MARLENE DAUT on the Haitian Revolution

The Napoleonic Quarterly

Marlene Daut, Professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale University, discusses the incredible 13-year period from 1791 to 1804 which saw self-liberated slaves, not least leader Toussaint Louverture, overcome French colonial rule to win freedom on Haiti. Including:

[01:00] - Reflections on the complexity of the Haitian Revolution

[05:15] - The intellectual roots of the Haitian Revolution

[09:30] - Metropolitan France's negative / imperialist attitudes towards Toussaint Louverture and Saint-Domingue

[14:00] - Bringing Haitian writers' thoughts and ideas to life

[18:00] - Competing narratives about the Haitian Revolution - and what the revolutionaries said themselves

[20:50] - Spelling out the end of slavery during the Revolution

[22:30] - The challenges of implementing liberty after centuries of enslaved labour (or, how it all went wrong)

[25:30] - Writing the biography of Henri-Christophe, the first king of Haiti

[28:00] - Race and racism in Haiti's Anglophone historiography.