#1791

Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington

Record Group 59: General Records of the Department of StateSeries: Letters ReceivedFile Unit: April THRU July 1791  

Orpheus tries to hold on to Eurydice

.c. 1791

"I feel only trepidation at the arduous labours to which this important position* will condemn me, at a time when I needed rest after such lengthy turmoil... But I am called to a turbulent destiny. I must follow it, until I have made the last sacrifice I can offer to my homeland."

Hugh Mercer, Jr. (Study for "The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton, Janury 3, 1777")

John Trumbull American

1791

Morte from Planescape Torment

"Morte is a talking skull. His sole weapon seems to be his mouth, whether by taunting or biting. He seems to be along for the ride, whether you want him around or not."

The Colony and the Company: Haiti after the Mississippi Bubble

"The Colony and the Company" by Ghachem is an excellently written historical exploration of an often-overlooked contributing factor of the Haitian Revolution. The author positions metropolitan finance and company collapse as complementary to, rather than a replacement for, revolutionary interpretations by looking closely at the connection of France’s Mississippi Bubble and the economic landscape in Saint Domingue, thus expanding the reader's understanding of the events leading up to 1791.

The Colony and the Company by Malick W. Ghachem is an articulately written and intellectually ambitious work that offers a compelling historical lens through which readers can examine the early foundations of the Caribbean’s most influential French colonies, St. Domingue (now known as Haiti). Rather than beginning with the Haitian Revolution or the late 18th century, Ghachem re-centres Saint-Domingue’s transformation into a violent sugar-plantation society in the early 18th century, connecting that transformation to France’s Mississippi Bubble and the collapse of company monopolies in the Atlantic world. In doing so, the book shifts both the chronology and the explanatory framework commonly used in Haitian historiography.

The primary purpose of the book is to present new research and reinterpretation. Ghachem argues that the fiscal and commercial crisis surrounding the Mississippi Bubble (c. 1719–1720) fundamentally reshaped imperial priorities and implanted enduring structures of debt, monopoly, coercion, and plantation violence in Saint-Domingue well before the Haitian Revolution of 1791. This intervention is significant because it challenges narratives that implicitly treat the revolution as the origin of Haiti’s long-term economic and political difficulties. Instead, Ghachem demonstrates that these problems were deeply embedded in colonial governance decades earlier, rooted in metropolitan financial experimentation and failure.

Structurally, the book is divided into six chapters and a conclusion. The chapters trace the evolution of company rule, metropolitan fiscal policy, and the transition to planter dominance following the collapse of monopoly trading companies. Ghachem pays close attention to the social formations that emerged within this framework, including Jesuit missionaries, free people of colour, maroons, enslaved labourers, and the rising planter oligarchy. His approach is firmly grounded in legal, economic, and social history. Through close readings of notarial records, company correspondence, legal codes, and commercial ledgers, he reconstructs how abstract financial crises in France translated into concrete institutional restructuring and intensified violence on the ground in Saint-Domingue. The emphasis on legal history is particularly valuable, as it reveals how law operated not merely as a reflection of power, but as an active instrument in reorganising labour, property, and authority in St. Domingue.

The book’s greatest strength is making the connection between Saint-Domingue and the Mississippi Bubble. By linking colonial development to speculative finance and state debt, Ghachem demonstrates that Caribbean plantation societies were not peripheral to European economic history but central to it, a bold and striking reality which many attempt to trivialise. This insight has broader implications for how historians understand capitalism, empire, and colonial extraction.

In comparison to other major works in the field, Ghachem’s contribution is both complementary and corrective. Laurent Dubois’s Avengers of the New World (2005) foregrounds revolutionary actors and political culture, while C. L. R. James’s The Black Jacobins (1938) famously emphasises revolutionary agency and global ideological currents. By foregrounding the Mississippi Bubble, he adds a metropolitan financial dimension that reframes plantation violence and growth as structurally rooted, not incidental.

Ghachem, a Professor of History at MIT, has both training in History (PhD) and Law (JD), enabling him to provide us with a nuanced analysis of colonial institutions, linking legal frameworks, imperial policy, and social consequences while extending his earlier work on Haiti with a deeper archival and chronological reach.

The book is clearly aimed at scholars and advanced students of Caribbean-Atlantic, colonial, and economic history, though Ghachem’s prose is straightforward enough that a well-informed general reader can follow his argument. Some readers may note that detailed accounts of cultural microhistory, everyday life stories, or extended treatment of African retention are omitted from this work. Though they might have provided further grounding to this powerful work, the absence of such matters when focusing on economic history is consistent with its analytical goals.

Overall, The Colony and the Company is a must-read for anyone interested in the multicausal nature of revolutions, the deep roots of colonial violence, and the legal-economic foundations of Atlantic enslavement. The book's persuasive thesis, methodological rigour, and originality make it a valuable and lasting contribution to the field.

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And no! It was not French!

It was written up May 3rd, 1791 by Lithuania and Poland (The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) during the work of Senate of 1788-1792. Sadly it was official for only a few years, as in 1795 Lithuania and Poland were absorbed by Russian, Prussian and Austrian empires.

“The Law on Governance” – Title page of the printed edition of the Constitution of May 3, 1791. Warsaw, 1791 | Michael Gröll Printing House National Library of Poland. SD XVIII.1.1573 and SD XVIII.1.505

The Adoption of the Constitution on May 3, 1791, in the Senate Hall of the Royal Palace in Warsaw By Jean-Pierre Norblin de la Gourdene, c. 1791 National Library of Poland. R.4312/WAF.9

Main points of the Constitution:

1. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth became a constitutional monarchy.

2. The old procedure for electing kings was abolished (yes, the kings were elected before - selected from various noble candidates). The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was declared a hereditary monarchy.

3. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth remained a noble state, but the Constitution sought to establish principles of class harmony and opened the door to further reforms of the state system.

4. The Catholic Church was recognized as the dominant religion, while religious tolerance was acknowledged.

5. A member of parliament elected to the Senate was granted the status of a representative of the entire nation.

6. The liberum veto—the nobility’s right to protest against Senate's resolutions and block their work—was abolished.

7. Social reforms: the Constitution recognized the citizens of royal cities as free people; they were granted the right to hold administrative and judicial offices and to attain military ranks. The framers of the Constitution regarded the alliance between the nobility and the townspeople as the foundation of the reformed system.