Syllabus / Handbook created by Dr Vanessa Mongey 2018/2019
To Preserve Their Freedom Napoléon's attempt to restore slavery in Haiti was unsuccessful. Desalines, Chief of the Blacks, defeated LeClerc. Black men, women and children took up arms to preserve their freedom, November 1802 by Jacob Lawrence (Toussaint L'Ouverture Series) 1988
Aims
The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) is the story of how the world’s first independent black republic came into existence. Enslaved people in the French colony of Saint-Domingue rose up against colonial powers and gained their freedom and independence. They created Haiti: the first fully free society in the Atlantic world and the second independent nation in the Americas after the United States. Outside of its borders, this revolution reshaped debates about slavery and freedom, precipitated rebellions in neighbouring territories, and intensified both repression and antislavery sentiment. Haiti became a refuge for the oppressed. In recent years, scholars have increasingly insisted the Haitian Revolution crucially shaped that much of what we inherited from the Age of Revolution—especially ideas of universal rights. As a revolution largely led by people of African descent, the Haitian Revolution posed a threat to deeply entrenched racism throughout the world.
There is no pre-requisite for this module but you might want to watch some Crash Course history videos on YouTube: Atlantic Slave Trade and the French Revolution here.
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You might also want to check out this podcast on the effect of the Atlantic Slave Trade on the Americas (especially the section on Saint-Domingue): and this one on the Haitian Revolution.
If you prefer the written word, then check this History of Haiti from Brown University:. Or this one by the Digital Library of the Caribbean.
Primary sources:
We will use David Geggus, ed. Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 2014) referred to HR in the handbook.
Other collections of primary sources:
Laurent Dubois and John D Garrigu, eds., Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief History with Documents (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
Jeremy Pokin, ed. Facing Racial Revolution: eyewitness accounts of the Haitian Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
Maurice Jackson & Jacqueline Bacon, eds., African Americans and the Haitian revolution: selected essays and historical documents (New York: Routledge, 2010)
Rafe Blaufarb, ed.. The Revolutionary Atlantic.Republican Visions, 1760-1830: A Documentary History (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018)
Digital Library of the Caribbean: http://www.dloc.com/ Haitian archives collection (mostly in French) http://dloc.com/ianh Caribbean Newspaper Digital Library http://dloc.com/cndl
French national library (mostly in French): http://gallica.bnf.fr/
French overseas archives (mostly in French): http://anom.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/ark:/61561/wz818idcda
HathiTrust digital library: http://www.hathitrust.org/
John Carter Brown Library and https://archive.org/details/jcbhaiti
Recommended reading:
Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: story of the Haitian revolution Jeremy Popkin, A concise history of the Haitian Revolution Carolyn Fick, The Making of Haiti: the Saint Domingue Revolution from Below Doris L. Garraway, ed. Tree of Liberty: The Haitian revolution in the Atlantic World. David Patrick Geggus, ed, The impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World David Patrick Geggus & Norman Fiering, eds. The world of the Haitian Revolution
Note on spelling & terminology
Saint-Domingue (with a hyphen) and Toussaint Louverture (no apostrophe).
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We will discuss why people are reluctant to use of the word slave as a noun and instead uses terms such as enslaved people, enslaved Africans, and captives. You can listen to this short 5’ summary.
Week 1: Defining Revolution
Song of the day: “Ti ca” by Altiery Dorival
Questions: What is a revolution? Is an event revolutionary because its participants called it so? Or because of historians? Or must a revolution fundamentally alter the structures of society? How would you define a revolution? Can you give examples of revolutions?
Required: Franklin Knight, “The Haitian Revolution,” American Historical Review (2000): 103-115 Laurent Dubois, “Why Haiti should be at the center of the Age of Revolution,” Aeon Essays, 7 November 2016: https://aeon.co/essays/why-haiti-should-be-at-the-centre-of-the-age-of-revolution
Recommended: Robin Blackburn, “Haiti, Slavery, and the Age of the Democratic Revolution.” William and Mary Quarterly 63.4 (2006): 633-674; David Geggus, “Haiti and Its Revolution: Four Recent Books.” Radical History Review 115(2013), 195-202; William Sewell, “Historical Events as Transformations of Structures,” in Logics of History , 225-70; Keith Baker, “Revolution,” from Baker, Inventing the French Revolution; selection from C.L.R. James, Black Jacobins, 85-117; Catherine Reinhardt, “French Caribbean Slaves Forge Their Own Ideal of Liberty in 1789,” in Doris Kadish, ed., Slavery in the Caribbean Francophone World (2002), 19-38.
Week 2: Colonial Saint-Domingue
Song of the day: “Dekole” by J. Perry feat. Izolan and Shabba
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Questions: What was the nature of pre-revolutionary society in France’s Caribbean colonies, and especially in Saint-Domingue? How did the divisions in this society compare with those in pre- revolutionary France?
Required: Black Code (Code Noir) 1685 online at https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/1205/2016/02/code- noir.pdf https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2011/01/slavery-in-the-french-colonies/ Plantation Hierarchy, HR, 4-6 A Slave Trader’s View, HR, 6-7 Plantation Slaves, HR, 7-10 Lejeune Atrocity Case, HR, 10-12 Racial Discrimination: Official, HR, 12-13 Racial Discrimination: Unofficial, HR, 14 Macandal the Poisoner, HR, 19-20 Plan habitation de Fenet de Saint-Memin a Saint-Domingue, 18th c
HR: xi-xiv & 1-2 & 15-16 David Geggus, “The French Slave Trade: An Overview,” William and Mary Quarterly 58:1 (2001): 119-138 Paul Cheney, “A Colonial Cul de Sac: Plantation Life in Wartime Saint-Domingue, 1775-1782.” Radical History Review 115 (2013), 45-64 Lesley Curtis “African in Early Haiti, or How to Fight Stereotypes” Eighteenth Century Commons (2012) http://www.18thcenturycommon.org/lesley_curtis/
Recommended: Popkin, A Concise History chap 3-4; KK Weaver “She Crushed the Child's Fragile Skull": Disease, Infanticide, and Enslaved Women in Eighteenth-Century Saint-Domingue,” French Colonial History (2004); L. Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 1-90; David Geggus, “Sex Ratio, Age and Ethnicity in the Atlantic Slave Trade: Data from French Shipping and Plantation Records,” Journal of African History 30 (1989): 23-44; Stewart King, “Planter Elites,” from Blue Coat or Powdered Wig: Free People of Color in Pre-Revolutionary Saint-Domingue, 205-25; Malick Ghachem, “Prosecuting Torture: The Strategic Ethics of Slavery in Pre-Revolutionary Saint- Domingue (Haiti)” Law and History Review, 29(4), (2011). 985-1029; Bernard Moitt, “Women and Labor: Slave Labor,” from Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 34-56: Yvonne Fabella, “Redeeming the ‘Character of the Creoles’: Whiteness, Gender, and Creolization in Pre- Revolutionary Saint-Domingue.” Journal of Historical Sociology 23:1 (2010), 40-72
Week 3: Beginnings
Song of the day:“Jou nou revolte” by Boukman Eksperyans
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Questions: What were the revolutionary processes that began in France in 1789 and in Saint- Domingue in 1791? What was the role of natural disasters (drought and food shortage) in starting the revolutions?
Required: Colony in Crisis: the Saint-Domingue Grain Crisis of 1789 https://colonyincrisis.lib.umd.edu/ Maronnage in Saint-Domingue http://www.marronnage.info/en/ Slaves on Strike, HR 25-29 Runaway Advertisements, HR, 33-35 Enlightenment, Race, and Slavery, HR, 39-40 Ogé Adresses the Planters’ Club, HR, 48-49 The May 1791 Debates, HR, 51-56 Free Colored Petition to the Assembly of the North, HR, 61 Rebellion of Ogé and Chavanne, HR, 62-63 The sentencing of Ogé and Chavanne, HR, 64 Peace Treaty 19-23 October 1791, HR, 68
HR: xiv-xviii & 36-38 & 57-58 Laurent Dubois, “An Enslaved Enlightenment: Rethinking the Intellectual History of the French Atlantic,” Social History 31: 1 (2006): 1-14 Charlton W. Yingling, “The Maroons of Santo Domingo in the Age of Revolutions: Adaptation and Evasion, 1783–1800,” History Workshop Journal, 79: 1 (2015): 25–51
Debate: Marronage’s impact on the Haitian Revolution. Annette Joseph-Gabriel, “Between the Lawgiver and the People: a reflection on Neil Roberts’ Freedom as Marronage,” https://www.aaihs.org/between-the-lawgiver-and-the-people/ Carolyn Fick, “Slave Resistance” in Haitian History: New Perspectives, 55-71 David Geggus, “On the eve of the Haitian Revolution: slave runaways in Saint-Domingue in the year 1790,” Slavery and Abolition 6: 3 (1985): 112-128
Recommended: Dubois, Avengers, 91-306; Yves Benot, “The Insurgents of 1791, their leaders and the concept of independence,” in Geggus and Fiering, The world of the Haitian Revolution; John D. Garrigus, “Colour, class and identity on the eve of the Haitian revolution: Saint‐Domingue's free coloured elite as colons américains,” Slavery & Abolition, 17:1, (2008) 20-43; Podcast on the Haitian Revolution with Laurent Dubois: focus on the late colonial period/ early events of the revolution 60 '
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Week 4: Insurrection
Song of the day: “Sak Pasé” by Welfare Poets
Questions: What did the enslaved rebels fight for? What was their goal? How did religion play a role in the slave uprising of 1791? What factors make a revolt a revolution?
Required: Articles 2 and 3 from the Code Noir Vodou and Petro, HR, 20-22 Vodou and the Underworld, HR, 22-24 Planning the Rebellion: The Lenormand Meeting, HR, 77-78 The Bois Caïman Ceremony, HR, 78 Slaves’ Reaction to the French Revolution, HR, 75-77 Slave Insurgents Make Demands, HR, 82-83 White Captive’s Experiences, HR, 83-86 Slave leaders negotiate, HR, 86-91 Women in Rebellion, HR, 91-92 Jean-Baptiste Chapuy, Vue des 40 jours d'incendie des habitations de la plaine du Cap Français. (1795) and Vue de l’incendie de la ville du Cap Français, arrivé le 21 juin 1793
Choose one object from the Vodou: Sacred Powers of Haiti exhibit: http://vodou.fieldmuseum.org/
HR: xix-xx & 72-74 John K. Thornton, “I am the Subject of the King of Congo”: African Political Ideology and the Haitian Revolution,” in Haitian History: New Perspectives, ed. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, 89-102
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Carolyn Fick, “Dilemmas of Emancipation: From the Saint Domingue Insurrections of 1791 to the Emerging Haitian State,” History Workshop Journal 46 (1998): 1-15
Debate: Bois Caïman ceremony Dantès Bellegarde, Histoire du Peuple Haïtien, (1953) Robin Law, “On the African background to the slave insurrection” Harriet Tubman seminar (1999) David Geggus, “Bois Caiman Ceremony” Chapter 6 of Haitian Revolutionary Studies (2002), 81-92
Optional but useful for the essay: Jeremy Popkin, “Facing Racial Revolution: Captivity Narratives and Identity in the Saint-Domingue Insurrection.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36.4 (2003): 511-533.
Recommended: Garvey E Lundy, “Vodou and the Haitian Revolution” in Encyclopedia of African Religion; S. Mintz and M-R. Trouillot, “Social History of Haitian Vodou,” in D. Cosentino, ed., Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, 123-47; Sue Peabody, “A Dangerous Zeal: Catholic Missions to Slaves in the French Antilles,” French Historical Studies 25 (2002), 53-90; Joseph C. Miller, “Central Africa During the Era of the Slave Trade,” and Hein Vanhee, “Central African Popular Christianity and the Makings of Haitian Vodou Religion” in Linda Heywood, ed. Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora, 21-64 and 243-264; Leslie Desmangles, "The Maroon Republics and Religious Diversity in Colonial Haiti" Anthropos 85: 4/6 (1990): 475– 482; Ina J. Fandrich, "Yorùbá Influences on Haitian Vodou and New Orleans Voodoo," Journal of Black Studies 37: 5 (2007): 775–791; John K. Thornton, “On the Trail of Voodoo: African Christianity in Africa and the Americas” The Americas 44: 3 (1988): 261-278; Kate Ramsey, The spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti.
Week 5: New language of liberty
Song of the day: “Pèpè Yè” by Boukman Eksperyans
Questions: Where did emancipation ‘begin’: metropolitan France or the colony of Saint-Domingue? What did freedom look like in Saint-Domingue after 1793?
Required: Sonthonax’s Early Advocacy of Slave Emancipation, HR,102 Emancipation Proclamation, HR,107-109 Royalism, Republicanism and Freedom, HR, 111-112 France Abolishes Slavery, HR, 112 Belley, the Black Deputy, HR, 112-114 Toussaint and ex-slaves, HR, 129-131
HR: xx-xxviii & 98-100 Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel, “Creolizing Freedom: French-Creole Translations of Liberty and Equality in the Haitian revolution,” Slavery and Abolition 36:1 (2015): 111-123
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Elizabeth Colwill “Fêtes de l'hymen, fêtes de la liberté: Matrimony, Emancipation, and the Creation of New Men,” in The World of the Haitian Revolution, ed. David Geggus and Norman Fielding (2009): 125-155
Debate: Silencing the Haitian Revolution. Thomas Reinhardt, “200 Years of Forgetting: Hushing Up the Haitian Revolution,” Journal of Black Studies 35 (2005): 246-61 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “An Unthinkable History: The Haitian Revolution as Non-Event,” in Silencing the Past
Recommended: Nick Nesbitt, Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment; Sara Johnson, The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas (2012); Pierre Force, “The House on Bayou Road: Atlantic Creole Networks in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” Journal of American History 100:1 (2013), 21-45; Fayçal Falaky, “Reading Rousseau in the Colonies: Theory, Practice, and the Question of Slavery. Small Axe 19:1 (2015): 5–19; José Lingna Nafafé, “Europe in Africa and Africa in Europe. Rethinking postcolonial space, cultural encounters and hybridity,” European Journal of Social Theory 16: 1(2013): 51-68
Week 6: New language of citizenship
Song of the day: "Vida Extranjera” by Black Peat (Ernst Yngignack)
Questions: How did Toussaint’s rule in Saint-Domingue change meanings of citizenship? Did working conditions change radically for those formerly enslaved?
Required: Toussaint the Royalist, HR,122-123 Toussaint the Abolitionist, HR, 123-126 Expulsion of Sonthonax, HR, 135-138 Toussaint Confronts His Critics, HR, 143-145
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War of the South, HR, 148-151 Plantation Labor in the Southeast, HR, 151-153 Toussaint’s Labor Decree, HR, 153-154 Toussaint Louverture, Constitution French Colony of Saint-Domingue, 1801, HR, 160-164 Proclamation 4 Frimaire X, HR, 166-167
HR: 117-119 & 139-142 Carolyn Fick, “The Haitian revolution and the Limits of Freedom: Defining Citizenship in the Revolutionary Era,” Social History 32:4 (2007): 394-414 Lorelle Semley, “To Live and Die, Free and French: Toussaint Louverture’s 1801 Constitution and the Original Challenge of Black Citizenship.” Radical History Review 115 (2013), 65-90
Debate: Great Men vs. Great Germs. CLR James, “Toussaint Seizes Power” and “Black Consul” chaps 10 and 11 in Black Jacobins John R. McNeill, “Mosquito Revolutions” McQuaide Distinguished Lecture (2013) Deborah Jenson, “Toussaint Louverture, Spin doctor? Launching the Haitian revolution in the French media,” in Doris L. Garraway, ed, Tree of Liberty: Cultural Legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World
Recommended: Malick W. Ghachem, “The Trap of Representations: Sovereignty, Slavery and the Road to the Haitian revolution,” Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques 29:1(2003): 123-144; Podcast with Ronald A Johnson on Toussaint's diplomatic relationships with the United States 50'
Week 7: Founding documents
Song of the day: "Fèy" by RAM
Questions: Compare the 1801 Constitution of Saint Domingue (intended to govern Saint Domingue as a province of France) and the first ratified constitution of independent Haiti (1805): what were the conditions that predicated the differences between the two constitutions? In what ways are they revolutionary and in what way do they maintain the regimes of power (race, class and gender)?
Required: Bonaparte on Slave Emancipation, HR, 171-172 General Leclerc and the Restoration of Slavery, HR 172-173 Toussaint Louverture, Constitution French Colony of Saint-Domingue, 1801 HR, 160-164 Atrocities HR 178-179 Declaration of Independence, 1 January 1804, HR 179-180 Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Proclamation, 28 April 1804, HR 180-182 Haitian Constitution 1805 : http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/1805- const.htm
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HR : xxix-xxxii &168-170 Julia Gaffield and Sybille Fisher, “Complexities of Imagining Haiti: a Study of National Constitutions, 1801-1807,” Journal of Social History 41:1 (2007): 81-103 Philippe Girard, “Napoléon Bonaparte and the Emancipation Issue in Saint-Domingue, 1799–1803,” French Historical Studies 32:4 (2009): 587-618 Philippe Girard, “Rebelles with a Cause: Women in the Haitian War of Independence, 1802-1804,” Gender and History, 21: 1 (2009): 60-85
Debate: Were the French expeditions of 1802-1803 genocides? Graham Nessler, “The Rochambeau Genocide” Island Luminous website http://islandluminous.fiu.edu/part02-slide13.html Philippe Girard, “French atrocities during the Haitian War of Independence,” Journal of Genocide Research, 15:2, 133-149 Sara E. Johnson, “You Should Give them Blacks to Eat”: Waging Inter-American Wars of Torture and Terror, American Quarterly, 61: 1 (2009): 65-92
Recommended: Philippe Girard, “Liberte, Egalite, Esclavage: French Revolutionary Ideals and the Failure of the Leclerc Expedition to Saint-Domingue,” French Colonial History 6 (2005): 55-77; Philippe R. Girard, “Jean-Jacques Dessalines and the Atlantic System: A Reappraisal.” William and Mary Quarterly 69:3(July 2012), 54-582; Deborah Jenson, “Jean-Jacques Dessalines and the African Character of the Haitian Revolution.” William and Mary Quarterly 69:3 (July 2012), 615-638
Week 8: Reverberations
Song of the day: “Eudomination” by Princess Eud feat. Mikaben
Questions: How did the Haitian Revolution influence abolitionists in different countries? How did it influence enslaved people across the Americas? How did it influence slave-owners?
Required: Spain’s Offer to the Insurgent Slaves, HR 105-107
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Black Auxiliaries of Carlos IV, HR 109-110 Jamaican Slaves 186 and Jamaican Song 1799, HR 188 Danger and Opportunity: British Press, HR 191 Anguished Thomas Jefferson, HR 195-197 Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Lafayette https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline- pdfs/08063_FPS.pdf Aponte’s Rebellion Cuba, 1812, HR 189 Greed and Fear in Cuba, HR 192-193 A British Visitor, HR 154-157 Race and barbarism, HR 201-202 Frederick Douglass, Lectures on Haiti, 1893, HR 203-205 Engravings from Rainsford’s Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti (1805)
HR: xxxii-xxxiv & 183-185 Johnhenry Gonzalez, “Defiant Haiti, Free Soil Runaways, Ship Seizures and the Politics of Non- recognition in the early 19th century,” Slavery & Abolition 36:1 (2015): 124-135 Laurence Brown, “Visions of Violence in the Haitian Revolution,” Atlantic Studies 13: 1 (2016): 144-164 Digital Aponte: book of painting http://aponte.hosting.nyu.edu/book-of-paintings/
Debate: Impact of the Haitian Revolution on various countries (check Recommended for more references) Britain: Henry Christophe and Thomas Clarkson: A Correspondence (1952) King Henry Christophe to Thomas Clarkson, letter 5 February 1816 http://islandluminous.fiu.edu/part03- slide12.html; Seymour Drescher, "British Way, French Way: Opinion Building and Revolution in the Second French Slave Emancipation." The American Historical Review 96, no. 3 (1991): 709-34. Geggus, David. "The Enigma of Jamaica in the 1790s: New Light on the Causes of Slave Rebellions." The William and Mary Quarterly 44, no. 2 (1987): 274-99
Cuba: Ada Ferrer, “Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic,” The American Historical Review 117:1 (2012): 40-66 You can have a look at some of the primary sources Ferrer used: https://haitidoi.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/08/document-package-for-ada-ferrer-article.pdf
United States: Leslie Alexander, The Black Republic: The Influence of the Haitian revolution on Northern Black Consciousness,” in African Americans and the Haitian Revolution, eds Jackson and Bacon, 59-79 + primary sources in the same volume; Podcast on connections US-Haiti with James Alexander Dun 60': https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/episode-124-james-alexander- dun-making-haitian-revolution-early-america/
Recommended: Charlton W. Yingling, “No One Who Reads the History of Hayti Can Doubt the Capacity of Colored Men: Racial Formation and Atlantic Rehabilitation in New York City’s Early Black Press, 1827-1841.” Early American Studies 11:2(Spring 2013), 314-348; Julia Gaffield, “Haiti
Haitian Revolution 11 and Jamaica in the Remaking of the Early Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World.” William and Mary Quarterly 69:3 (July 2012), 583-614; Matthew J. Clavin, Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War: The Promise and Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution; Gordon S. Brown, Toussaint’s Clause: The Founding Fathers and the Haitian Revolution; Emily Clark, The Strange History of the American Quadroon: Free Women of Color in the Revolutionary Atlantic World; Alexander DeConde, The Affair of Louisiana; Alfred N. Hunt, Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America; Ronald Johnson, Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and their Atlantic World Alliance; Tim Matthewson, A Proslavery Foreign Policy: Haitian-American Relations during the Early Republic; Edward Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War; Arthur Scherr, Thomas Jefferson’s Haitian Policy: Myths and Realities; Ashli White, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early United States
Week 9: Building a new state
Song of the day: National anthem of Haiti (1903-4)
Questions: What happened after 1804? Why was early national Haiti divided into different states? What different strategies did Haitian rulers and intellectuals use to build up their new states?
Required: Baron de Vastey, Political Remarks on Some French Works and Newspapers, Concerning Hayti (1818) on google books p. 166-175 https://books.google.fr/books?id=uJ5EAQAAMAAJ&dq=baron+de+vastey+writings&hl=fr&source =gbs_navlinks_s Alexander Petion’s rejection of French colonization 1816 http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/petion-1816.html Artworks of the Haitian Revolution ex. pick one of Jacob Lawrence's painting: https://www.davidsongalleries.com/artists/modern/jacob-lawrence/toussaint-louverure/ If you want to learn more about Lawrence: http://lawrencemigration.phillipscollection.org/
Summary of the 1804-1820 period by Bob Corbett: http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/haiti/history/earlyhaiti/postrev.htm Marlene Daut, Inside the Kingdom of Hayti, ‘the Wakanda of the Western Hemisphere’ The Conversation https://theconversation.com/inside-the-kingdom-of-hayti-the-wakanda-of-the-western- hemisphere-108250 Mimi Sheller, “Sword-Bearing Citizens: Militarism and Manhood in Nineteenth-century Haiti (1997) in Haitian History: New Perspectives, 157-179 Nathan Dize, “Monumental Louverture: French/Haitian Sites of Memory” https://ageofrevolutions.com/2018/04/09/monumental-louverture-french-haitian-sites-of-memory- and-the-commemoration-of-abolition/
Debate: Writing other histories of the Haitian Revolution. Marlene L. Daut; The “Alpha and Omega” Of Haitian Literature: Baron de Vastey and the US Audience of Haitian Political Writing,” Comparative Literature 1 March 2012; 64 (1): 49–72
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Erin Zavitz, “Revolutionary narrations: Early Haitian historiography and the challenge of writing counter-history, Atlantic Studies 14:3 (2017): 336-353
Recommended: Michel-Rolph Trouillot. “Three Faces of Sans-Souci” Silencing the Past; Rebecca Scott, “Paper Thin: Freedom, Re-Enslavement and Determinations of Status in the Diaspora of the Haitian Revolution” Law and History Review 29:4 (2011), 1061-1087; Marlene Daut, “Unsilencing the Past: Boisrond-Tonnerre, Vastey, and the Re-Writing of the Haitian Revolution.” South Atlantic Review 74:1 (2009), 35-64; Kate Hodgson, “‘Internal Harmony, Peace to the Outside World’: Imagining Community in Nineteenth-Century Haiti.” Paragraph 37:2 (2014), 178-192; Robert K. Lacerte, “The Evolution of Land and Labour in the Haitian Revolution, 1791-1820.” In Caribbean Freedom: Society and Economy From Emancipation to the Present, Hilary Beckles, Verene Shepherd, eds,. (1996), 42-47; Chris Bongie, ed. Baron de Pompee-Valentin Vastey, The Colonial System Unveiled (2014); Raphael Hoermann Figures of terror: The “zombie” and the Haitian Revolution, Atlantic Studies, 14:2 (2016): 152-173
Week 10: Historiography and Review session
Song of the day: “Simbi” by Moonlight Benjamin
Questions: In this module, we discussed ways to think about the mechanisms of power that produce the sources through which we construct historical narratives, can we apply the same reflection to historical narratives themselves?
Required: Robert Taber, "Navigating Haiti's History: Saint‐Domingue and the Haitian Revolution" (2015) Philippe Girard, “The Haitian Revolution, History’s New Frontier: State of the Scholarship and Archival Sources.” Slavery and Abolition 34:3(2013), 485-507.
Recommended: C.L.R. James, “Lectures on The Black Jacobins.” Small Axe 8 (Sep. 2000), 65-112; Matthew Smith, “Footprints on the Sea: Finding Haiti in Caribbean Historiography.” Small Axe 43(March 2014), 55-71; Jana Evans Braziel, “Re-membering Défilée: Dédée Bazile as Revolutionary Lieu de Mémoire.” Small Axe 18 (2005), 57-85; John D. Garrigus, “White Jacobins/Black Jacobins: Bringing the Haitian and French Revolutions Together in the Classroom,” French Historical Studies 23 (2000), 259-75
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