Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World

Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World

The effect of Saint Domingue's decolonization on the wider Atlantic world

The slave revolution that two hundred years ago created the state of Haiti alarmed and excited public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic. Its repercussions ranged from the world commodity markets to the imagination of poets, from the council chambers of the great powers to slave quarters in Virginia and Brazil and most points in between. Sharing attention with such tumultuous events as the French Revolution and the Napoleonic War, Haiti's fifteen-year struggle for racial equality, slave emancipation, and colonial independence challenged notions about racial hierarchy that were gaining legitimacy in an Atlantic world dominated by Europeans and the slave trade.

The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World explores the multifarious influence—from economic to ideological to psychological—that a revolt on a small Caribbean island had on the continents surrounding it. Fifteen international scholars, including eminent historians David Brion Davis, Seymour Drescher, and Robin Blackburn, explicate such diverse ramifications as the spawning of slave resistance and the stimulation of slavery's expansion, the opening of economic frontiers, and the formation of black and white diasporas. They show how the Haitian Revolution embittered contemporary debates about race and abolition and inspired poetry, plays, and novels. Seeking to disentangle its effects from those of the French Revolution, they demonstrate that its impact was ambiguous, complex, and contradictory.

  • Cover
  • The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • CONTENTS
  • List of Tables, Figures, and Maps
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgements
  • PART ONE: OVERVIEW
    • Chapter 1 Impact of the French and Haitian Revolutions
    • Chapter 2 The Limits of Example
    • Chapter 3 The Force of Example
  • PART TWO: POLITICS
    • Chapter 4 From Liberalism to Racism: German Historians, Journalists, and the Haitian Revolution from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries
    • Chapter 5 Bryan Edwards and the Haitian Revolution
    • Chapter 6 Puerto Rico’s Creole Patriots and the Slave Trade after Haitian Revolution
    • Chapter 7 American Political Culture and the French and Haitian Revolutions: Nathaniel Cutting and the Jeffersonian Republicans
  • PART THREE: RESISTANCE
    • Chapter 8 Charleston’s Rumored Slave Revolt of 1793
    • Chapter 9 The Promise of Revolution: Saint-Domingue and the Struggle for Autonomy in Guadeloupe, 1797–1802
    • Chapter 10 “A Black French General Arrived to Conquer the Island”: Images of the Haitian Revolution in Cuba’s 1812 Aponte Rebellion
    • Chapter 11 A Fragmented Majority: Free “Of All Colors,” Indians, and Slaves in Caribbean Colombia During the Haitian Revolution
    • Chapter 12 Haiti as an Image of Popular Republicanism in Caribbean Colombia: Cartagena Province (1811–1828)
  • PART FOUR: REFUGEES
    • Chapter 13 Étrangers dans un Pays Étrange: Saint-Domingan Refugees of Color in Philadelphia
    • Chapter 14 Repercussions of the Haitian Revolution in Louisiana
    • Chapter 15 The Caradeux and Colonial Memory
  • Epilogue
  • List of Contributors
  • Index