Race, property encroachment and jurisdiction in the 18th century French Atlantic world: the case of the widow Ogé

In 1774, Angélique Hossé petitioned the French Conseil Privé to overturn an administrative ruling by that had allowed her neighbors to build a private access road across her coffee plantation in French Saint-Domingue. Was this litigation actually about “race”? Mother of the future “quarteron” revolutionary Vincent Ogé, Hossé mentioned neither her color nor her genealogy in her petition, simply qualifying herself as a widow. By contrast, her legal opponents consistently branded her a rebellious “mulâtresse”. How should historians refer to Angélique Hossé’s “race”? Should we respect her own silence? Or should we embrace – and arguably reinforce – the exclusionary rhetoric of her opponents? Was Hossé a “mulâtresse” or not? Rather than dwelling on her “racial status” per se, this article instead uses her litigation to investigate the social, juridical, and administrative practices through which racial identification was contested in 18th century Saint-Domingue. After recounting the history of the litigation from Hossé’s own perspective, analyzing it as a dispute over legal servitudes and property rights, the article moves on to place her rhetorical strategy of silence within evolving colonial and imperial debates over the meanings of color, slavery, and race. The article closes by showing how Hossé’s opponents, by racializing the litigation in the eyes of the royal council, succeeded in sending it down an administrative black hole, frustrating her pursuit of justice. While revealing the practical dynamics of 18th century French colonial and imperial racialization, the history of Hossé’s litigation simultaneously illuminates the social origins of the Haitian Revolution.