he was now “very faithful,” phrases that seem to make reference to common perceptions of Black people by whites as “savage.”Footnote ⁶⁴

After Jean-Jacques Brossard’s departure, the situation changed significantly, according to, Sauzeau, a relative of the family, Brossard de la Poupardière himself, and other witnesses. Binet was described as a problematic character and was eventually fired by Brossard due to poor management of the plantation. Binet’s fate after his dismissal remains unclear. Is he the Gabriel Binet who owned a house in the parish of Aquin a few years later? Or the Pierre Binet, who worked as a coastal pilot between 1757 and 1785? As is often the case with plantation gérants, little information is available about their identities beyond their names.

The case of Jean-Baptiste Arnaudeau is unique in that his correspondence with his employer, Aimé-Benjamin Fleuriau, is well preserved. Arnaudeau lived at the Bellevue plantation from 1775, according to one letter he wrote to Fleuriau. He also left behind some personal archives. His daughter’s birth certificate of 5 September 1793 and his marriage certificate to Marguerite François-Baussan of 23 July 1793 provide more information about his background. According to these records, Jean-Baptiste Arnaudeau was the legitimate son of Jean-Baptiste Arnaudeau and Françoise Chamois, born in La Rochelle in the parish of Saint-Barthélémy on 30 June 1753. His name was registered as Jean-Henri-Joseph-Élie Arnaudeau, but it was common in France during the Ancien Régime to use one’s father’s first name as a customary name. There is no doubt that this is the same Jean-Baptiste Arnaudeau who is found in Saint-Domingue twenty-two years later, as no other Arnaudeau was born in the same parish that year. It is likely that Arnaudeau’s position on the plantation was obtained due to the close business and family connections between the Chamois and Fleuriau families. Arnaudeau’s maternal grandfather had married into the Fleuriau family, and both families were linked through family and commercial relationships. The bond connecting Jean-Baptiste Arnaudeau and Aimé-Benjamin Fleuriau was therefore established differently from that between Binet and Jean-Jacques Brossard de la Poupardière, as Binet was a stranger to that family. Nevertheless, both relationships were based essentially on trust, which was easily broken in the absence of the plantation’s owner, as distance created a shift in the power dynamic between owners and gérants, with the latter often taking advantage of their position to engage in illegal activities.

The “hijacking” of enslaved people was a widespread issue in the colony of Saint-Domingue, reflecting both the gérants’ significant autonomy and the systemic flaws in plantation management. Gérants would often use enslaved people for their personal gain or profit, such as for additional labour on the gérant’s own property, rather than for the purposes intended by the plantation owner. A relative of the Brossard de la Poupardière family documented this practice, stating that Binet used the slaves of the plantation for his own profit.Footnote ⁶⁵Arnaudeau was known to engage in this practice, according to Colonel Malenfant, who reported the accounts of his neighbour’s slaves, who claimed that “he [Arnaudeau] has a property in the Mornes; it is Fleuriau’s Negroes who plant the coffee, who do all the work. He has 15 to 20 Negroes of his own. Every week he sends 30 to 40 Negroes from Fleuriau to his plantation. Isn’t this white man a rascal?” Such practices underline how gérants blurred the lines between personal enrichment and their formal responsibilities, undermining plantation owners’ control.Footnote ⁶⁶

In response to the misuse of enslaved labour, legal measures such as the 23 December 1785 ordinance sought to penalise gérants for misappropriation, recognising it as a form of theft punishable by fines: “Those of the said procureurs or économes-gérants who are found to have hijacked for their own profit or to the profit of a third party the work of the slaves entrusted to their care, without the written consent of the owner … will be prosecuted, as thieves.”Footnote ⁶⁷This legislation was driven by the desire of owners to maintain control over the activities of their gérants, but distance, as well as the lack of effective means, often made it difficult for owners to monitor and regulate these actions. As stated in the ordinance, the “Police courante d’habitation” (plantation police) was tasked with addressing such offences. Yet, in practice, they tended to focus on enslaved individuals—tracking maroons or preventing theft—rather than monitoring gérants’ behaviour. Footnote ⁶⁸Consequently, gérants were able to continue to commit crimes with relative impunity. For absentee owners like the Fleuriaus and Brossards, financial returns often took precedence over concerns about labour mismanagement, underscoring the prioritisation of profits over control.

In addition to the hijacking of enslaved people, gérants were also implicated in embezzling plantation resources, a fact often revealed through evidenced discrepancies in bookkeeping. The Ordinance of 1784 mandated managers to regularly send accounts and journals detailing the progress, expenses, and income of the plantation. While intended to provide absentee owners with oversight, these records frequently reported lower-than-expected revenues. Correspondence between owners and gérants often centred on crop yields and shipments, particularly of sugar and coffee. At the beginning of each letter he sent to his employer, Arnaudeau would report on the shipment of barrels to France, but the yield from the plantation appeared to be insufficient for the Fleuriau family. Following the death of his father in 1787, Louis-Benjamin Fleuriau took over correspondence with Arnaudeau. He identified two primary causes for the low yield: the need for enhanced agricultural methods and a lack of effective prioritisation. Despite the geographical separation and age disparity, Louis-Benjamin’s familial ties and acknowledgement of Arnaudeau’s expertise prevented him from being overly assertive with the gérant. Instead, he adopted a polite and counselling tone. However, Arnaudeau used this dynamic to his advantage. In his monthly updates, he blamed poor output on uncontrollable external factors, including inadequate slave labour, harsh weather events like droughts, and tropical storms. He expressed himself thusly:

These consistent justifications highlight the gérants’ ability to deflect blame while exploiting the trust and distance inherent in absentee ownership. Determining whether Arnaudeau’s explanations masked fraudulent intentions remains challenging. When the plantation’s poor performance could not be attributed to external factors like weather or insufficient enslaved labour, Arnaudeau claimed ignorance, as illustrated by his statement: “I see with sorrow that they [the sugars] have reached you badly conditioned. I don’t know what the reason could be.”Footnote ⁷⁰Are indeed the sugars poorly conditioned, or has the gérant deliberately sent lower quality sugar in order to retain the higher quality sugar for personal gain? It is very likely that Arnaudeau resold some of the family’s sugar to the black market. Was the plantation he purchased in 1789 bought with the money he made as a smuggler? One can only speculate. Despite the family’s frequent requests for financial accounts and their desire for “significant improvement,”Footnote ⁷¹Arnaudeau was able to maintain a balance that satisfied the family, even as sugar production declined. At the time of Aimé-Benjamin Fleuriau’s death in 1787, the Bellevue plantation had produced 242 barrels of sugar, which had increased to 352 by 1790,Footnote ⁷²generating an annual income of 306,895 francs for the Fleuriau family from sugar production alone.Footnote ⁷³The value of the Bellevue plantation was estimated at 167,612.25 francs, making it one of the top 100 properties in Saint-Domingue.Footnote ⁷⁴This ability to balance the family’s expectations while likely engaging in illicit activities underscores the complexities of the gérant-owner relationship, particularly under conditions of absenteeism.

In contrast to the relationship between Jean-Baptiste Arnaudeau and the Fleuriau family, the dynamic between Jean-Jacques Brossard de la Poupardière and Binet was fraught with tension, characterised by poor communication and growing mistrust. After leaving the plantation, Brossard observed a notable shift in Binet’s behaviour. Once attentive to his employer’s interests, Binet increasingly prioritised his own, neglecting his responsibilities as manager. Brossard lamented this change in a letter, writing, “You only have ambitions for your own interests. In the first and second years of my departure, you seemed to be very zealous for my interests, but now you are only recognised as being concerned with yours and ready to sacrifice mine.”Footnote ⁷⁵Desperate for information about the state of his property and Binet’s activities, he reached out to neighbouring friends and to his économe, M. Sollicoffre. Brossard angrily wrote to Binet, “I had to write to my friends since I could not get anything from you or from Mr Solicofre [sic] who was as secretive as you.”Footnote ⁷⁶

Brossard de la Poupardière repeatedly voiced his frustration with Binet’s lack of transparency, criticising his self-serving behaviour and neglect of the plantation’s interests. He accused Binet of withholding essential information and failing to provide requested accounts, which was a recurring issue in their correspondence. Binet also faced allegations of taking unwarranted liberties, including undertaking unauthorised construction projects without consulting Brossard.Footnote ⁷⁷This ongoing conflict culminated in Brossard’s sharp rebuke: “Think about it if all the goods you possess are legitimately yours. You must have made great profits to have made a fortune similar to yours in such a short time.”Footnote ⁷⁸This statement reveals Brossard’s acute awareness of Binet’s fraudulent behaviour and strongly implies that Binet had amassed his wealth through illicit means. Brossard’s frustration underscores his belief that Binet was exploiting his position for personal financial gain to the detriment of the plantation and its owner.

This recurring tension between absentee owners and their gérants reveals the paradoxical position of these intermediaries, who were simultaneously autonomous in their daily operations and somehow reliant on the trust of their employers. As Supervisors and Authority explains, “Managers operated in a space of delegated authority, where the absence of direct oversight both empowered and constrained their actions.”Footnote ⁷⁹This dual dynamic highlights how gérants were able to exploit the latitude afforded by their roles, navigating the fine line between fulfilling their employers’ expectations and advancing their own interests.

Rather than the illegal activities themselves, it was the fraud and embezzlement—exacerbated when the plantation’s income could no longer meet expectations—that became the primary source of conflict between plantation owners and gérants. Smuggling, however, was often tolerated by owners as the inevitable cost of their absence. For gérants, these activities offered more than just financial rewards; they provided an opportunity to transcend their marginalised status as petits blancs and assert their autonomy within the rigid plantation hierarchy. Through theft and smuggling, gérants carved out a sphere of influence that allowed them to accumulate wealth and redefine their position within colonial society. The hidden economy they created operated not because it was invisible to plantation owners or the enslaved workforce but because it functioned beyond the boundaries of legal and institutional oversight. This extra-legal economy was not merely a byproduct of absenteeism but a defining feature of the plantation system, revealing the profound vulnerabilities and contradictions at its core.