Echoes of the Haitian Revolution, 1804-2004

Echoes of the Haitian Revolution, 1804-2004
Author: Martin Munro
Publisher:
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN:

The bicentenary of Haitian independence in 2004 triggered a renewed interest in Haitian history and culture. In many ways, however, much work is still required in this fertile field. Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and Its Cultural Aftershocks, the first collection of essays edited by Martin Munro and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, addressed the repercussions of the Haitian Revolution in Haiti, the Caribbean, North America and Europe. This present volume develops and complements the previous collection to meet the growing demand for original scholarly work on Haiti. Widening the cultural lens to include diasporic studies, art, and questions of race and gender, Echoes of the Haitian Revolution exposes how the history of Haiti has shaped our ideas of race, nation and civilization in ways that we are often unaware of. Haiti's lessons continue to engage us in a dynamic dialog that compels us to question and revisit received arguments. The essays collected here provoke and stimulate these necessary conversations by approaching the legacies and repercussions of the revolution from a cultural perspective.

Haiti: The Aftershocks of History

Haiti: The Aftershocks of History
Author: Laurent Dubois
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2012
Genre: Haiti
ISBN: 0805093354

Even before the 2010 earthquake, Haiti was known as a benighted place of poverty and corruption, and has often been blamed for its own wretchedness. But as historian Laurent Dubois makes clear, its difficulties are rooted in its founding revolution, the only successful slave revolt in the history of the world; the hostility that this rebellion generated among the colonial powers; and the intense struggle within Haiti itself to define its newfound freedom and realize its promise. Dubois vividly depicts the isolation and impoverishment that followed the 1804 uprising. He details how the indemnity imposed by the former French rulers initiated a devastating cycle of debt, while frequent interventions by the United States further undermined Haiti's independence. At the same time, Dubois shows, the internal debates about what Haiti should do with its hard-won liberty alienated the nation's leaders from the broader population, setting the stage for enduring political conflict. Yet the Haitian people have never given up on their struggle for true democracy.--From publisher description.

Stirring the Pot of Haitian History

Stirring the Pot of Haitian History
Author: Michel-Rolph Trouillot
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 1800859678

Stirring the Pot of Haitian History is the first-ever translation of Ti dife boule sou istoua Ayiti (1977), the earliest book written by Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot. Challenging understandings of two centuries of Haitian history, Trouillot analyzes the pivotal role of formerly enslaved Haitian revolutionaries in the Revolution and War of Independence (1791-1804), a generation of people who became the founders of the modern Haitian state and advanced the vibrant culture that flourishes in Haiti. This book confronts Haiti's political culture and the racial mythologizing of historical figures such as Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Toussaint Louverture, Andre Rigaud, and Alexandre Petion. Trouillot examines the socio-economic and political contradictions and inequalities within the French colony of Saint-Domingue, traces the unraveling of the racist class system after 1790, and argues that Vodou and the Haitian Creole language provided the underlying cultural cohesion and resistance that led Haiti to independence. This groundbreaking book blends Marxist criticism with Haiti's rich oral storytelling traditions to provide a playful yet incisive account of Haitian political thought that is rooted in the style and culture of Haitian Creole speakers. Proverbs, wordplay, and songs from popular culture and Vodou religion are interspersed with explorations of complex social and political realities and historical hypotheses; readers are thus drawn into a captivating oral performance. In a nation where the Haitian Creole majority language is still marginalized in government and education, Ti dife boule leaps out as a major contribution in the effort to expand Haitian Creole scholarship. Stirring the Pot of Haitian History holds a significant place in the expanding canon of Caribbean literature. The English translation of Trouillot's first book - showing how historical problems continue to reverberate within the contemporary moment - provides readers with a one-of-a-kind Haitian perspective on Haitian revolutionary history and its legacies.

The Haitian Revolution in the Literary Imagination

The Haitian Revolution in the Literary Imagination
Author: Philip Kaisary
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2014-02-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0813935482

The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) reshaped the debates about slavery and freedom throughout the Atlantic world, accelerated the abolitionist movement, precipitated rebellions in neighboring territories, and intensified both repression and antislavery sentiment. The story of the birth of the world’s first independent black republic has since held an iconic fascination for a diverse array of writers, artists, and intellectuals throughout the Atlantic diaspora. Examining twentieth-century responses to the Haitian Revolution, Philip Kaisary offers a profound new reading of the representation of the Revolution by radicals and conservatives alike in primary texts that span English, French, and Spanish languages and that include poetry, drama, history, biography, fiction, and opera. In a complementary focus on canonical works by Aimé Césaire, C. L. R. James, Edouard Glissant, and Alejo Carpentier in addition to the work of René Depestre, Langston Hughes, and Madison Smartt Bell, Kaisary argues that the Haitian Revolution generated an enduring cultural and ideological inheritance. He addresses critical understandings and fictional reinventions of the Revolution and thinks through how, and to what effect, authors of major diasporic texts have metamorphosed and appropriated this spectacular corner of black revolutionary history.

Rethinking the Haitian Revolution

Rethinking the Haitian Revolution
Author: Alex Dupuy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2019-03-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442261129

In this important book, leading scholar Alex Dupuy provides a critical reinterpretation of the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath. Dupuy evaluates the French colonial context of Saint-Domingue and then Haiti, the achievements and limitations of the revolution, and the divisions in the Haitian ruling class that blocked meaningful economic and political development. He reconsiders the link between slavery and modern capitalism; refutes the argument that Hegel derived his master-slave dialectic from the Haitian Revolution; analyzes the consequences of new class and color divisions after independence; and convincingly explains why Haiti chose to pay an indemnity to France in return for its recognition of Haiti’s independence. In his sophisticated analysis of race, class, and slavery, Dupuy provides a robust theoretical framework for conceptualizing and understanding these major themes.

Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature

Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature
Author: Martin Munro
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2013-08-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1846318548

Exile and Post-1946 Haitian Literature provides readers with an excellent introduction to recent Haitian literature, one of the richest literary traditions in the Americas. Martin Munro focuses on works written after 1946, a period in which exile has become the dominant theme in Haitian literature. Using this notion of Haitian writing as a literature of exile, Munro analyzes key novels by the most important figures of each generation of the past sixty years, including Jacques Stephen Alexis, René Depestre, Émile Ollivier, Dany Laferrière, and Edwidge Danticat.

Tree of Liberty

Tree of Liberty
Author: Doris Lorraine Garraway
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780813926865

On January 1, 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared the independence of Haiti, thus bringing to an end the only successful slave revolution in history and transforming the colony of Saint-Domingue into the second independent state in the Western Hemisphere. The historical significance of the Haitian Revolution has been addressed by numerous scholars, but the importance of the Revolution as a cultural and political phenomenon has only begun to be explored. Although the path-breaking work of Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Sibylle Fischer has illustrated the profound silences surrounding the Haitian Revolution in Western historiography and in Caribbean cultural production in the aftermath of the Revolution, contributors to this volume argue that, while suppressed and disavowed in some quarters, the Haitian Revolution nonetheless had an enduring cultural and political impact, particularly on peoples and communities that have been marginalized in the historical record and absent from the discourses of Western historiography. Tree of Liberty interrogates the literary, historical, and political discourses that the Revolution produced and inspired across time and space and across national and linguistic boundaries. In so doing, it seeks to initiate a far-reaching discussion of the Revolution as a cultural and political phenomenon that shaped ideas about the Enlightenment, freedom, postcolonialism, and race in the modern Atlantic world. Contributors: A. James Arnold, University of Virginia * Chris Bongie, Queen's University * Paul Breslin, Northwestern University * Ada Ferrer, New York University * Doris L. Garraway, Northwestern University * E. Anthony Hurley, SUNY Stony Brook * Deborah Jenson, University of Wisconsin, Madison * Jean Jonassaint, Syracuse University * Valerie Kaussen, University of Missouri * Ifeoma C.K. Nwankwo, Vanderbilt University