Correspondance de M. le Marquis Du Chilleau, Gouverneur

First edition. Bound in later hardpaper boards covered with pastepaper, spine with red gilt leather title vignette. [2] 37 [1] pp and one large folding table. Printed record of the 1789 Saint-Domingue grain shortage, revealing the clash between Governor du Chilleau and Intendant Marbois over colonial survival and metropolitan control on the eve of the Haitian Revolution. Official printed dossier documenting the dispute between Governor Marie-Charles du Chilleau and Intendant François Barbé-Marbois over the emergency importation of foreign flour during the subsistence crisis that struck Saint-Domingue in 1789. Printed for submission to the deputies of the colony at the request of the National Assembly, the text reproduces their complete correspondence with the Minister of the Marine, César Henri, Comte de La Luzerne, together with memoranda and statistical tables of flour imports. Following the ruinous hurricane of 1788, a failed harvest, and the severe winter that crippled France s grain exports, Saint-Domingue faced imminent famine. Du Chilleau, then governor-general, authorized the free importation of flour and biscuit by both French and American ships between 3 April and 1 July 1789, arguing that without immediate measures the colony would be left without food for planters and enslaved workers alike. Marbois, the intendant, opposed the decree as contrary to royal regulations and to the interests of French commerce. Their letters trace in detail the administrative conflict that paralyzed the colony in the months preceding the Revolution, revealing two incompatible views of colonial governance: du Chilleau s pragmatic and inclusive approach versus Marbois s insistence on strict metropolitan control. The exchanges grew increasingly hostile. Du Chilleau accused Marbois of insubordination and appealed to La Luzerne to recall one of them, while Marbois defended the integrity of royal commerce and warned against opening the ports to Americans. The annexed tables record the quantities of flour imported between April and July 1789 by port: at Le Cap alone, 12,152 barrels of foreign flour were landed barely sufficient for a few weeks supply and a calculation dated 7 July notes that only eleven days of flour remained on hand. Du Chilleau s final letters, dated May 1789, extend the permission to October and allow payment in colonial produce to preserve the island s limited specie reserves, a measure Marbois again refused to sign. Du Chilleau was recalled and imprisoned later that year; Marbois remained in office and later served as Napoleon s Minister of the Treasury. The affair reflected the broader collapse of the old colonial system on the eve of the Haitian Revolution. The correspondence exposes the contradictions of a plantation economy dependent on external provisions and rigid mercantile regulation at the very moment when France itself was disintegrating. Within a year, Saint-Domingue s grain shortages and political divisions would merge into the revolutionary crisis that destroyed slavery and colonial rule. Marie-Charles du Chilleau d Airvault (1734 1794), marquis du Chilleau, was a French general and colonial administrator, appointed governor-general of Saint-Domingue by La Luzerne in 1788. After his recall and imprisonment in 1789, he died during the Terror. François, marquis de Barbé-Marbois (1745 1837), intendant of Saint-Domingue since 1785, opposed these measures and defended the exclusif system; he later became Napoleon s Minister of the Treasury (1801 1806). César Henri, comte de La Luzerne (1737 1799), governor-general of Saint-Domingue from 1785 to 1787 and Minister of the Navy and Colonies from 1787 to 1790, oversaw the ministry during the dispute. An important record of the colonial grain shortage of 1789 and of the final conflict between royal authority and local necessity in France s richest Caribbean possession. Rare. No copies recorded in RBH; WorldCat locates five institutional holdings,