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Lot Essay
Jacques Potier, a French infantry captain, engineer and draughtsman, served in Saint Domingue (Haiti) from 1755 until 1762, directed by the Duke of Orleans to build new fortifications and develop the colony as a naval base in defence of France's important sugar trade.
Discovered by Columbus in 1492 and named Espagnola (Little Spain), later Latinized into Hispaniola, the island known by its natives as Haiti (mountainous country) remained a Spanish possession until the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697 ceded the western part of the island (present day Haiti) to the French. The colony languished until its mother country lifted restrictions on its trade from the 1720s, and by mid-century its rich natural resources and agriculture (sugar cane, indigo, coffee, cotton and cocoa), worked by the vast slave population brought into the colony by the French at Port-de-Paix on the north-western coast, transformed the territory into one of France's richest and most profitable colonies.
Potier's work, designing, building and restoring fortifications at Port-de-Paix and Saint-Louis, consolidated the French defences on the island, protecting and developing these important commercial and strategic sites at the time of the Seven Years War. The drawings by Potier record both his work on these vital maritime fortifications and on the plantations, where he would have had responsibility for the design and construction of hydraulic powered mills, irrigation and drainage.
In one of the earliest texts about the colony, Moreau de Saint-Mery's Description de la Partie Française de L'Isle Saint Dominique, written in 1773, the two most important figures are Potier and Louis-Roger Charlevoix de Villiers, sous-ingénieur at Saint Domingue from 1746, and later ingénieur and capitaine. Moreau de Saint-Mery discusses his building a small fort near Port-de-Paix which was begun in 1756, a date that appears on two of the drawings. Another, Grand-Fort, was restored in 1757. One of Potier's drawings is a view of an habitation du sucre, a sugar plantation featuring the master's residence, a row of slave cabins, fields of cane, the mill and sugar-house. One of the buildings carries the date of 1757.
Apart from depicting the landscape and architecture of the colony, Potier's drawings are remarkable for their graphic depiction of the regime of slavery on the plantations.
The French exploited the rich agriculture of the island through the forced labour of half a million slaves, notoriously ill-treated here, with the planter paying little attention to the Code Noir. The situation would later prompt Toussaint L'Ouverture's revolution of 1791, his eventual victory in 1803, and the creation of the independent state of Haiti in 1804.
Potier was wounded in a skirmish with the English in 1762 and returned to France where he was made a Knight of the Order of St. Louis and then held the position of adviser on military engineering to the Duke of Orleans until shortly before the French Revolution of 1789.
Discovered by Columbus in 1492 and named Espagnola (Little Spain), later Latinized into Hispaniola, the island known by its natives as Haiti (mountainous country) remained a Spanish possession until the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697 ceded the western part of the island (present day Haiti) to the French. The colony languished until its mother country lifted restrictions on its trade from the 1720s, and by mid-century its rich natural resources and agriculture (sugar cane, indigo, coffee, cotton and cocoa), worked by the vast slave population brought into the colony by the French at Port-de-Paix on the north-western coast, transformed the territory into one of France's richest and most profitable colonies.
Potier's work, designing, building and restoring fortifications at Port-de-Paix and Saint-Louis, consolidated the French defences on the island, protecting and developing these important commercial and strategic sites at the time of the Seven Years War. The drawings by Potier record both his work on these vital maritime fortifications and on the plantations, where he would have had responsibility for the design and construction of hydraulic powered mills, irrigation and drainage.
In one of the earliest texts about the colony, Moreau de Saint-Mery's Description de la Partie Française de L'Isle Saint Dominique, written in 1773, the two most important figures are Potier and Louis-Roger Charlevoix de Villiers, sous-ingénieur at Saint Domingue from 1746, and later ingénieur and capitaine. Moreau de Saint-Mery discusses his building a small fort near Port-de-Paix which was begun in 1756, a date that appears on two of the drawings. Another, Grand-Fort, was restored in 1757. One of Potier's drawings is a view of an habitation du sucre, a sugar plantation featuring the master's residence, a row of slave cabins, fields of cane, the mill and sugar-house. One of the buildings carries the date of 1757.
Apart from depicting the landscape and architecture of the colony, Potier's drawings are remarkable for their graphic depiction of the regime of slavery on the plantations.
The French exploited the rich agriculture of the island through the forced labour of half a million slaves, notoriously ill-treated here, with the planter paying little attention to the Code Noir. The situation would later prompt Toussaint L'Ouverture's revolution of 1791, his eventual victory in 1803, and the creation of the independent state of Haiti in 1804.
Potier was wounded in a skirmish with the English in 1762 and returned to France where he was made a Knight of the Order of St. Louis and then held the position of adviser on military engineering to the Duke of Orleans until shortly before the French Revolution of 1789.