Sara Johnson's Fear of French Negroes

 

 Fear of French Negroes, which places the Haitian Revolution in a broader circum-Caribbean transcolonial context, intriguingly examines the repercussions, parallels, and ramifications of the Haitian Revolution in the Caribbean world through the simultaneous use of canines for torture and war against black bodies (Second Maroon War in Jamaica, last days of Saint Domingue, the Seminole Wars between the US and Seminoles and their African-American/black allies in Florida, and the Spanish/Cuban chasseurs, dog-trainers who turned the canines into beasts craving black bodies), the effects of Haitian rule in Santo Domingo/Dominican Republic and possible transcultural, transcolonial links in popular religion) black privateers in the Gulf of Mexico in the early decades of the 19th century, music, and black newspapers from Haiti, France, and the US North. I have yet to read such an analysis of the Haitian Revolution in this broader context with visual and literary sourcs since Modernity Disawoved, and though it definitely has its weaknesses, provides as fresh look at trasncolonial black collaborations, contact, and, as she suggests in the final chapter, a nascent Pan-Africanist or pan-Black Atlantic consciousness in the newspapers of free blacks in the 1830s and 1840s, from the US,  to Haiti and France.

She often suggests things with her interpretations that she can't prove so that weakens her book, but overall she makes some interesting points. Her chapter on the Haitian unification of Hispaniola in the 19th century was interesting, though weakened in parts by her perhaps overly imaginative wishful thinking. But I think she mostly acknowledges her weaknesses in terms of stating some of her claims as probabilities rather than 'pure' fact. And yes, her approach is interesting. It reminds me of Sibyl Fischer's Modernity Disavowed, which likewise used literary and art sources for examining the impact of the Haitian Revolution in Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. Moreover, her analysis of a possible Haitian/Saint-Dominguan role in the proliferation of the cinquillo rhythm found throughout circum-Caribbean music is powerful, although many of those societies she describes in New Orleans, Cuba, Trinidad, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico could have arose from enslaved Africans imported over the centuries. Nevertheless, the "French Negro" influence on some forms of bomba in Puerto Rico and the tumba francesa of eastern Cuba are undeniable, and the role of Saint-Dominguan refugees, immigrants, settlers, free people of color, bonded persons, and white French colons considered harbingers of culture, had a tremendous impact on the Americas in the Age of Revolution. As she indicates in the chapter on black privateers operating with the Lafitte brothers, such as the Saint Dominguan gens du couleur, Joseph Savary, who aided in the former's slave smuggling operations and other nefarious deeds, reveals the often contradictory impact of French republicanism, Haitian abolitionism, and race relations in the Americas. Likewise, Petion's republic in the southern half of Haiti in the 1810s lending aid and refuge for Venezuelan and Colombian nationalist liberators was contradictory in terms of the maintenace of racial slavery in the soon to be free Latin American state of Gran Colombia as well. Thus, as Johnson indicates, there is no romanticized, ahistorical theme of black solidarity always being for the interests of ALL people of African descent, since many fought for slavers, slave regimes, and  colonial and postcolonial governments that did not, ultimately, challenge the status quo.

All in all, an interesting analysis, with the chapter entitled Une et indivisible, a reference to Toussaint's Constititution on the indivisibility of Hispaniola, will hopefully lead to future fresh takes on Haitian-Dominican relations in the first half of the 19th century, as the career of Jose Campos Tavares complicates the notion of "Haitian invaders." Perhaps more historical digging and linguistic investigations into the lives of former slaves and the masses of free people of color in Spanish Santo Domingo will, one day, be better known, so we can compare white elite constructs of Haitian rule in Hispaniola to those of the common people, who, as Johnson suggests, were at least initially pro-Haitian, perhaps a majority being so. Furthermore, as Johnson indicates in the chapter as well as in a separate article published in the Journal of Haitian Studies, the long existence of a porous colonial and national border as well as the Spanish-speaking east's long history of African slavery, many parallels and influences can be seen in popular religion, such as Vodou, music, and literary sources derived from 19th century Dominican poetry and rural discouse. Though nothing ground-breaking perhaps, and occasionally weakened by a lack of direct sources that, to paraphrase Spivak, leaves the subaltern unable to speak, Johnson's text is a call for further work by historians, musicologists, linguists, and specialists in Atlantic Studies, Caribbean Studies, Latin American Studies, French Studies, and African Diasporic Studies to do additional research. Her final chapter on free black newspapers in the circum-Caribbean and the US and France also shed new light on earlier periods of transnation, transcolonial solidarity and 'blackness,' with suggestive ramifications for theorists of the Black Atlantic. Her newspaper sources even indicate 'black' writers in Haiti, the US, and, a Martinican established in France, alluded to each other's work, wrote about black literary figures and intellectuals in other parts of the hemisphere, and, in one case, even conceived of a Caribbean federation! This leaves one asking, why have so few studies been conducted regarding Petion and Bolivar, or deeper research into Haitian unification of Hispaniola, or the links that Saint Dominguan exiles and refugees maintained with their homeland? Putting that into consideration, Johnson's text is important scholarly work that will, one hopes, lead to additional studies on how the "fear of French Negroes" and their alleged radicalism shaped the Atlantic world.