(^116) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
ambushes and used poisoned arrows. Unlike the Aztecs, the Caribs
tried to kill their adversaries. The French paid dearly for their temer
ity, but in the end they got two of the largest islands in the Lesser An
tilles, with fertile soil and good harbors, and these are still French
today, départements d'outre-mer. (Sometimes these tiny islands were
shared, as is St. Martin to this day. Make room for me too. Even those
traditional enemies the English and French lived at times side by side,
joining forces to defend against the common Spanish foe.)
The big French prize, however, like Jamaica for the English, was the
western end of Hispaniola (Saint-Domingue for the French, now
Haiti). The eastern half remained Spanish. The island lends itself to this
division: the two ends are separated by a high mountain barrier. Over
the years Saint-Domingue had become a favorite hideout of flibustiers
(freebooters) and maroons (runaway slaves). Their very presence was
a bad example and their predatory habits—Chaunu calls them "an in
ternational crime association of French origin"—had drawn several
Spanish punitive expeditions, to no avail.^7 (These people could shoot
back.) The French made allies of these troublemakers and with them
simply took over that part of the island. The Spanish stayed far away.
Saint-Domingue was the last of the great sugar isles to come into
production, and being last, was the most fertile and profitable. Sugar
spawned enormous fortunes, in France and on the island; paid for high
living, beautiful estates, handsome coaches, and gaudily liveried
(though generally barefoot) black servants. (The French peasantry also
went around barefoot.) So profitable was this plantation enterprise
that Adam Smith, who knew the English Indies better than the French,
took it to be evidence of French superiority: "... the genius of their
government," he wrote, "naturally introduces a better management of
their negro slaves."^8 He could not have been more wrong. In 1790 the
slaves of Saint-Domingue, encouraged by revolutionary doctrines from
France, rose in revolt and established the second new nation of the
New World. The French tried to return and failed, defeated more by
disease than by bullets. By the time the guns were laid down and the
steel sheathed, every white person in Haiti was dead, from the old in
bed to the suckling babe. Exception was made for a handful of doctors.
It took a lot of work to grow sugar cane, cut it, crush it, and refine the
juice: gang labor under a hot sky; dangerous, hurried round-the-clock
pressing, boiling, and skimming before the crop spoiled. In the fields,
men and women did the work of animals. No plows, few tools, every-
nora
(Nora)
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