The Haitian Revolution: A Basic Reading Guide

Patrick S. O’Donnell (2023)

I welcome title suggestions with two constraints: books, in English.

Engraving of the Battle of Vertières that ended the Haitian War of Independence (Attack and take of the
Crête-à-Pierrot. Original illustration by Auguste Raffet, engraving by Hébert.)

“The movement for Black liberation made its world-historical debut in August 1791 when ten
thousand slaves in the north of Saint-Domingue rose up and laid waste to sugar plantations.
Within three months, the numbers involved in the insurrection had grown eightfold. Sugar
production almost ceased. Fortunes burned. Planters fled, and some were killed. By 1794, the
rebels had compelled France to abolish slavery throughout its colonies. Here was one of the
most astonishing achievements in history, but it was fleeting. Napoleon, who seized power in
1799, reneged on France’s promise of ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’ for those with dark skin. His
regime couldn’t tolerate a former slave ruling over its most valuable colony. But Toussaint
Louverture’s army of self-freed soldiers – men and women uprooted from their homelands and
families, survivors of the Middle Passage and of an especially brutal form of slavery – wouldn’t
submit to bondage again. The French general Charles Leclerc promised to subdue Saint-
Domingue within two weeks, but nine months later he was dead, along with tens of thousands
of his soldiers. In 1804, Haiti became the second republic in the New World and the first Black

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one. The second article of its constitution abolished slavery; the fourteenth declared all Haitians,
regardless of their skin colour, to be Black. Haiti was post-colonial before many colonies existed.

A handful of contemporaries grasped what was happening: ‘There’s not a breathing of the
common wind/That will forget thee,’ Wordsworth wrote in homage to Louverture, who was by
then dying in a French prison. Most contemporary writers, as the Haitian historian and
anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot argued, were too blinded by racism to see what was
taking place. The idea that Black slaves could imagine or desire freedom, let alone engineer a
protracted, eventually victorious struggle for it, was unthinkable. In 1804 the economies of most
Atlantic powers depended on Black slavery. The US president was a slaver celebrated for a
Declaration of Independence that didn’t need to specify that only white men were created
equal. Humiliation may also have had something to do with this failure of comprehension.
France, routed, was forced into a firesale of the Louisiana Territory, a lacklustre end to
Napoleon’s western ambitions. (Britain, for its part, lost sixty thousand men in its attempt to
gain control of the Caribbean.)

Archives reflect inequalities. While written records by the protagonists are scarce (Louverture,
who was said to send out more than two hundred letters a day, was a rare exception), accounts
from planters, European officials and opponents of Black liberation are plentiful, many of them
steeped in a baroque and obsessive racism. Too many historians have taken such sources at
their word. Not that many historians wrote about the revolution. The exception was C.L.R.
James, whose Black Jacobins, published in 1938, was neglected for decades then reissued in 1963
as decolonisation movements gained momentum across the African continent.

Writing about the Haitian Revolution has often reflected (and recreated) the inequalities that
gave rise to it. For nearly two centuries, the revolution was an affront to economies grown fat
on slavery, to empires still carving up the Third World under the auspices of civilising it, to
polities ostensibly based on universal rights. But by the mid-1990s, a shift in scholarly attitudes
towards Black liberation was beginning to take place. Trouillot’s work was key to that shift,
particularly his emphasis on the ways in which the forces of slavery, colonialism and racism
shaped the modern world. Now, a new generation of historians are inventing or applying fresh
methods to fragmentary archives, critically interpreting the better-known primary sources and
hypothesising about what has been left out. They scour the manifests of ships and the ledgers of
overseers, travelogues, newspapers, Vatican dossiers and Vodou iconography, searching for
traces of the people who made the revolution. Dozens of books and articles now appear every
year about the Haitian Revolution, while historians take to Twitter and the popular press to
remind us of Haiti’s singular place in the history of liberation movements.” – Pooja Bhatia, in a
review essay for the London Review of Books, Vol. 42, No. 22, 19 November 2020

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 Alexander, Leslie M. Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black
Internationalism in the United States. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2023.
 Blackburn, Robin. The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848. New York: Verso,
1998.
 Brown, Gordon S. Toussaint’s Clause: The Founding Fathers and the Haitian Revolution.
Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.
 Buck-Morss, Susan. Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. Pittsburgh, PA: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2009.
 Byrd, Brandon R. The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti.
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
 Casimir, Jean (Laurent Dubois, trans.) The Haitians: A Decolonial History. Chapel Hill,
NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2020.
 Daut, Marene L. Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution
in the Atlantic World, 1789-1865. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015.
 Daut, Marlene L. Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
 Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth
Century. London: Verso, 2010 (1997).
 Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004.
 Dubois, Laurent and John D. Garrigus. Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A
Brief History with Documents. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin, 2nd ed., 2017.
 Dun, James Alexander. Dangerous Neighbors: Making the Haitian Revolution in Early
America. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
 Eller, Anne. We Dream Together: Dominican Independence, Haiti, and the Fight for
Caribbean Freedom. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.
 Ferrer, Ada. Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2014.
 Fick, Carolyn. The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below.
Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2000.
 Fischer, Sibylle. Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of
Revolution. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
 Forsdick, Charles and Christian Høgsbjerg, eds. The Black Jacobins Reader. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2017.
 Forsdick, Charles and Christian Høgsbjerg. Toussaint Louverture: A Black Jacobin in the
Age of Revolutions. London: Pluto Press, 2017.
 Gaffield, Julia. Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.

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 Gaffield, Julia, ed. The Haitian Declaration of Independence: Creation, Context, and
Legacy. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2016.
 Geggus, David Patrick. Haitian Revolutionary Studies. Bloomington, IN: University of
Indiana Press, 2002.
 Geggus, David Patrick, ed. The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World.
Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
 Geggus, David Patrick and Norman Fiering, eds. The World of the Haitian Revolution.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009.
 Girard, Philippe R. The Slaves Who Defeated Napoleon: Toussaint Louverture and the
Haitian War of Independence, 1801–1804. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press,
2011.
 Girard, Philippe. Toussaint Louverture: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Basic Books,
2016.
 Gonzalez, Johnhenry. Maroon Nation: A History of Revolutionary Haiti. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2019.
 Hazareesingh, Sudhir. Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Touissaint Louverture. New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.
 Horne, Gerald. Confronting Black Jacobins: The United States, the Haitian Revolution, and
the Origins of the Dominican Republic. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2015.
 Hunt, Alfred. Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the
Caribbean. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1988.
 Jackson, Maurice and Jacqueline Bacon, eds. African Americans and the Haitian
Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents. New York: Routledge, 2010.
 James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution.
New York: Random House/Vintage Books, 2nd ed., 1963/1989 (1938).
 Johnson, Ronald Angelo. Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint
Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press,
2014.
 Johnson, Sara E. The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the
Revolutionary Americas. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012.
 Kaisary, Philip. The Haitian Revolution in the Literary Imagination: Radical Horizons,
Conservative Constraints. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2014.
 Kennedy, Roger G. (an illustrated documentary by David Larkin) When Art Worked:
The New Deal, Art, and Democracy. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2009.
 Logan, Rayford W. The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 1776-1891.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1941.
 L’Ouverture, Toussaint (Nick Nesbitt, ed.) The Haitian Revolution. London: Verso,
2008. [A collection of Louverture’s writings and speeches]

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  Matthewson, Tim. A Proslavery Foreign Policy: Haitian-American Relations during the
Early American Republic. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003.
 Munro, Martin and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, eds. Reinterpreting the Haitian
Revolution and Its Cultural Aftershocks. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West
Indies Press, 2006.
 Nesbitt, Nick. Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical
Enlightenment. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2008.
 Oldfield, J.R. Transatlantic Abolitionism: The Age of Revolution, 1787-1820. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2010.
 Piketty, Thomas. “Slave and Colonial Societies,” in Part II of his book Capital and
Ideology (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020).
 Plummer, Brenda Gayle. Haiti and the Great Powers, 1902-1915. Baton Rouge, LA:
Louisiana State University Press, 1988.
 Plummer, Brenda Gayle. Haiti and the United States: The Psychological Moment. Athens,
GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992.
 Polyné, Millery. From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan-
Americanism, 1870-1964. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2010.
 Popkin, Jeremy D. You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
 Ros, Martin. Night of Fire: The Black Napoleon and The Battle for Haiti. New York:
Sarpedon Publishers, 1994.
 Scott, Julius S. The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian
Revolution. London: Verso, 2018.
 Stewart, Whitney Nell and John Garrison Marks, eds. Race and Nation in the Age of
Emancipations. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2018.
 Stinchcombe, Arthur L. Sugar Island Slavery in the Age of Enlightenment: The Political
Economy of the Caribbean World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
 West, Michael O., William G. Martin, and Fanon Che Wilkins, eds. From Toussaint to
Tupac: The Black International since the Age of Revolution. Chapel Hill, NC: University
of North Carolina Press, 2009.
 White, Ashli. Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic.
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

“The Haitian case is emblematic, not only because it was the first abolition of the modern era
following a victorious slave revolt and the first independence secured by a black population
from a European power but also because the episode ended with a gigantic debt that did much
to undermine the development of Haiti over the next two centuries. If France finally agreed to
recognize Haitian independence in 1825 and to end its threat to invade the island with French

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troops, it was only because Charles X extracted from the Haitian government a promise to pay
150 million gold francs to compensate slaveowners for loss of their property [‘the figure was
based on the profitability of the plantations and the value of slaves prior to the Haitian
revolution’]. The government in Port-au-Prince really had no choice given France’s obvious
military superiority, the embargo imposed by the French fleet pending a settlement, and the
real risk of an occupation of the island. [....]

Recent research has shown that the sum of 150 million gold francs represented more than 300
percent of Haiti’s national income in 1825—in other words, three years of production. The
treaty also provided that the entire amount should be paid within five years to the Caisse des
Dépôts et Consignation (a public banking institution created during the French Revolution and
still in existence today), where it would be paid out to the despoiled slaveowners (which was
done), while the Haitian government was required to refinance the loan from the Caisse with
new loans from private French banks so as to spread the payments over time (which was also
done). It is crucial to recognize the magnitude of the sums involved. With refinancing at an
annual interest of 5 percent, typical for the time—not even counting the juicy commissions that
the bankers did not fail to add on in the course of numerous partial defaults and renegotiations
over the subsequent decades—this meant Haiti was obliged to repay the equivalent of 15
percent of its national product every year, indefinitely, simply to pay the interest of the debt
without even beginning to pay down the principal. [….]

The 1825 debt was not definitively repaid and officially wiped from the books until the early
1950s. For more than a century, from 1825 to 1950 [!], the price that France insisted Haiti pay for
its freedom had one main consequence: namely, that the island’s economic and political
development was subordinated to the question of the indemnity....” — Thomas Piketty

Relevant Bibliographies
 The European Enlightenment
 Human Rights
 C.L.R. James: Marxist Humanist & Afro-Trinidadian Socialist
 Pan-Africanism, Black Internationalism, and Black Cosmopolitanism
 Slavery
 After Slavery and Reconstruction: The Black Struggle in the U.S. for Freedom, Equality,
and Self-Realization