ABSTRACT Late eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue produced both a thriving Masonic movement and the most successful slave uprising in modern world history. Scholars have suggested but never proven that these two movements were linked. One biographer hypothesizes that white planters who knew the future Toussaint Louverture from colonial Masonic circles helped him organize the slave uprising of August 1791. This speculation is inspired by the fact that in the late 1790s Louverture signed his name with a distinctive pattern of dots. Many colonists and free men of color used similar symbols, which have been described as Masonic signatures. This article examines whether the approximately 300 men of all races who made such signatures in the 1780s and early 1790s were Masons. It finds little or no evidence that they were. It hypothesizes that men used these symbols to suggest their membership in secret societies that did not, in fact, exist.

中文翻译：

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一个秘密的兄弟会？海地革命前后的黑人共济会问题

摘要18世纪末的圣多明格（Saint-Domingue）既产生了兴旺的共济会运动，也是现代世界历史上最成功的奴隶起义。学者们提出了但从未证明这两个运动是相互联系的。一位传记作者以为，白人种植者从殖民地共济会圈子了解了未来的图森·卢浮图，从而帮助他组织了1791年8月的奴隶起义。这一推测的灵感来自于1790年代后期，卢浮图以独特的圆点图案签名。许多殖民者和有色人种使用类似的符号，被称为共济会的签名。本文研究了在1780年代和1790年代初期做出此类签名的所有种族中大约有300名男性是梅森人。它发现很少或没有证据表明它们是。