The Haitian Declaration of Independence: Creation, Context, and Legacy ed. by Julia Gaffield

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Haitian Declaration of Independence: Creation, Context, and Legacy ed. by Julia Gaffield Dannie Brice The Haitian Declaration of Independence: Creation, Context, and Legacy. Edited by Julia Gaffield. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780813937878. 280 pp. US$39.50 cloth. Julia Gaffield’s unearthing of the Haitian Declaration of Independence at the National Archives of the United Kingdom has prompted an interdisciplinary collection of scholarship framing the act of the declaration within an Atlantic context. While the scholarly study of Haitian independence has centered primarily on the Haitian Revolution, this volume is devoted to the documentation of the Haitian Declaration of Independence in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. In an introduction addressing the book’s contributions and methods, anthology editor Gaffield and collaborator David Armitage, a British [End Page 193] historian, discuss the importance of new archival strategies on Haitian statecraft as scholarly sources continue to grow and reimagine the revolution and its effects in the independence period. The volume’s expansive scope spans historical materials on the declaration. It also offers literary references and political bibliographies focusing on diplomatic and commercial connections between and among Haiti, the circum-Caribbean, and the larger Atlantic from the pre-revolutionary era to the contemporary moment. For the first time, the document of the Haitian Declaration of Independence is examined from transnational perspectives. As a result, “its meanings and significance are now better understood than at any time since 1804” (10). Part 1, “Writing the Declaration,” sets the stage creatively for subsequent chapters. This section cogently elaborates on aspects of writing a declaration of emancipation during an era of colonial slavery that readers may not have considered before. David Geggus’s chapter, “Haiti’s Declaration of Independence,” and John Garrigus’s “‘Victims of Our Own Credulity and Indulgence’: The Life of Louis Félix Boisrond-Tonnerre” both complicate the contentious role of the declaration of 1803 and the official act of independence in 1804 in bringing about democratic ideals and republican rights in an emerging state. Drawing on letters from the signatories and leaders of Independence, Geggus’s work examines the textual production and radical development of the declaration in the aftermath of the revolution. Garrigus reconstructs a bibliography of Boisrond-Tonnerre, one of the authors, whose mixed-race status enabled him to write the final document in French in order to reach France and the outside world.1 This diplomatic tactic omitted from consideration the formerly enslaved people who fought for independence, and whose language was Kreyòl. If the Haitian declaration was distinct in political style, Deborah Jenson points to its poetic form, which encapsulated the violence of the war of independence on the people and the land. Her article “Living by Metaphor in the Haitian Declaration of Independence: Tigers and Cognitive Theory” sheds light on the role of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, referred to as the “author,” in instigating the famous language of the proclamation of independence, suggesting that the heroic image of Haitian independence is indebted to his inf luence. What has not been elaborated on thus far in scholarship, Patrick Tardieu argues in “The Debate Surrounding the Printing of the Haitian Declaration of Independence: A Review of the Literature,” is a comparative study of related documents: “Only by taking into account other printings from the time can we discuss the issue of manuscript versus printed version of the January 1, 1804, Acte de l’Indépendance” (62). Tardieu’s chapter on the [End Page 194] reception of the declaration in Latin America establishes the discussion for the second section of the volume. Part 2, “Haitian Independence and the Atlantic,” delves into the circulatory networks of the Haitian Declaration through discussions of its impact on the world stage and its domestic aims in the aftermath of the revolution in 1804 and 1806. Phillipe Girard’s multiarchival research, which focuses on international policies in Venezuela, Cuba, and Santo Domingo, traces the circulation of rumors and conspiracies of rebellion in Spanish colonies that inspired enslaved and free people of color to revolt, promulgating regional abolition of slavery decades after the document’s creation. Although the Haitian constitution had not indicated the intention of interfering...