"The Slaves Who Vanquished Napoleon, or the Officers Who Defeated Themselves?” Review essay on Philippe R. Girard, The Slaves Who Defeated Napoleon: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian War of Independence, 1801-1804, H-France Review 13, no. 18 (Jan. 2013) (original) (raw)
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The Haitian Revolution is one of the most important revolutions in the Western world, in which a large population of formerly enslaved Africans founded a new nation without slavery, put a permanent ban on colonial slavery in the new republic's first constitution, and declared the undivided human rights of and the absolute equality for all people. After a successful revolution against the inhuman institution of slavery and unflagging striving against the colonial-imperial powers of France, Spain, and Britain, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the general in chief who succeeded Toussaint Louverture, declared the emergence of the new state of Haiti on the first day of the new year in 1804. This essay is a critical evaluation on the most recent literary and historiographical scholarship on the Haitian Revolution. It reflects on the significance of the Revolution as a historic world event as well as a reference point for thinking about freedom, universal human rights, social justice and equality in our postcolonial moment. I argue that there has been an "intellectual shift," what I call "The Haitian Turn," in modern scholarship in North America on the Haitian Revolution. 1 I close with some suggestions on the future scholarship on the Haitian Revolution. This is not an exhaustive study on the scholarship of the Haitian Revolution but a critical reflection on the most recent important studies on the topic.
Colonial Subjects No More: Histories of the Haitian Revolution
In his 1995 book Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Michel-Rolph Trouillot has used the construction of both public memory and the academic M a t t s o n | 2 historiography of the Haitian Revolution to explore issues such as dominant narratives, historical silences, and the postmodernist recognition of many truths. These themes can in fact be seen quite often in the recent historiography of the Haitian Revolution due to its remarkable but for too long silenced impact on world history. Trouillot emphasizes the usefulness of the Haitian Revolution in examining the discipline of history itself, down to the insistence upon the rigors of research even in a postmodernist context. "The unearthing of silences," writes Trouillot, "and the historian's subsequent emphasis on the retrospective significance of hitherto neglected events, requires not only extra labor at the archives […] but also a project linked to an interpretation." 1 The historiography of the Haitian Revolution intersects with many issues of French colonialism; modernism, colonialism, postcolonialism, slavery, revolts, revolutions, racism, citizenship, republicanism and historical discourse are all topics which are well-represented in the scholarship. This essay will explore the English-language histories of the Haitian Revolution with a primary focus on the most recent works.
“Unexploited sources for the history of the Haitian Revolution”
Latin American Research Review 18 : 95-103, 1983
One of the greatest servile rebellions and the sole successful slave revolt in world history, the insurrection that destroyed France's richest colony and led to the creation of Haiti has been the subject of a great deal of writing and controversy, but relatively little basic research. The destruction of Saint Domingue and the career of the black leader Toussaint Louverture have inspired innumerable popular and partisan works, but at the level of primary research, we have not progressed far beyond Ardouin's Etudes of 1853 and Pauleus Sannon's Histoire of the 1920s. 1 The appearance of a new scholarly biography of Toussaint Louverture provides a good occasion for reviewing the vast quantity of largely neglected manuscript material that concerns this unique and profound event. 2 Pierre Pluchon's stimulating and controversial De l'esclavage au pouvoir certainly shows the way forward, being based solidly, but almost solely, on the main series of government correspondence in the Archives Nationales in Paris. It breaks new ground in the systematic use of these sources (principally the series CC9), but it remains, even regarding the material in Paris, an unbalanced achievement. Apart from its primarily political slant, the work ignores to its cost the enormous Dxxv series generated by the Comites des Colonies and also the wellknown collections in the Bibliotheque Nationale of Sonthonax and Laveaux correspondence, whose six volumes contain a large part of Toussaint's surviving letters. 3 Although far from fully exploited, all this material, along with the invaluable collection of miscellanea left by Moreau de Saint-Mery (A.N., Colonies, F3), has been dipped into frequently by writers on the revolution and is the primary source of most scholarly work on the subject. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to some of the entirely neglected material to be found not only in France but also in Spain, Great Britain, the Caribbean, and the United States that might illuminate further the strange twilight period in which Saint Domingue was transformed into Haiti.
Set within a larger analysis of class relations in the Haitian Revolution, this is a microhistory that intersects with several important themes in the revolution: rumor, atrocity, the arming of slaves, race relations, and the origins and wealth of the free colored population. It is an empirical investigation of an obscure rebellion by free men of color in the Grande Anse region in 1791. Although the rebellion is obscure, it is associated with an atrocity story that has long resonated in discussion of the revolution. Based primarily on unexploited or little-known sources, the article demonstrates the range and depth of research that remains possible and suggests that a regional focus is the best way to advance current scholarship on the Haitian Revolution.
Haiti and Its Revolution: Four Recent Books
Radical History Review, 2013
Haiti' s history, Laurent Dubois tells us, "can-indeed must-serve as a source of inspiration, and even hope" (10). For those who would write it, this is a problem. Among the country's many burdens has been the exemplary role it has perforce played in international debates about slavery, colonialism, and race. Just as its earliest chroniclers often aimed to denigrate, modern historians frequently lean toward apologetics and celebration. The attraction exerted by Haiti's revolutionary origins has tended to pull in writers more eager to make a statement than to research its