The Priest and the Prophetess

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Rey
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
The North ◽  
Race Science ◽  
Coastal Cities ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Haitian Revolution

Shortly after a slave revolt in the North Province of the French colony of Saint-Domingue sparked the Haitian Revolution in August 1791, a free black immigrant coffee farmer and gender-bending religious visionary named Romaine-la-Prophétesse launched a separate insurgency on behalf of his own beleaguered people. Leading thousands of free colored insurgents and the slaves they liberated in the colony’s West Province, Romaine achieved something that no other rebel leader ever did in the colonial history of the Americas: conquering not one, but two coastal cities: Jacmel and Léogâne. His political adviser was a French Catholic priest named Abbé Ouvière, who brokered the treaty that formally tendered to Romaine rule over the latter city. What was the nature of their relationship? In what ways was each man instrumental in broader revolutionary events in the colony? This book answers these and related questions, deepening our understanding of the function of religion in the Haitian Revolution, along with those of race, science, and medicine, in the broader revolutionary Atlantic world, the latter topics impelled by the second half of the priest’s remarkable life as a scientist and physician in the United States, as Dr. Felix Pascalis. That Abbé Ouvière and Dr. Pascalis were one and the same person has heretofore been lost on scholars, and that Romaine-la-Prophétesse, though ultimately betrayed by the priest, would be judged by him as worthy of honor from his “tyrannized nation,” accentuate the historical significance of each man and the major contributions of this book.

The Shock Waves of the Haitian Revolution

Slave No More ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 164-196
Author(s):  
Aline Helg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Shock Waves ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
Northern United States ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Haitian Revolution

This chapter explores the shock waves caused by the Haitian Revolution and the massive slave insurrection that took both the Americas and Europe by surprise. Despite the rarity of large-scale revolts after 1794, the Saint Domingue insurrection did have a lasting impact on the slaves. The greatest lesson they retained from Haiti was that the institution of slavery was neither unchangeable nor invincible. Amid the troubled backdrop of the age of revolutions, many attentively followed the legal changes upsetting their owners, like the Spanish Códigno Negro, the French abolition of slavery, gradual emancipation laws in the northern United States, and the ban of the slave trade by Great Britain and the United States. Furthermore, after 1794, protests during which slaves claimed freedom they believed to have been decreed by the king or the government, but hidden by their masters, multiplied.

scholarly journals Viral Events: Epidemiology, Ecology and the Outbreak of Modern Sovereignty // Eventos virales: Epidemiología, ecología y la irrupción de la soberanía moderna

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-132
Author(s):  
Carlos Fonseca Suárez
Keyword(s):  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
Ecological History ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Haitian Revolution ◽  
History Books ◽  
The Revolution

      Like most revolutionary processes, the history of the Haitian revolution has typically been narrated from the perspective of revolutionary heroes. Whether as the feat of Toussant L’Ouverture, Francois Macandal or Jean-Jacques Dessalaines, historians have often tried to encapsulate the revolution within the narrow margins of human causality. In this article, I attempt to sketch the contours of another possible history: an ecological history in which the feats of the revolutionary heroes give way to the radical power of nature. By focusing on the role that two epidemic phenomena—yellow fever and mesmerism—had within the revolution, I attempt to show how the emergence of an “epidemiological discourse” proved to be fundamental for imagining the outbreak of modern sovereignty as it occurred in Saint-Domingue. Drawing on the ecological history of the Greater Caribbean and the routes of exchange that determined the historical development of its radical environment, the article attempts to imagine what an ecocritical history of the revolutionary process could look like. It lays out a political cartography unlike that which one usually encounters in history books, following a mosquito in its route from Africa to America and retracing the way in which a European pseudo-science—mesmerism—arrived from France to America. The epidemiological discourse surrounding both yellow fever and mesmerism reveals the emergence of a new sociological language capable of figuring the crisis of imperial modes of sovereignty as well as the emergence of new modes of radical subjectivity. Departing from the works Deleuze and Guattari, but also in dialogue with recent debates in ecocriticism, the significance of the Haitian Revolution is reconsidered in its relationship to the emergence of sociology as a language capable of explaining the emergence of the modern political subject par excellence: the modern multitude. Resumen      Como la mayoría de los procesos revolucionarios, la historia de la revolución haitiana usualmente ha sido narrada desde la perspectiva histórica de los héroes revolucionarios. Ya sea como la épica de Toussant L’Ouverture, Francois Macandal o Jean-Jacques Dessalaines, los historiadores han intentado encapsular la revolución dentro de los márgenes de la causalidad humana. En este artículo, intento esbozar los contornos de otra posible historia: una historia ecológica en la que las hazañas de los héroes revolucionarios ceden el escenario al poder radical de la naturaleza. Mediante una articulación del rol que dos fenómenos epidémicos—la fiebre amarilla y el mesmerismo—tuvieron dentro de la revolución, intento demostrar cómo la aparición de un “discurso epidemiológico” demostró ser fundamental en el proceso de crisis de soberanía imperial que ocurrió en Saint-Domingue. Investigando tanto la historia ecológica del Gran Caribe como las rutas de intercambio que determinaron la radicalización de su atmósfera política, el artículo intenta imaginar una historia ecocrítica del proceso revolucionario. A través de una cartografía de las rutas transatlánticas de circulación de un mosquito, así como del desembarco en América de una pseudociencia—el mesmerismo—el artículo esboza una historiografía política distinta. Se escudriña el discurso epidemiológico que giraba en torno tanto a la fiebre amarilla como al mesmerismo en relación con el surgimiento de un nuevo discurso sociológico capaz de representar la crisis de los modelos imperiales de soberanía y el surgimiento de nuevas subjetividades radicales. Partiendo de los trabajos de Deleuze y Guattari, pero también en conversación con los recientes debates sobre la ecocrítica, el significado de la Revolución Haitiana es reconsiderado en relación con el surgimiento de la sociología como el idioma del sujeto moderno por excelencia: la multitud.

The Archive of Fear

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Zwarg
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
New World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Trauma Theory ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Haitian Revolution

Not about Haiti but about the haunting power of its revolution, The Archive of Fear explores the traumatic force field that continued to inflect U.S. discussions of slavery and abolition both before and after the Civil War, sometimes with surprising intensity and endurance. Focusing on U.S. slavery and its aftermath in the nineteenth century, it challenges the long-assumed distinction between psychological and cultural-historical theories of trauma, discovering a virtual dialogue between three central U.S. writers and Sigmund Freud concerning the traumatic response of slavery’s perpetrators. To do so, it shows how trauma theory before Freud first involves a return to an overlap between crisis, insurrection, and mesmerism found in the work of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Mesmer’s “crisis state” has long been read as the precursor to hypnosis, the tool Freud famously rejected when he created psychoanalysis. But the story of what was lost to trauma theory when Freud adopted the “talk cure” can be told through cultural disruptions of New World slavery, especially after mesmerism arrived in Saint Domingue where its implication in the Haitian revolution in both reality and fantasy had an impact on the history of emancipation in the United States. The Archive of Fear argues that a strain of trauma theory and practice comes alive in the temporal and spatial disruptions of New World slavery—and that key elements of that theory still inform the infrastructure of race relations today. Reviewing trauma theory through its pre-Freudian roots—especially as the alarm of slavery’s perpetrators relates to the temporal patterns of Mesmer’s “crisis state”—widens our sense of the affective atmospheres through which emancipation had to be sought. And it illuminates the fugitive approach Douglass, Stowe, and Du Bois devised to confront and defuse the archive of fear still blocking full emancipation today.

Reimagining Instruction in Special Collections: The Special Case of Haiti

2020 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-321
Author(s):  
Kellee E. Warren
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
The Past ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
The Haitian Revolution ◽  
Special Case

ABSTRACT A growing body of literature has developed around critical archival instruction and archivists as educators. This development demonstrates the pedagogical evolution beyond show-and-tell sessions to critical approaches in archival instruction and specific standards in archival literacy. This article provides a cross-disciplinary discussion of an approach to archival instruction. Also included is a reimagined instruction session using a fragmentary collection from the Saint-Domingue/Haiti colonial administration. Stories of the enslaved are usually marked by death and brutality. But Haiti's is a story of triumph; though fleeting, a victory nonetheless. When instructors decolonize archival instruction, they bring the past into the present and the future. The Haitian Revolution was a large-scale revolt by enslaved Africans, and it was also directly connected to the expansion of the United States. Archival instructors should encourage students to reimagine the stories told from the Saint-Domingue colonial administration collection and from any colonial collections that may be under their care.

The Haitian Revolution in Atlantic Perspective

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Geggus
Keyword(s):  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Haitian Revolution ◽  
Free People ◽  
North And South America ◽  
North And South

Of all the Atlantic revolutions, the fifteen-year struggle that transformed French Saint-Domingue into independent Haiti produced the greatest degree of social and economic change, and most fully embodied the contemporary pursuit of freedom, equality, and independence. Between 1789 and 1804, the Haitian Revolution unfolded as a succession of major precedents: the winning of colonial representation in a metropolitan assembly, the ending of racial discrimination, the first abolition of slavery in an important slave society, and the creation of Latin America's first independent state. Beginning as a home-rule movement among wealthy white colonists, it rapidly drew in militant free people of colour who demanded political rights and then set off the largest slave uprising in the history of the Americas. Sandwiched between the colonial revolutions of North and South America, and complexly intertwined with the coterminous revolution in France, Haiti's revolution has rarely been grouped with these major conflicts despite its claims to global significance.

Romaine-la-Prophétesse

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Rey
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
The North ◽  
Black Immigrant ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Haitian Revolution

Although arguably no insurgent leader in the early stage of the Haitian Revolution had a greater concrete impact than Romaine-la-Prophétesse, scholars have thus far focused more attention on maroon leaders in the North Province of Saint-Domingue, like Makaya, Boukman, and Jean-François. Entitled “Romaine-la-Prophétesse,” and based on extensive research of primary source material, this chapter provides a detailed biography of Romaine Rivière, a black immigrant from the Spanish side of the island of Hispaniola, who was transformed from a respected coffee farmer into a religiously inspired, gender-bending warlord in the colony’s West Province. The chapter’s principal categories of analysis are religion, race, gender/sexuality, marronage, and royalism, providing what is not only the most extensive biographical portrait of Romaine but of any insurgent leader during the first stage of the Haitian Revolution. The time period covered is 1750 to 1791, or Romaine’s life up until the Trou Coffy insurgency.

scholarly journals How Did Geography Affect the Haitian Revolution?

Perceptions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Jennifer Romine
Keyword(s):  
Local Environment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Asymmetric Warfare ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
The Haitian Revolution ◽  
Economic Ties ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Impact

This paper concerns Haiti’s geography and how it affected the Haitian Revolution. Its aims involve detailing the geography (especially human and physical) of colonial Saint-Domingue at the end of the Eighteenth Century and investigating the impact of that geography on the Haitian Revolution. The study focuses chiefly on primary sources from France, Saint-Domingue, and the United States in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth centuries and uses them to narrate the relationship of the Haitian revolutionaries to the geography of their country. It paints a picture of colonial Saint-Domingue as a mountainous and sparsely-populated place, largely remote from the French metropole, and with certain regions alienated from each other by a lack of economic ties. It then discusses the unconventional, Fabian, and proto-Guerrilla tactics that the Haitian revolutionaries employed, including asymmetric warfare, the employment of the surrounding biome in manufacturing supplies and gaining positional advantages, and the use of mountainous jungle to bluff the enemy concerning the size and equipment of insurgent forces. It notes how this strategy works symbiotically with the local environment, and how it propelled the Haitian Revolution to victory and allowed the continuous maintenance of an upper hand against enemy armies despite a disadvantage in numbers and equipment and a pro forma colony-metropole relationship with France. It describes the ways in which this symbiotic relationship with geography not only won Haiti’s independence but also shook the world. This paper describes Saint-Domingue’s geography during the time of the Haitian Revolution, and then discusses the importance of this geography in the creation of the first revolutionary black republic.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Rey
Keyword(s):  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Catholic Priest ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Coastal Cities ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Haitian Revolution ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Relationship

The introduction conventionally acquaints the reader with the scope and objectives of the study, which focuses primarily on the relationship between a free black insurgent leader, Romaine-la-Prophétesse, and a French Catholic priest, Abbé Ouvière, during the first months of the Haitian Revolution (1791–1792). The social and political contexts for their relationship are explained, while the book’s key contributions are also forecast. One of these contributions is to broaden our understanding of the role of religion in the Haitian Revolution, a question that in scholarly literature has thus far been largely limited to considerations of Vodou; that Romaine was a deeply pious Catholic and that he achieved something that no other black insurgent leader in the history of the Americas ever did—conquering two coastal cities—underscores our need to also consider Catholic contributions to resistance in the era and region. The introduction closes with a brief chapter outline.

Time, Space, and Jurisdiction in Atlantic World Slavery: The Volunbrun Household in Gradual Emancipation New York

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 1031-1060 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha S. Jones
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
The Bahamas ◽  
Saint Domingue ◽  
The North ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Haitian Revolution ◽  
Male Companion ◽  
The City

The widow Drouillard de Volunbrun and her household boarded the brig Mary & Elizabeth in November 1796, only after many failed attempts to leave the French colony of Saint-Domingue. Like many others, they sought refuge from the violence and deprivation of the Haitian Revolution. In the party were the widow, her mother, a male companion, Marie Alphonse Cléry and, at best count, twenty enslaved people. Catastrophe struck November 18 when the Mary & Elizabeth wrecked on the west end of the Miguana Reef, off the Bahamas. The vessel and cargo were “totally” lost, but the captain, crew, and twenty-nine passengers, including the Volunbrun household, were “saved.” By the following April of 1797, the household was again at sea, bound for New York City. New York was, Shane White explains, “the center of the heaviest slaveholding region” in the North. Slaveholdings were small, with slaves a shrinking minority of the overall population. Still, one in five households held at least one slave. The household maintained a modest profile during their first four years in the city, moving to what was then the city's northeast periphery, Eagle Street near Bowery. Their neighbors were skilled workers, including butchers, masons, and men working the maritime trades. The widow put most of those she termed slaves to work manufacturing cigars.

The Interplay of Developing Morality and Gender Attitudes

2020 ◽  
pp. 724-745
Author(s):  
Rebecca S. Bigler ◽  
Lynn S. Liben
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gender Nonconformity ◽  
Gender Attitudes ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Ethical Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
And Behavior

Morality and gender are intersecting realms of human thought and behavior. Reasoning and action at their intersection (e.g., views of women’s rights legislation) carry important consequences for societies, communities, and individual lives. In this chapter, the authors argue that children’s developing views of morality and gender reciprocally shape one another in important and underexplored ways. The chapter begins with a brief history of psychological theory and research at the intersection of morality and gender and suggests reasons for the historical failure to view gender attitudes through moral lenses. The authors then describe reasons for expecting morality to play an important role in shaping children’s developing gender attitudes and, reciprocally, for gender attitudes to play an important role in shaping children’s developing moral values. The authors next illustrate the importance and relevance of these ideas by discussing two topics at the center of contentious debate in the United States concerning ethical policy and practice: treatment of gender nonconformity and gender-segregated schooling. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research.

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