Histoire de l'Isle Espagnole ou de S. Domingue

In the early 1700’s, Father Jean-Baptiste le Pers, a French Jesuit priest, ventured across the Atlantic to the colony of Saint Domingue (now Haiti) in the West Indies. Father le Pers’ letters described the area and its history in rich detail, so much so that they informed Jesuit historian Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix’s book on the subject, published in 1730. The volumes were illustrated with depictions of native ceremonies and fold-out maps. It was an important work of its time, documenting native and black communities in the Caribbean, and remains a valuable research tool for the study of the colonial Caribbean.