In the late eighteenth century the French colony of Saint-Domingue, the western third of the island of Hispaniola, was the most productive colony in the Antilles. It was also the one afflicted by the most complex economic and social problems. The foundation of Saint-Domingue's economy was sugar, although a certain amount of coffee, cotton and indigo was also produced. Production of sugar dates from the end of the seventeenth century after France had occupied some parts of the island claimed in its entirety by Spain. In the course of the eighteenth century the French planters went on to surpass the production of all the British West Indian colonies put together. By the end of the century, with production costs substantially lower than those of the British plantations, the French could undercut the British in the European sugar market. Their success became yet more marked after the independence of the British North American colonies which, once free of the British colonial monopoly, began to supply themselves with French West Indian products, particularly those of Saint-Domingue. It was precisely from 1783, when the War of American Independence drew to a close, that the French colony's already impressive rate of development accelerated, and the production of sugar reached levels never before attained.

To supply their labour needs, the planters of Saint-Domingue, predominantly white, were importing an average of 30,000 African slaves annually in the years that preceded the French Revolution. Initially the provision of black slaves for the sugar plantations of Saint-Domingue was in the hands of monopoly companies created by the French government during the second half of the seventeenth century.