Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution

by Marlene L. Daut

The Haitian Revolution was a powerful blow against colonialism and slavery, and as its thinkers and fighters blazed the path to universal freedom, they forced anticolonial, antislavery, and antiracist ideals into modern political grammar. The first state in the Americas to permanently abolish slavery, outlaw color prejudice, and forbid colonialism, Haitians established their nation in a hostile Atlantic World. Slavery was ubiquitous throughout the rest of the Americas and foreign nations and empires repeatedly attacked Haitian sovereignty. Yet Haitian writers and politicians successfully defended their independence while planting the ideological roots of egalitarian statehood.

In Awakening the Ashes , Marlene L. Daut situates famous and lesser-known eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Haitian revolutionaries, pamphleteers, and political thinkers within the global history of ideas, showing how their systems of knowledge and interpretation took center stage in the Age of Revolutions. While modern understandings of freedom and equality are often linked to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man or the US Declaration of Independence, Daut argues that the more immediate reference should be to what she calls the 1804 Principle that no human being should ever again be colonized or enslaved, an idea promulgated by the Haitians who, against all odds, upended French empire.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Latin American History

440 pages, Hardcover

First published October 17, 2023

About the author

Marlene L. Daut is an author, scholar, editor, and professor. Her books include Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World; Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism; Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (UNC Press); and The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe. Her articles on Haitian history and culture have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Essence, The Nation, the LA Review of Books, and others. She has won several awards, grants, and fellowships for her contributions to historical and cultural understandings of the Caribbean, notably from the Ford Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Haitian Studies Association, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She recently won a grant from the Robert Silvers Foundation for The First and Last King of Haiti. Daut graduated from Loyola Marymount University in 2002 and went on to teach in Rouen, France as an Assistante d’Anglais before enrolling at the University of Notre Dame, where she earned a Ph.D. in 2009. Since graduating, Daut has taught Haitian and French Colonial history and culture at the University of Miami, the Claremont Graduate University, and the University of Virginia, where she also became series editor of New World Studies at UVA Press. In July 2022, she was appointed as Professor of French and African American Studies at Yale University.

Reviews

[Peyton · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Not long after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the relationship between independent Haiti and the United States considerably cooled. An article published in the October 17, 1804, issue of Haiti’s Gazette politique et commerciale and written by Joseph Rouanez provided a prescient analysis of the more metaphysical meanings, rather than the purely material effects, of the change that U.S.–Haitian trade relations underwent once the pro-slavery Thomas Jefferson became president. Rouanez wrote that the United States would one day inevitably 'occupy a distinguished rank among the masters of the Sea.' The justification for this prophecy now seems so clairvoyant that it is worth quoting from the piece at length. Averring the inevitable decline of France and England, the article reads: 'The same thing will befall the powers that are presently dominant; they will undergo an unmistakable decline, while the United States will assume the rank to which it is destined. But this era will become deadly for the Caribbean. It will simply change masters. It will come under the yoke of the United States.' The Caribbean was not in danger of being overrun by Haitians. The real danger, according to Rouanez, was the United States. Rouanez found it was obvious that the United States had designs to take over the whole continent. Louisiana was a case in point. As for ongoing U.S. slavery, 'in the states of the south, [it] is a fire that smolders under the ashes, the eventual explosion of which will one day make tremble the hardened and deaf masters who still maintain it, despite the prudent advice of their fellow citizens of the north.' Like Boisrond-Tonnerre, who urged that the 'keys to liberty' were already in the hands of the enslaved people across the Americas, Rouanez, who likewise fought in the Haitian Revolution, warned that one day 'some audacious avengers will reclaim with interest their natural rights that have been violated.'"

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are an academic studying 18th and 19th century Haiti, you'll love this book. Otherwise, don't bother.

[Douglas Grion Filho · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5) Very good! In the first few chapters, the author jumps around chronologically way too much, often inside the same paragraph, which can be super confusing. But the book is very well researched and I basically agreed with all the author's takes.

[Chandra Powers Wersch]

This is not for the layperson. It's intended for those who specialize specifically in Caribbean/Haitian history and intellectual history. It's very dense and filled with academic jargon. That being said, I can see how it's a great addition to the historiography of the country, subfield, and intellectual history of decolonization.

[tory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting read. Daut’s presentation of the Haitian Revolution through Haitian scholars was eye opening and interesting, but the book was inaccessible at times and the paragraph length was sometimes simply exhausting.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best hook I've read on Haiti

Marlene Daut paints the world of the Haitian Revolution beautifully. She starts prior to colonization and dives deeply into the thought behind the Revolution. This was a fascinating book that I could not put down.

[Macie Ericksen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat confusing ordering of information but extremely interesting and informative

[Glynis Hart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, did this need a good editor. Lots of doubling back, looping sentences, super-dense academic prose. I did a lot of flipping back and forth to make sure I had the time of events right, and considered simply writing out a timeline of events to accompany the book. Daut's thesis is that the history itself was politicized, distorted and suppressed because the news of a successful Black revolution was such a powerful inspiration to the enslaved everywhere else. That the only book recounting the revolution in Haitian language was suppressed until the late 20th century surely makes her case.