While still a teenager, he was made caretaker of the estate’s mules and oxen—a post usually held by a white man. Louverture seized this rare opportunity to educate himself in his free time and to read through his master’s library, including Julius Caesar’s Commentaries and Abbé Raynal’s Histoire des deux Indes, or History of two Indies, an encyclopedic account of trade between Europe and the Far East. Caesar’s work helped him understand politics and the art of war, and Raynal’s gave him a thorough grounding in the economics of the region and of Europe.
