In this ambitious book, Girard employs the latest tools of the historian's craft, multi-archival research in particular, and applies them to the climactic yet poorly understood last years of the Haitian Revolution. Haiti lost most of its archives to neglect and theft, but a substantial number of documents survive in French, U.S., British, and Spanish collections, both public and private. In all, this book relies on contemporary military, commercial, and administrative sources drawn from nineteen archives and research libraries on both sides of the Atlantic.
Toussaint L’Ouverture was the leader of the Haitian Revolution in the late eighteenth century, in which slaves rebelled against their masters and established the first black republic. In this collection of his writings and speeches, former Haitian politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide demonstrates L’Ouverture’s profound contribution to the struggle for equality.
The definitive biography of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture, leader of the only successful slave revolt in world history Toussaint Louverture's life was one of hardship, triumph, and contradiction. Born into bondage in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), the richest colony in the Western Hemisphere, he witnessed first-hand the torture of the enslaved population. Yet he managed to secure his freedom and establish himself as a small-scale planter. He even purchased slaves of his own. In Toussaint Louverture, Philippe Girard reveals the dramatic story of how Louverture transformed himself from lowly freedman to revolutionary hero. In 1791, the unassuming Louverture masterminded the only successful slave revolt in history. By 1801, he was general and governor of Saint-Domingue, and an international statesman who forged treaties with Britain, France, Spain, and the United States-empires that feared the effect his example would have on their slave regimes. Louveture's ascendency was short-lived, however. In 1802, he was exiled to France, dying soon after as one of the most famous men in the world, variously feared and celebrated as the "Black Napoleon." As Girard shows, in life Louverture was not an idealist, but an ambitious pragmatist. He strove not only for abolition and independence, but to build Saint-Domingue's economic might and elevate his own social standing. He helped free Saint-Domingue's slaves yet immediately restricted their rights in the interests of protecting the island's sugar production. He warded off French invasions but embraced the cultural model of the French gentility. In death, Louverture quickly passed into legend, his memory inspiring abolitionist, black nationalist, and anti-colonialist movements well into the 20th century. Deeply researched and bracingly original, Toussaint Louverture is the definitive biography of one of the most influential people of his era, or any other.
"In the aftermath of January's horrific earthquake, the world's attention is focused on Haiti. In this full narrative history of the Caribbean nation, historian Philippe Girard offers insight into Haiti's complex and layered past, showing that its current state as the poorest country in the western hemisphere was not inevitable. This highly readable and accessible history takes the reader back two hundred years to a time when Haiti was so prosperous it was known as the Pearl of the Antilles. Haiti was the only country in the Americas to pull off a successful slave revolution, yet today its survival is completely dependent on foreign aid. As all eyes turn to watch what happens to Haiti, author Girard provides the necessary context for envisioning its future--including a detailed account of the quake's consequences, an assessment of the benefit and cost of an American intervention, and commentary on what Haiti must do to rebuild for a brighter future"--
Laurent Dubois weaves the stories of slaves, free people of African descent, wealthy whites and French administrators into an unforgettable tale of insurrection, war, heroism and victory.
A powerful and impassioned historical account of the largest successful revolt by enslaved people in history: the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1803 “One of the seminal texts about the history of slavery and abolition.... Provocative and empowering.” —The New York Times Book Review The Black Jacobins, by Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James, was the first major analysis of the uprising that began in the wake of the storming of the Bastille in France and became the model for liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of plantation owners toward enslaved people was horrifyingly severe. And it is the story of a charismatic and barely literate enslaved person named Toussaint L’Ouverture, who successfully led the Black people of San Domingo against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces—and in the process helped form the first independent post-colonial nation in the Caribbean. With a new introduction (2023) by Professor David Scott.
This book tells the story of the Battle of Vertières, fought in 1803 between indigenous Haitian forces under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Dessalines and a French expeditionary army commanded by Napoleon. The battle marked the culmination of a thirteen-year revolutionary struggle to end slavery and the dawn of an independent Haiti. Yet despite its pivotal importance to the history of Haiti, France, and the Americas, the Battle of Vertières has been struck from the record. The Cry of Vertières is the first book-length study of the battle, drawing from an array of sources including military correspondence, Haitian literature, art, and popular music. The event itself is recounted in vivid detail: it is a dramatic story of a volunteer army of former slaves, seeking the promises of freedom and citizenship held out by the revolution, defeating a colonial power determined to re-enslave them. The book also examines why the history of the battle has been suppressed in France - an act of erasure of a humiliating defeat - and why it remains fragile even in Haiti. Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec explains that today Vertières is both a key lieu de mémoire that embodies reconciliation, pride, and strength for the Haitian people, and a figure of speech exploited by politicians to reinforce their power. Describing a decisive yet largely forgotten moment in the revolutionary history of the Americas, The Cry of Vertières makes an essential contribution to the complex subjects of race, memory, colonialism, and cultural nationalism in present-day France and Haiti.
At the end of the 1700s, French Saint Domingue was the richest and most brutal colony in the Western Hemisphere. A mere twelve years later, however, Haitian rebels had defeated the Spanish, British, and French and declared independence after the first—and only—successful slave revolt in history. Much of the success of the revolution must be credited to one man, Toussaint Louverture, a figure about whom surprisingly little is known. In this fascinating biography, Madison Smartt Bell, award-winning author of a trilogy of novels that investigate Haiti’s history, combines a novelist’s passion with a deep knowledge of the historical milieu that produced the man labeled a saint, a martyr, or a clever opportunist who instigated one of the most violent events in modern history. The first biography in English in over sixty years of the man who led the Haitian Revolution, this is an engaging reexamination of the controversial, paradoxical leader.
Slave Portraiture in the Atlantic World is the first book to focus on the individualized portrayal of enslaved people from the time of Europe's full engagement with plantation slavery in the late sixteenth century to its final official abolition in Brazil in 1888. While this period saw the emergence of portraiture as a major field of representation in Western art, 'slave' and 'portraiture' as categories appear to be mutually exclusive. On the one hand, the logic of chattel slavery sought to render the slave's body as an instrument for production, as the site of a non-subject. Portraiture, on the contrary, privileged the face as the primary visual matrix for the representation of a distinct individuality. Essays address this apparent paradox of 'slave portraits' from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, probing the historical conditions that made the creation of such rare and enigmatic objects possible and exploring their implications for a more complex understanding of power relations under slavery.
