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Confronting Black Jacobins: The U.S., The Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic
Giving particular attention to the responses of African Americans, Horne surveys the reaction in the United States to the revolutionary process in the nation that became Haiti, the splitting of the island in 1844, which led to the formation of the Dominican Republic, and the failed attempt by the United States to annex both in the 1870s. Drawing upon a rich collection of archival and other primary source materials, Horne deftly weaves together a disparate array of voices--world leaders and diplomats, slaveholders, white abolitionists, and the freedom fighters he terms Black Jacobins. Horne at once illuminates the tangled conflicts of the colonial powers, the commercial interests and imperial ambitions of U.S. elites, and the brutality and tenacity of the American slaveholding class, while never losing sight of the freedom struggles of Africans both on the island and on the mainland, which sought the fulfillment of the emancipatory promise of 18th century republicanism
416 pages, Paperback
First published October 22, 2015
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About the author
Gerald Horne
71 books402 followersDr. Gerald Horne is an eminent historian who is Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. An author of more than thirty books and one hundred scholarly articles and reviews, his research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations, war and the film industry.
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October 15, 2021
Prolific historian Gerald Horne tells in great detail the impact of the Haitian Revolution on the slave system in the Western Hemisphere, as well as its implications on the colonial endeavors of the major Euro / American powers of the day. As Horne flatly states, the central argument of this book is that “the Haitian Revolution created a general crisis for the system of slavery that could only be resolved with its collapse.” Horne details how Haiti sought to assert itself as a revolutionary Black republic that prioritized a type of Pan African, anti-slavery ethos. This radical nationalism terrified the existing slave regimes in the Caribbean, but more importantly, the United States. As such, the U.S. began its centuries long effort to undermine Haitian sovereignty and empower Haiti’s enemies—a process that is still continuing today.
This book traces the French colonizers’ significant connections to American settlers and capitalists leading up to the Haitian Revolution. Both parties trafficked African slaves and traded sugar, and the island of Hispaniola represented supreme strategic importance to the United States. For these reasons, the U.S. government was invested in supporting France put down the African rebellion, especially since there was much evidence that the rebellion had the propensity to spread to the North American mainland in places like South Carolina and Louisiana. In depicting these multi-national imperial connections, Horne does a masterful job removing the Haitian Revolution from its historic isolation, situating it in its proper context alongside rebellions and revolts through the slavery-ridden Caribbean (Grenada, Jamaica, Martinique, Dominica, St. Vincent, etc.). In doing so, Horne illuminates the crisis that African revolt created in the slave-colonial system, a crises that deepened when Haiti officially declared itself a free Black republic.
I was fascinated by Horne’s argument about how the Haitian Revolution dealt a blow to the construction of “whiteness,” and how both the British abolitionist movement and the American pro-slavery movement sought to preserve the gains of “whiteness”—albeit by different means—by never allowing a revolutionary moment like that to happen again. Along those same lines, the development of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic puts on full display the fluidity of whiteness and Blackness as racial constructs capable of stretching, bending, and folding based on the whims of Euro-American imperialists. Over and over again, Horne seeks to stress just how frightened the U.S. “slave-holding republic” was by the Haitian Revolution. White Southern enslavers were in perpetual fear that another Haiti could be created in Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, or worst of all, the American South. Ultimately, in a ironic twist of fate, the U.S. was forced to recognize Haiti’s sovereignty, as the Dominican Republic had succumbed to Spanish incursion, thereby threatening the U.S.’s interests in the entire region (as Spain no doubt had its sight on Haiti as well).
In short, Haiti from its very beginning defied the very foundation of America’s formation and existence—the idea that enslavement was the African’s natural position. Accordingly, the U.S. (along with the other Euro-Colonial powers) feared the complete collapse of the slave-system and colonial enterprise. As such, Haiti must fall, and to that end, the Dominican Republic (St. Domingo), which the Haitian revolutionaries had “freed” from Spanish control and united under the Haitian flag in the early 1820s, was constructed a few decades later out of the Euro-American impulse to weaken Haiti, reinvigorate African enslavement in the Caribbean, and destroy all notions of Black sovereignty. Of course, America funded and supplied Dominican rebels and constantly threatened to invade and occupy Haiti. Further, America pushed to annex the Dominican Republic (and Hispaniola as a whole) in order to have a place to deposit formerly enslaved Africans post Civil War, and to ensure America’s colonial footing in the Caribbean. The consequences of the failure of this attempted annexation is intimately traced and laid out in the latter half of the book.
A major lesson of this book is that organized unity always defeats disorganized division. Horne does a brilliant job explaining the triumphs and defeats of 19th Century Haiti. This is a must read for anyone interested in learning about the revolutionary history of Haiti.
This book traces the French colonizers’ significant connections to American settlers and capitalists leading up to the Haitian Revolution. Both parties trafficked African slaves and traded sugar, and the island of Hispaniola represented supreme strategic importance to the United States. For these reasons, the U.S. government was invested in supporting France put down the African rebellion, especially since there was much evidence that the rebellion had the propensity to spread to the North American mainland in places like South Carolina and Louisiana. In depicting these multi-national imperial connections, Horne does a masterful job removing the Haitian Revolution from its historic isolation, situating it in its proper context alongside rebellions and revolts through the slavery-ridden Caribbean (Grenada, Jamaica, Martinique, Dominica, St. Vincent, etc.). In doing so, Horne illuminates the crisis that African revolt created in the slave-colonial system, a crises that deepened when Haiti officially declared itself a free Black republic.
I was fascinated by Horne’s argument about how the Haitian Revolution dealt a blow to the construction of “whiteness,” and how both the British abolitionist movement and the American pro-slavery movement sought to preserve the gains of “whiteness”—albeit by different means—by never allowing a revolutionary moment like that to happen again. Along those same lines, the development of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic puts on full display the fluidity of whiteness and Blackness as racial constructs capable of stretching, bending, and folding based on the whims of Euro-American imperialists. Over and over again, Horne seeks to stress just how frightened the U.S. “slave-holding republic” was by the Haitian Revolution. White Southern enslavers were in perpetual fear that another Haiti could be created in Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, or worst of all, the American South. Ultimately, in a ironic twist of fate, the U.S. was forced to recognize Haiti’s sovereignty, as the Dominican Republic had succumbed to Spanish incursion, thereby threatening the U.S.’s interests in the entire region (as Spain no doubt had its sight on Haiti as well).
In short, Haiti from its very beginning defied the very foundation of America’s formation and existence—the idea that enslavement was the African’s natural position. Accordingly, the U.S. (along with the other Euro-Colonial powers) feared the complete collapse of the slave-system and colonial enterprise. As such, Haiti must fall, and to that end, the Dominican Republic (St. Domingo), which the Haitian revolutionaries had “freed” from Spanish control and united under the Haitian flag in the early 1820s, was constructed a few decades later out of the Euro-American impulse to weaken Haiti, reinvigorate African enslavement in the Caribbean, and destroy all notions of Black sovereignty. Of course, America funded and supplied Dominican rebels and constantly threatened to invade and occupy Haiti. Further, America pushed to annex the Dominican Republic (and Hispaniola as a whole) in order to have a place to deposit formerly enslaved Africans post Civil War, and to ensure America’s colonial footing in the Caribbean. The consequences of the failure of this attempted annexation is intimately traced and laid out in the latter half of the book.
A major lesson of this book is that organized unity always defeats disorganized division. Horne does a brilliant job explaining the triumphs and defeats of 19th Century Haiti. This is a must read for anyone interested in learning about the revolutionary history of Haiti.
April 13, 2016
In Confronting Black Jacobins, historian Gerald Horne states his "central argument" thus: "[T]he Haitian Revolution created a general crisis for the system of slavery that could only be resolved with its collapse." It represented a "confrontation that compelled a retreat of the racialized slavery that had given rise to the slave-holding republic in the first instance" (p. 10).
How was this "retreat" manifested? The fact that the black slaves of Haiti rose up and killed their white owners "was bound to concentrate devilishly the collective mind of the slave-holding republic. The revolution posed starkly an existential question: retreat stolidly from slavery or risk losing everything--including one's life, as in Hispaniola" (p. 15).
Horne entirely fails to convince. The documentary period of the book overlaps US history from the Federal period midway through Reconstruction. Unfortunately for Horne, this period in US history exhibited the opposite of a retreat for slavery. In fact, this period saw the enthusiastic expansion and entrenchment of racialized slavery in the American South to the point that, sure of its destiny as an economic colossus, the South refused to compromise any longer with the chafing, sectional nuisances of the "slave-holding republic" and famously established its own republic founded upon the principle of African slavery.
And then, when this racialized-slavery-believing republic was defeated militarily--with many lives being lost on both sides--it was not done "as in Hispaniola," that is, by way of an armed slave revolt in which blacks rose up spontaneously to kill and overthrow their white masters. The defeat of slavery in the US came about as the result of a war prosecuted by one white nation-state against another white nation-state. This is not to say that blacks in the US did not contribute to the result. It is only to say that it did not happen in the US "as in Hispaniola." Is it not important for historians to make these distinctions?
Further--to the enduring shame of the US--while the military defeat of the racialized-slavery-believing republic (to continue with a Horne-style label) may have erased a legalized slave system, it did not--except briefly and bravely, during Reconstruction--produce political and social liberation for American blacks. This kind of liberation, of course, was the other signal accomplishment of the Haitian Revolution.
Instead, with slavery out of the way, the US allowed its idiosyncratic system of federalism to perpetuate a racialized caste system that discriminated against black and mixed-race men and women, with enduring effects to this day.
One gathers that Horne just can't get enough of calling the US the "slave-holding republic" to the point that he is blind to the contradictions inherent in the US constitutional system from day one, before the Haitian Revolution. There is no sense at all either that sectional differences almost scuttled the entire project in the womb in 1787 or that the ideological and ethical compromises in the final draft were widely known, controversial, and often bitterly opposed.
"Slave-holding republic" might be a sweet refrain to Horne's ears, but to the extent that it enables him to call slavery the "business model" of the US, it is not only discordant, it is just plain, bad history. And manifestly so: If it were true, there would have been no Southern secession.
Horne marshals all of his evidence to the service of the notion that the Haitian Revolution was one of the causes of the end of slavery in the US. Here are some examples where questionable interpretation leads to theoretical over-reach.
Example 1: The US--which, it must be remembered, is the "slave-holding republic"--was always afraid of the Haitian example to the extent that it always adamantly opposed it. The first quote in the book, on the third line, is President George Washington calling the slave uprising in St. Domingue "lamentable;" he then mentions a "spirit of revolt among the Blacks." The reigning narrative of the book is the fear among white Americans that the Haitian slave revolt will be exported to their shores. How to explain, then, the willingness of the John Adams administration to cooperate, militarily and commercially, with Toussaint Louverture, the revolutionary ruler of Haiti, against the French? How to explain that Louverture's constitution was written, at least in part, by Alexander Hamilton? How to explain Horne's own admission that, at least from 1812-1826, that the US was Haiti's main trading partner?
Horne's claim is that trade with Haiti "came with a steep price. For New England Federalists heavily invested in trade with the island of freedom thereby offended Dixie and quickened sectional conflict that eventuated in civil war" (p. 140). Yet surprisingly, who was among those considering the relative advantages of trade with Haiti in 1817? None other than John C. Calhoun, described by Horne--on the following page and without irony--as "maniacally pro-slavery."
Example 2: Keeping in mind that the Haitian Revolution was essentially a Spartacist endeavor and was unquestionably feared by white slaveowners as an inspirational example to their own slaves, it is also important to understand that to some Americans of the period it was not so much Haitians per se to be feared as it was (white) French revolutionaries, Napoleons, Spanish, or even the British whose imperialistic ambitions would bring black armies to the US. Even where he seems to be aware of this thinking, Horne doesn't allow it to shape his hypothesis. Ironically the force that did lead black soldiers to the destruction of slavery in the slave-holding republic was … the slave-holding republic itself.
Example 3: Haiti became a magnet for escaping slaves and refugees of color, and this was a significant drain on the labor resources of the slave system in the US. I think that's what he intends us to believe, but I can't say for sure because Horne is given to flights of rhetorical grandstanding that do not seem to fit the events that he places in evidence.
Here as an example is an extended, quoted passage (pp. 96-7): At the time Jefferson became US president,
What does this paragraph mean? How does Joseph's escape/attempted escape make clear that the US is walking a slippery tightrope between the effects of the slave revolt on St. Domingue and French efforts to retake the island? Not only is it a non sequitur, but It is a non sequitur advanced as an important piece of evidence that the Haitian Revolution had such an impact on the slave system in the US that there was apparently some kind of mass exodus of slaves from the US.
Which did not happen. There was no fatal breach in the ramparts of slavery in the US due to the Haitian Revolution. One perhaps wishes that there had been. But instead--and it is critical to keep this in mind--the constitutional nature of the end of slavery in the US, combined with the nature of the US federal system itself--produced the very dynamics that, unlike in Haiti, meant that the end of slavery in the US did not bring with it immediate or enduring political and social rights for blacks and people of color.
Certainly, slaves fled to Haiti and free blacks emigrated to the Dominican Republic (the "Spanish" side of the Haitian isle). Certainly these places were held up as ideal locations for the voluntary or forced removal of the African population in the US. But ever since the existence of slavery in the US, slaves had fled to the Great Dismal Swamp or to Seminole Country or somewhere else in the untracked frontier. One of the great problems for enslavers in the US was the freedom available in states where slaves had been emancipated, e.g. Massachusetts in 1783, before the Haitian Revolution. These options already existed for the escape-minded slave by the time Haiti happened. If there was a breach in the ramparts of slavery, it was already there before Haiti.
As far as slave revolts are concerned, Horne writes (p. 18) that "the evidence gushing from Dixie leads to the suspicion that enslaved mainland Africans found inspiration--if not aid--for their inclinations in Haiti." Gushing evidence that only leads to a suspicion? I would say it was manifestly true, and deservedly so, since the revolution engineered by Toussaint Louverture was an awe-inspiring accomplishment.
However, the historian must still parse the evidence--though he or she may need a colander--and one issue that Horne mentions but does not sufficiently consider is the role and reputation of the mixed-race gens de couleur in the events that he reports. The Denmark Vesey plot in South Carolina was revealed, according to Horne, by "a slaveholder of color" out of "fear of another Hispaniola-style revolt" (p. 18). Previously, in Louisiana, where a "Massacre of Whites" had been "threatened," in part by a "white man" who claimed to have been in on similar dealings in St. Domingue, it was the mixed-race gens de couleur who at least in part made up the militia charged with protecting New Orleans. Americans brought up on a binary white/black distinction between the so-called races will have little understanding of the social and political gradations produced by Caribbean Creolization, but it is an important part of the story that must be told if it is to be understood. To his credit Horne brings this aspect into his account, but his over-the-top rhetorical style is ill-suited to an examination of whatever eddies this might have produced in the gush of evidence from Dixie.
At the end Horne states "the ultimate legacy of Haiti on the mainland is the penetrating impression left by Black Jacobinism, which inspired abolition and helped to generate a spirit of militancy among African Americans that has yet to be extinguished" (p. 315). This seems to me to be a plausible statement, but the book that he has just written goes well beyond that legacy with additional claims for history that cannot be substantiated.
It is a shame. Americans in general need to know about the Haitian Revolution. Blacks in Haiti fought to free themselves from an unfathomably cruel system of labor exploitation, and then they held onto their freedom by fighting off two of the most powerful military regimes the world has ever known: first the British Empire and then the Napoleonic one. In so doing, in the latter case, they essentially made to the people of the United States a gift of the entire trans-Mississippi West (which Napoleon abandoned after the failure of his military expedition to re-take Haiti). That the response from Dixie was not "Damn, we have a problem because slavery," but rather, "Hey, let's expand slavery out there!" would be a more useful lesson for Americans than the one the Horne tries to tell.
How was this "retreat" manifested? The fact that the black slaves of Haiti rose up and killed their white owners "was bound to concentrate devilishly the collective mind of the slave-holding republic. The revolution posed starkly an existential question: retreat stolidly from slavery or risk losing everything--including one's life, as in Hispaniola" (p. 15).
Horne entirely fails to convince. The documentary period of the book overlaps US history from the Federal period midway through Reconstruction. Unfortunately for Horne, this period in US history exhibited the opposite of a retreat for slavery. In fact, this period saw the enthusiastic expansion and entrenchment of racialized slavery in the American South to the point that, sure of its destiny as an economic colossus, the South refused to compromise any longer with the chafing, sectional nuisances of the "slave-holding republic" and famously established its own republic founded upon the principle of African slavery.
And then, when this racialized-slavery-believing republic was defeated militarily--with many lives being lost on both sides--it was not done "as in Hispaniola," that is, by way of an armed slave revolt in which blacks rose up spontaneously to kill and overthrow their white masters. The defeat of slavery in the US came about as the result of a war prosecuted by one white nation-state against another white nation-state. This is not to say that blacks in the US did not contribute to the result. It is only to say that it did not happen in the US "as in Hispaniola." Is it not important for historians to make these distinctions?
Further--to the enduring shame of the US--while the military defeat of the racialized-slavery-believing republic (to continue with a Horne-style label) may have erased a legalized slave system, it did not--except briefly and bravely, during Reconstruction--produce political and social liberation for American blacks. This kind of liberation, of course, was the other signal accomplishment of the Haitian Revolution.
Instead, with slavery out of the way, the US allowed its idiosyncratic system of federalism to perpetuate a racialized caste system that discriminated against black and mixed-race men and women, with enduring effects to this day.
One gathers that Horne just can't get enough of calling the US the "slave-holding republic" to the point that he is blind to the contradictions inherent in the US constitutional system from day one, before the Haitian Revolution. There is no sense at all either that sectional differences almost scuttled the entire project in the womb in 1787 or that the ideological and ethical compromises in the final draft were widely known, controversial, and often bitterly opposed.
"Slave-holding republic" might be a sweet refrain to Horne's ears, but to the extent that it enables him to call slavery the "business model" of the US, it is not only discordant, it is just plain, bad history. And manifestly so: If it were true, there would have been no Southern secession.
Horne marshals all of his evidence to the service of the notion that the Haitian Revolution was one of the causes of the end of slavery in the US. Here are some examples where questionable interpretation leads to theoretical over-reach.
Example 1: The US--which, it must be remembered, is the "slave-holding republic"--was always afraid of the Haitian example to the extent that it always adamantly opposed it. The first quote in the book, on the third line, is President George Washington calling the slave uprising in St. Domingue "lamentable;" he then mentions a "spirit of revolt among the Blacks." The reigning narrative of the book is the fear among white Americans that the Haitian slave revolt will be exported to their shores. How to explain, then, the willingness of the John Adams administration to cooperate, militarily and commercially, with Toussaint Louverture, the revolutionary ruler of Haiti, against the French? How to explain that Louverture's constitution was written, at least in part, by Alexander Hamilton? How to explain Horne's own admission that, at least from 1812-1826, that the US was Haiti's main trading partner?
Horne's claim is that trade with Haiti "came with a steep price. For New England Federalists heavily invested in trade with the island of freedom thereby offended Dixie and quickened sectional conflict that eventuated in civil war" (p. 140). Yet surprisingly, who was among those considering the relative advantages of trade with Haiti in 1817? None other than John C. Calhoun, described by Horne--on the following page and without irony--as "maniacally pro-slavery."
Example 2: Keeping in mind that the Haitian Revolution was essentially a Spartacist endeavor and was unquestionably feared by white slaveowners as an inspirational example to their own slaves, it is also important to understand that to some Americans of the period it was not so much Haitians per se to be feared as it was (white) French revolutionaries, Napoleons, Spanish, or even the British whose imperialistic ambitions would bring black armies to the US. Even where he seems to be aware of this thinking, Horne doesn't allow it to shape his hypothesis. Ironically the force that did lead black soldiers to the destruction of slavery in the slave-holding republic was … the slave-holding republic itself.
Example 3: Haiti became a magnet for escaping slaves and refugees of color, and this was a significant drain on the labor resources of the slave system in the US. I think that's what he intends us to believe, but I can't say for sure because Horne is given to flights of rhetorical grandstanding that do not seem to fit the events that he places in evidence.
Here as an example is an extended, quoted passage (pp. 96-7): At the time Jefferson became US president,
the slave-holding republic was walking a slippery tightrope, seeking simultaneously to avoid falling into the jaws of French revanchism and what would soon become the claws of Haitian abolitionism. This became clear when slaveholder George Hunter en route to Savannah arrived on the island in the spring of 1802 accompanied with what was described as "a certain coloured man named Joseph," his "property." Having an acute sense of time and place, "Joseph" managed to reach the "shore by means of swimming"--but was captured and wisely "claimed the protection of a French citizen to which he was entitled" and "that he was not at full liberty and no longer a slave." It was "incumbent" a US agent was told with emphasis, to "protest" this bald attempt to "deprive Mr. Hunter of his property in the said Joseph"--but he and other slaveholders were to find that once Haiti was established, the ramparts of slavery had been breached fatally, as cases like that of Joseph rose in profusion in the coming decades.
What does this paragraph mean? How does Joseph's escape/attempted escape make clear that the US is walking a slippery tightrope between the effects of the slave revolt on St. Domingue and French efforts to retake the island? Not only is it a non sequitur, but It is a non sequitur advanced as an important piece of evidence that the Haitian Revolution had such an impact on the slave system in the US that there was apparently some kind of mass exodus of slaves from the US.
Which did not happen. There was no fatal breach in the ramparts of slavery in the US due to the Haitian Revolution. One perhaps wishes that there had been. But instead--and it is critical to keep this in mind--the constitutional nature of the end of slavery in the US, combined with the nature of the US federal system itself--produced the very dynamics that, unlike in Haiti, meant that the end of slavery in the US did not bring with it immediate or enduring political and social rights for blacks and people of color.
Certainly, slaves fled to Haiti and free blacks emigrated to the Dominican Republic (the "Spanish" side of the Haitian isle). Certainly these places were held up as ideal locations for the voluntary or forced removal of the African population in the US. But ever since the existence of slavery in the US, slaves had fled to the Great Dismal Swamp or to Seminole Country or somewhere else in the untracked frontier. One of the great problems for enslavers in the US was the freedom available in states where slaves had been emancipated, e.g. Massachusetts in 1783, before the Haitian Revolution. These options already existed for the escape-minded slave by the time Haiti happened. If there was a breach in the ramparts of slavery, it was already there before Haiti.
As far as slave revolts are concerned, Horne writes (p. 18) that "the evidence gushing from Dixie leads to the suspicion that enslaved mainland Africans found inspiration--if not aid--for their inclinations in Haiti." Gushing evidence that only leads to a suspicion? I would say it was manifestly true, and deservedly so, since the revolution engineered by Toussaint Louverture was an awe-inspiring accomplishment.
However, the historian must still parse the evidence--though he or she may need a colander--and one issue that Horne mentions but does not sufficiently consider is the role and reputation of the mixed-race gens de couleur in the events that he reports. The Denmark Vesey plot in South Carolina was revealed, according to Horne, by "a slaveholder of color" out of "fear of another Hispaniola-style revolt" (p. 18). Previously, in Louisiana, where a "Massacre of Whites" had been "threatened," in part by a "white man" who claimed to have been in on similar dealings in St. Domingue, it was the mixed-race gens de couleur who at least in part made up the militia charged with protecting New Orleans. Americans brought up on a binary white/black distinction between the so-called races will have little understanding of the social and political gradations produced by Caribbean Creolization, but it is an important part of the story that must be told if it is to be understood. To his credit Horne brings this aspect into his account, but his over-the-top rhetorical style is ill-suited to an examination of whatever eddies this might have produced in the gush of evidence from Dixie.
At the end Horne states "the ultimate legacy of Haiti on the mainland is the penetrating impression left by Black Jacobinism, which inspired abolition and helped to generate a spirit of militancy among African Americans that has yet to be extinguished" (p. 315). This seems to me to be a plausible statement, but the book that he has just written goes well beyond that legacy with additional claims for history that cannot be substantiated.
It is a shame. Americans in general need to know about the Haitian Revolution. Blacks in Haiti fought to free themselves from an unfathomably cruel system of labor exploitation, and then they held onto their freedom by fighting off two of the most powerful military regimes the world has ever known: first the British Empire and then the Napoleonic one. In so doing, in the latter case, they essentially made to the people of the United States a gift of the entire trans-Mississippi West (which Napoleon abandoned after the failure of his military expedition to re-take Haiti). That the response from Dixie was not "Damn, we have a problem because slavery," but rather, "Hey, let's expand slavery out there!" would be a more useful lesson for Americans than the one the Horne tries to tell.
December 20, 2021
I would have to say this is the weakest Horne book I have read to date. The Haitian revolution is fascinating and the details of how the nation survived the age of imperialism are absolutely worth reading about. Its also essential reading to understand why Haiti is so important to the Black community. Beyond that the writing is just not up to par. While I do think that the Haitian revolution had wide and far reaching effects on US slave holders the evidence Horne presents shows that slave owners doubled down on their views and bigotry, which is the opposite of the argument Horne is making.
This book is definitely worth reading and I did learn a lot from it. Its just not what I expected from Gerald Horne.
This book is definitely worth reading and I did learn a lot from it. Its just not what I expected from Gerald Horne.
May 16, 2017
Amazing. Let me just say I learned a whole lot that I never knew about before. The impact revolutionary Haiti had on Dixie, the USA, slavery, Britain, France, Spain, the Caribbean was immense. The lingering impact of all this stuff has never gone away. Horne's attention to detail makes the book at times difficult to read, but is absolutely necessary (and is well footnoted).
Along with earlier book on the American (counter) revolution, Horne provides us with a brand new perspective on the history of the USA and the world.
Along with earlier book on the American (counter) revolution, Horne provides us with a brand new perspective on the history of the USA and the world.
September 1, 2019
i thought people might look at me funny for reading this on the train, because of the cover. i found out though that people aren’t really that interested in what other people are doing on the train. they mostly like to see what’s going on with their phones, or what’s going on on the floor.
February 16, 2020
Haiti, understanding its challenges
This book details the pressures put upon an emerging nation, requisite with heroes and scoundrels. This book should be required for understanding foreign policies.
This book details the pressures put upon an emerging nation, requisite with heroes and scoundrels. This book should be required for understanding foreign policies.
September 10, 2022
This book is as much about the United States as it is about Haiti. As those of us who have studied Haitian history understand, the country is a basket case today because it has been strangled by the western powers, chief among them the United States, since its birth. Through trade embargoes, political meddling and outright military occupation, Haiti never had a chance. The Haitian revolution of 1791-1804, Horne writes, "mocked the pretensions of slaveholders," particularly those in the United States, "and inspired the enslaved to believe realistically that their plight was not divinely ordained, nor perpetual but could be overcome."
The "slave-holding republic" (as he gleefully refers to the United States throughout his text) could not tolerate the existence of a nation consisting of freed slaves so close to its own shores, so it sought to undermine and discredit Haitian governments, and even attempted to annex the young republic and use it as a dumping ground for its own troublesome blacks.
Throughout my own life the prevailing official American attitude has been "We had a Civil War and freed our slaves, so everything is fine now!" But this book shows just how deeply the ideology of white supremacy was ingrained in the American psyche in the 19th century. Even abolitionist Samuel Howe was completely a man of his time in terms of his attitude toward race relations, writing "...Where they are left to themselves, [the] Negroes of Hayti, as in other West India Islands...tend to revert toward barbarism...the Negro...needs contact with more highly developed races [because] he imitates rather than originates." With friends like these...
Many would argue that such attitudes remain even today. The assumptions that underpinned the American slave system continue to exist, and are being expressed openly by politicians and media outlets. Founding Father and third U.S. president Thomas Jefferson, the darling of 21st century American conservatives, was a slave holder himself who agonized over the presence of a free black republic so close to the southern U.S. states. According to Horne, "When Jefferson referred to the Black Jacobins (of Haiti) as the 'cannibals of the terrible republic,' his fear of mastication may not have included his own marrow but, surely, that of the slave system over which he presided."
This book, which includes chapters on how enslaved and free Africans in the U.S. and elsewhere in the hemisphere reacted to the birth of Haiti, was of special interest to me because some of my ancestors were among the American blacks who migrated to the new nation in the hope of a better future. For that reason it was difficult to read, because so much of the history Horne presents is personal.
But there are moments where I laughed out loud. French refugees from the Haitian revolution arriving in Virginia in 1795 wrote to the governor to thank him for the generousity of the citizens of Norfolk but also complaining that they had arrived "almost naked," with "nothing but a small number of faithful slaves." When informed that the slaves would have to be returned to Haiti to avoid contaminating local blacks with unacceptable ideas of freedom, they moaned "we get our living by the means of our Negroes and were we deprived of them we should remain helpless and destitute...we should become beggars." Priceless!
This massively detailed history of the first decades of Haitian independence should be read by every American.
The "slave-holding republic" (as he gleefully refers to the United States throughout his text) could not tolerate the existence of a nation consisting of freed slaves so close to its own shores, so it sought to undermine and discredit Haitian governments, and even attempted to annex the young republic and use it as a dumping ground for its own troublesome blacks.
Throughout my own life the prevailing official American attitude has been "We had a Civil War and freed our slaves, so everything is fine now!" But this book shows just how deeply the ideology of white supremacy was ingrained in the American psyche in the 19th century. Even abolitionist Samuel Howe was completely a man of his time in terms of his attitude toward race relations, writing "...Where they are left to themselves, [the] Negroes of Hayti, as in other West India Islands...tend to revert toward barbarism...the Negro...needs contact with more highly developed races [because] he imitates rather than originates." With friends like these...
Many would argue that such attitudes remain even today. The assumptions that underpinned the American slave system continue to exist, and are being expressed openly by politicians and media outlets. Founding Father and third U.S. president Thomas Jefferson, the darling of 21st century American conservatives, was a slave holder himself who agonized over the presence of a free black republic so close to the southern U.S. states. According to Horne, "When Jefferson referred to the Black Jacobins (of Haiti) as the 'cannibals of the terrible republic,' his fear of mastication may not have included his own marrow but, surely, that of the slave system over which he presided."
This book, which includes chapters on how enslaved and free Africans in the U.S. and elsewhere in the hemisphere reacted to the birth of Haiti, was of special interest to me because some of my ancestors were among the American blacks who migrated to the new nation in the hope of a better future. For that reason it was difficult to read, because so much of the history Horne presents is personal.
But there are moments where I laughed out loud. French refugees from the Haitian revolution arriving in Virginia in 1795 wrote to the governor to thank him for the generousity of the citizens of Norfolk but also complaining that they had arrived "almost naked," with "nothing but a small number of faithful slaves." When informed that the slaves would have to be returned to Haiti to avoid contaminating local blacks with unacceptable ideas of freedom, they moaned "we get our living by the means of our Negroes and were we deprived of them we should remain helpless and destitute...we should become beggars." Priceless!
This massively detailed history of the first decades of Haitian independence should be read by every American.
June 13, 2024
Dense as all hell, but incredible.
December 23, 2024
Not what I was looking for (this book focuses on the US' response to Haitian independence, rathen than the independence itself) but interesting nonetheless!
July 11, 2025
I learned a lot from this book of history I was completely aware of. But the authors use if phrasing made it a difficult read to get through.
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