Series Annoucement The Americas in the Early Modern Atlantic World Series Editors: Amy Turner Bushnell, Adjunct Associate Professor of History at Brown University and a Research Associate at the John Carter Brown Library Jack P. Greene, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at The Johns Hopkins University This series publishes volumes on any aspect, people, or society of the colonial Americas within an Atlantic context. The premise is that new work on the early modern Americas having an Atlantic frame of reference will contribute importantly to informed colonial comparison. * * * In 1804 French Saint- Domingue became the independent nation of Haiti after the only successful slave uprising in world history. When the Haitian Revolution broke out, the colony was home to the largest and wealthiest free population of African descent in the New World. Before Haiti explains the origins of this free colored class, exposes the ways its members both supported and challenged slavery, and examines how they created their own New World identity from 1760 to 1804.