Revolutionary narrations: Early Haitian historiography and the challenge of writing counter-history

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines a selection of understudied nineteenth-century Haitian texts to illuminate how Haitians tensely narrated their country’s foundational event and negotiated the challenge of constructing the first black nation-state in the Americas. The predominantly mixed-race male authors held their own biases and prejudices that were often informed by the same racialized labels they sought to overturn. Writing Haiti’s history, specifically that of the revolution, exposed these biases as well as critical social divisions, most notably between an emergent Eurocentric élite and the majority of recently freed, uneducated former slaves who spoke no French. Despite appeals to unity and Haitians’ Africanity, early narratives of the revolution disavowed or treated with ambivalence the role of former slaves and African-derived spiritual traditions in Haiti’s founding. I trace this ambivalence towards or disavowal of the black majority through a corpus of understudied texts that represent specific interventions in Haiti’s emerging national historiography. In particular, I focus on how five authors, Juste Chanlatte, Baron de Vastey, Hérard Dumesle, Thomas Madiou, and Beaubrun Ardouin, narrate the Haitian Revolution and grapple with the role or contributions of slaves/former slaves in the revolution and the influence of African-derived spiritual traditions. Their histories initiated a process of incorporating the black majority and African traditions into the official national imaginary, though on élite terms. For these authors, the predominantly black majority, while contributors to the country’s founding, needed civilizing in order for Haiti to prosper and progress as a nation in the post-Enlightenment Atlantic World.