Political Thought of the Haitian Revolution
Megan Gallagher | [email protected]
Sample syllabus
Course description
Though not often regarded as such today, the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) arguably
exemplifies both the best and worst lessons of the European Enlightenment, even more so
than the American or French Revolutions that predated it (in 1776 and 1789, respectively).
Indeed, some of its greatest proponents and leaders saw the Haitian Revolution as fulfilling
the promises of equality and freedom that the American and French Revolutions had fallen
short of achieving. What began as the largest and most successful slave revolt in the western
hemisphere on the French colony of Saint-Domingue ended with the creation of the
republic of Haiti. We will trace this evolution by reading a combination of primary and
secondary sources, spanning history, literature, political theory, and contemporary political
documents and speeches. In so doing, we will privilege the voices of Haitian actors and
observers, re-centering the Revolution within its own narrative, not as an echo of those that
preceded it.
Moving in a roughly chronological order, we will consider how the events of the Revolution
mandated a reconsideration of political categories such as liberty, citizenship, and rights. We
will pay particular attention to the ways in which these terms had only recently been
unsettled by Enlightenment thinkers, some of whom, such as the philosophes Diderot and
Raynal, were still considering whether Europe’s treatment of its colonies could be reconciled
with their advocacy of universal principles such as freedom and democracy within European
borders. Early weeks will cover the principle events of the Revolution; no prior familiarity is
necessary.
Reading schedule
I. History
Week 1 | Introduction
• Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, excerpts
• Jeremy Popkin, A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution, introduction and chapters 1-2
• Laurent Dubois, “An Enslaved Enlightenment: Rethinking the Intellectual History of the
French Atlantic,” Social History 31.1 (2006): 1-14.
Documents
• The Code Noir, 1685
• Prophesies of Slave Revolutions, 1771 and 1780
Week 2 | Pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue
• David Geggus, “Saint-Domingue on the Eve of the Haitian Revolution,” in Geggus and
Norman Fiering, eds., The World of the Haitian Revolution.
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• John Garrigus “Saint-Domingue’s Free People of Color and the Tools of Revolution,” in
Geggus and Fiering
• Dominique Rogers, “On the Road to Citizenship: The Complex Route to Integration of
the Free People of Color in the Two Capitals of Saint-Domingue,” in Geggus and Fiering
• Popkin, A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution, chapters 3-4.
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Documents
Letters from the Slave Revolt in Martinique, August-September 1789
The Free Citizens of Color, Address to the National Assembly, 22 October 1789
The National Assembly, Decree of March 8 and Instructions of 28 March 1790
The National Assembly, Law on the Colonies, 1791
Week 3 | Colonization
• Diderot and Raynal, Histoire des Deux Indes, excerpts
• Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism
Week 4 | Uprising
• Popkin, A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution, chapters 5-6
• Yves Benot, “The Insurgents of 1791, Their Leaders, and the Concept of Independence,”
in Geggus and Fiering
Documents
• Letters from the Uprising of Vincent Ogé, October 1790
• Pierre Mossut, Letter to the Marquis de Gallifet, 19 September 1791
• Philadelphia General Advertiser, Reports on the Insurrection, October-November
1791
• Jean-François and Biassou, Letters to the Commissioners, December 1791
• Gros, In the Camps of the Insurgents, 1791
• The National Assembly, Law of 4 April1792
• Journal Républicain de la Guadeloupe, Account of the Slave Revolt, 24 April 1793
• The National Convention, The Abolition of Slavery, 4 February 1794
Week 5 | The Canonical Account
• CLR James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, selections
II. Reconceputalizations
Week 6 | Race
• Guillaume Aubert, “‘The Blood of France’: Race and Purity of Blood in the French
Atlantic World,” William and Mary Quarterly 61.3 (2004): 439-478.
• Garrigus, “‘To establish a community of property’”: Marriage and Race before and during
the Haitian Revolution,” The History of the Family 12.2 (2007): 142-152.
• Geggus, “Slave and Free Colored Women in Saint-Domingue,” in More than Chattel: Black
Women and Slavery in the Americas, eds. David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine.
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Documents
• Julien Raimond, Observations on the Origin and Progression of the White
Colonists’ Prejudice against Men of Color, 1791
Week 7 | Slavery and Emancipation
• Sibylle Fischer, Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution,
introduction and chapters 9-13
Documents
• Légér Félicité Sonthonax, Decree of General Liberty Proclaimed, 29 August 1793
• Insurgent Responses to Emancipation, 1793
• Etienne Laveaux, A Celebration of the Anniversary of Abolition, 1798
Week 8 |A New Language of Liberty
• Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel, “Creolizing Freedom: French-Creole Translations of Liberty
and Equality in the Haitian Revolution,” Slavery & Abolition 36.1 (2015): 111-123.
• Catherine Reinhardt, “French Caribbean Slaves Forge Their Own Ideal of Liberty in
1789,” in Doris Kadish, ed., Slavery in the Caribbean Francophone World.
• Neil Roberts, Freedom as Marronage, chapters 1 and 4.
Week 9 | Citizenship
• Malick W. Ghachem, “The ‘Trap’ of Representation: Sovereignty, Slavery and the Road to
the Haitian Revolution,” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques 29.1 (2003): 123-144.
• Carolyn Fick, “The Haitian Revolution and the Limits of Freedom: Defining Citizenship
in the Revolutionary Era,” Social History 32.4 (2007): 394-414.
• Janet Polasky, Revolutions without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World, chapters 3
and 8
Week 10 |Universalism
• Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History
• David Scott, “Antinomies of Slavery, Enlightenment, and Universal History,” Small Axe 33
(2010): 152-162.
• Fischer, “History and Catastrophe,” Small Axe 33 (2010): 163-172.
Week 11 | Human Rights
• Franklin W. Knight, “The Haitian Revolution and the Notion of Human Rights,” Journal of
The Historical Society 5 (2005): 391-416.
• Nick Nesbitt, Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment,
selections
III. Effects
Week 12 | Reverberations: Americas
• Ashli White, “The Saint-Dominguan Refugees and American Distinctiveness in the Early
Years of the Haitian Revolution,” in Geggus and Fiering
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• Sue Peabody, “‘Free upon higher ground’: Saint-Domingue Slaves’ Suits for Freedom in
U.S. Courts, 1792-1830,” in Geggus and Fiering
• Ada Ferrer, “Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic,” The American
Historical Review 117.1 (2012): 40-66.
• Johnhenry Gonzalez, “Defiant Haiti: Free-Soil Runaways, Ship Seizures and the Politics of
Diplomatic Non-Recognition in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Slavery & Abolition 36.1
(2015): 124-135.
Documents
• Thomas Jefferson, Letters, 1797-1802
• Refugees in Charleston, S.C., Petition, 25 October 1799
• Charles Brockton Brown, St. Domingo, December 1804
• Frederick Douglass, Lecture on Haiti, 1893
Week 13 | Reverberations: Europe
• Popkin, “The French Revolution’s Other Island,” in Geggus and Fiering
• 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
• Cristian Cantir, “‘Savages in the midst’: Revolutionary Haiti in International Society (1791–
1838),” Journal of International Relations and Development (2015) - online ahead of print.
• Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, “The Specter of Saint-Domingue: American and French
Reactions to the Haitian Revolution,” in Geggus and Fiering
Documents
• Wordsworth, “To Toussaint L’Ouverture,” 1802
Week 14 | Founding Documents
• Geggus, “Haiti’s Declaration of Independence,” in Julia Gaffield, ed., The Haitian
Declaration of Independence: Creation, Context, and Legacy
• Julia Gaffield, “Complexities of Imagining Haiti: A Study of National Constitutions,
1801-1807,” Journal of Social History 41.1 (2007): 81-103
• Barrymore Anthony Bogues, “The Haitian Revolution/s and the making of Freedom in
the Atlantic World: An Examination of the Haitian Constitution of 1806,” Swithin
Wilmot, ed., Freedom: Retrospective and Prospective (Kingston: Ian Randle Press, 2009) pp.
141-171.
Documents
• Toussaint Louverture, From Constitution of the French Colony of SaintDomingue, 1801
• Boisrond Tonnerre, The Haitian Declaration of Independence, 1 January 1804
• Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Proclamation, 28 April 1804
• The Haitian Constitution, 1805
Week 15 | Haiti as Heir of the Enlightenment?
• Émeric Bergeaud, Stella
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Required texts
Émeric Bergeaud, Stella
Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History
Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism
Laurent Dubois and John Garrigus, eds., Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief
History with Documents
David Patrick Geggus and Norman Fiering, eds., The World of the Haitian Revolution
CLR James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
Nick Nesbitt, Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment
Jeremy Popkin, A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution
In addition to the Dubois and Garrigus volume, some primary sources will come from
David Geggus’ The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History, which is optional.
All other readings will be available on the course site.
Recommended reading
Robin Blackburn, “Haiti, Slavery, and the Age of the Democratic Revolution.” William and
Mary Quarterly 63.4 (2006): 633-674.
Philip P. Boucher, France and the American Tropics to 1700: Tropics of Discontent?
Susan Buck-Morss, “Hegel and Haiti,” Critical Inquiry 26.4 (2000): 821-865.
Brandon Byrd, “Black Republicans, Black Republic: Black Leaders, Haiti, and the Promise of
Reconstruction,” Slavery & Abolition 36.4 (2015): 545-567.
Daniel Carey, and Lynn Festa The Postcolonial Enlightenment : Eighteenth-Century Colonialism and
Postcolonial Theory.
Matthew Clavin, Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War: The Promise and Peril of a Second
Haitian Revolution.
J. Michael Dash, “Haïti Chimère: Revolutionary Universalism and Its Caribbean Context,” in
eds. Martin Munro and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, Reinterpreting the Haitian
Revolution and Its Cultural Aftershocks, pp. 9-19.
Marlene Daut, Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the
Atlantic World, 1789-1865.
Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, and Michael Drexler, eds., The Haitian Revolution and the Early
United States: Histories, Textualities, Geographies.
Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution.
---, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution & Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804.
---, “An Enslaved Enlightenment: Rethinking the Intellectual History of the French
Atlantic,” Social History 31.1 (2006): 1-14.
---, “Republican Anti-Racism and Racism: A Caribbean Genealogy,” French Politics, Culture and
Society 18.3 (2000): 5-17.
Daphne Duchesne, “Two Contending Mothers: Discrepant Allegories in Émeric Bergeaud’s
Stella.” Research in African Literatures 46.2 (2015): 104-118.
Carolyn Fick, “Dilemmas of Emancipation: From the Saint Domingue Insurrections of
1791 to the Emerging Haitian State.” History Workshop Journal 46 (1998): 1-15.
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---, “The Haitian Revolution and the Limits of Freedom: Defining Citizenship in the
Revolutionary Era.” Social History 32.4 (2007): 394-414.
---, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below.
---, “Revolutionary Saint Domingue and the Emerging Atlantic: Paradigms of Sovereignty.”
Review: Fernand Braudel Center. (2008): 121-144.
Ulrich Fleischmann, “L’histoire de la fondation de la Nation haïtienne : mythes et abus
politiques.” Haïti 1804 - lumières et ténèbres: impact et résonances d’une révolution 121 (2008).
Julia Gaffield, Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution.
Doris Garraway, The Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean.
David Barry Gaspar and David Patrick Geggus, eds., A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution
and the Greater Caribbean.
David Patrick Geggus, ed. The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World.
Malick W. Ghachem, The Old Regime and the Haitian Revolution.
---, “Montesquieu in the Caribbean: The Colonial Enlightenment between Code Noir and
Code Civil.” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 25.2 (1999): 183-219.
Philippe Girard, “Rebelles with a Cause: Women in the Haitian War of Independence, 1802–
04,” Gender & History 21.1 (2009): 60-85.
Édouard Glissant, Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays.
Paget Henry, Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy.
Léon-François Hoffmann, “L’Étranger dans le roman haïtien,” L’esprit créateur 17.2 (1978):
83-102.
---, “En marge du premier roman haïtien, Stella, d’Emeric Bergeaud,” Conjonction 161 (1976):
75-102.
---, Le Nègre romantique : personnage littéraire et obsession collective.
---, Essays on Haitian Literature.
Gerald Horne, Confronting Black Jacobins: The U.S., the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the
Dominican Republic.
Alfred Hunt, Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean.
Maurice Jackson and Jacqueline Bacon, eds., African Americans and the Haitian Revolution:
Selected Essays and Historical Documents.
Ronald Angelo Johnson, Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and
Their Atlantic World Alliance.
Jean Jonassaint, Des Romans de tradition haïtienne: sur un récit tragique.
---, “Tragic Narratives: The Novels of Haitian Tradition,” Callaloo 26.1 (2003): 203-218.
Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel, “Creolizing Freedom: French–Creole Translations of Liberty
and Equality in the Haitian Revolution.” Slavery & Abolition 36.1 (2015): 111-123.
Franklin W. Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism. 3rd edition.
Yun Kyoung Kwon, “When Parisian Liberals Spoke for Haiti: French Anti-Slavery
Discourses on Haiti under the Restoration, 1814-30.” Atlantic Studies 8.3 (2011):
317-341.
Walter Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America.
Christiane Ndiaye, “Stella d’Émeric Bergeaud: une écriture épique de l’histoire.” Itinéraires.
Littérature, textes, cultures (2009): 19-31.
Sue Peabody, “There Are No Slaves in France”: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the
Ancien Régime.
Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall, eds., The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France.
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Jeremy Popkin, Facing Racial Revolution: Eyewitness Accounts of the Haitian Insurrection.
---, “Facing Racial Revolution: Captivity Narratives and Identity in the Saint-Domingue
Insurrection.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36.4 (2003): 511-533.
---, You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery.
Reiland Rabaka, Africana Critical Theory: Reconstructing the Black Radical Tradition from W.E.B. Du
Bois and C.L.R. James to Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral
Catherine Reinhardt, “French Caribbean Slaves Forge Their Own Ideal of Liberty in 1789,”
in Doris Kadish, ed., Slavery in the Caribbean Francophone World, pp. 19-38.
David Scott, Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment.
Rebecca J. Scott and Jean M. Hébrard, Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of
Emancipation.
Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, The Abbé Grégoire and the French Revolution: Tbe Making of Modern
Universalism.
Robert D. Taber, “Navigating Haiti’s History: Saint-Domingue and the Haitian Revolution.”
History Compass 13.5 (2015): 235-250.
John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800.
Michel-Ralph Trouillot,“The Odd and the Ordinary: Haiti, the Caribbean, and the World,”
Cimarron 2.3 (1990): 3-12.
Ashli White, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic.
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