Hidalgo on Defiant Haiti

Historian Dennis Hidalgo has written a valuable review of Johnhenry Gonzalez's "Defiant Haiti: Free-Soil Runaways, Ship Seizures and the Politics of Diplomatic Non-Recognition in the Early Nineteenth Century." For all those interested in how enslaved people from neighboring Caribbean societies responded to Haitian 'free soil' policy or Haiti under Boyer, I recommend Gonzalez's piece and Hidalgo's short review.

Toby Green on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

I first read Toby Green's "The Rise of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa: 1300-1589" a while back, but I love how Green emphasizes African agency and history that shaped creolization, trade, and slavery in the broader Atlantic World context.  He emphases internal African diasporas that linked North Africa with West Africa and global markets, which paved the way for international trade with Europeans, the slave trade, and cultural mixing that facilitated the exchange of people, goods, and culture that shaped the Atlantic World. Listen to podcasts with Toby Green here and here.

Fetishes and the Rights of Man

I recently read Stephan Palmié's Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition and what stood out most to me was the example of a rebel slave during the Haitian Revolution whose fallen corpse was found to carry a copy of the Rights of Man (Droits des Hommes) as well as a 'fetish.' This is part of the author's larger argument about placing Afro-Cuban (or Afro-Atlantic religious practices in a broader perspective) as essentially "modern" (not a primordial, timeless African tradition) and as much a product of modernity as the French Revolution, Enlightenment thought, and Caribbean slavery and rationalized economies. Other examples given by the author include the Lemba cult of Central Africa, which was also a way for Central African groups to reconstruct their social and moral systems of thought in response to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and an increasingly linked Atlantic World.

Returning to the fallen soldier of the Haitian Revolution, it is important to remember how one should not try to enforce a dichotomy that makes it seem "strange" or nonsensical for this former slave to have carried on his body a "fetish" representing African/Afro-Atlantic as well as writings expressing Enlightenment thought. Because both the Enlightenment and Haitian Vodou (although that term is not the most accurate for describing the religious and moral thought of Africans in colonial Saint Domingue) are products of modernity and a broader Atlantic World, both are equally "modern" and rational, and to be expected in the highly modern, complex Caribbean of the late 18th and 19th centuries. Stephan Palmié's comments on this case are also of importance for understanding the principles and ideology behind slave insurgency in Saint Domingue and the Haitian Revolution, a subject Thornton's work has explored based on Central African societies, specifically, Kongolese, in Saint Domingue. But what would be more interesting to study is the confluence of European and African influences on the slave masses during the Haitian Revolution, from Afro-Atlantic social thought and religion to Enlightenment ideas.

The Choices Program: Haitian Revolution

Check out this fascinating program on the Haitian Revolution featuring 3 different scholars. The Choices Program special on the Haitian Revolution features several video interviews with scholars (such as Alex Dupuy) that cover the basics of the turbulent period, as well as some of its legacies. Although it serves more of an introductory purpose, there is still lots to learn from this project, as well as a chance to hear Anthony Brogues and Patrick Sylvain, two scholars I am not familiar with.

Intersections of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds

I came across this fascinating post from a blog I follow on Haiti. I suppose it's not that surprising that British colonial newspapers in early 19th century India reported on events in the Caribbean, such as Haitian independence, but it's interesting to note that readers there followed closely events in the Atlantic. The readership for the Courier is not stated to be primarily British/European colonists in India (which was the domain of the British East India Company, I believe, and not a direct colony under the authority of the British government), I would suspect that the majority of its readers were Europeans and assimilated and local India allies. Nonetheless, I am fascinated by the fact that readers in Bombay were following news from around the world! As the post explains, limiting ourselves into a single area of study or region ignores the plethora of instances of mutual influence and exchange, which also grew exponentially in the age of European dominance as the 19th century proceeded. Transnational/transcolonial history, my friends, transnational/transcolonial history.