Toussaint Louverture was the leader of the Haitian Revolution. His military genius and political acumen led to the establishment of the independent Black state of Haiti. The success of the Haitian Revolution shook the institution of slavery throughout the New World. Toussaint Louverture began his military career as a leader of the 1791 slave rebellion in the French colony of Saint Domingue. He served from 1791-1803 and died in a French jail in 1803.
Bender,Thomas (Editor), Dubois,Laurent (Editor), and Rabinowitz,Richard (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2011
Published:
London; New York: D Giles Ltd.
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
287 p, A season of revolutions : the United States, France, and Haiti / Thomas Bender -- Insurgents before independence : the revolution of the American people / T.H. Breen -- A port in the storm : Philadelphia's commerce during the Atlantic revolution era / Cathy Matson -- Atlantic revolutions and the age of abolitionism / David Brion Davis and Peter P. Hinks -- The achievement of the Haitian revolution, 1791-1804 / Robin Blackburn -- An African revolutionary in the Atlantic world / Laurent Dubois and Julius S. Scott -- Liberty in black, white, and color : a trans-Atlantic debate / Jeremy D. Popkin -- A vapor of dread : observations on racial terror and vengeance in the age of revolution / Vincent Brown -- One woman, three revolutions : Rosalie of the Poulard nation / Rebecca J. Scott and Jean M. Hébrard -- The 1804 Haitian revolution / Jean Casimir -- Curating history's silences : the Revolution exhibition / Richard Rabinowitz.; Explores, largely through illustrations, how three globally influential revolutions transformed politics and culture between 1763 and 1816, from the triumph of the British Empire in the Seven Years' War to the end of the Napoleonic Wars.; Time: Geschichte 1763-1815. 1700 - 1804
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
68 p, Traditional Caribbean history has been directed by and focused upon the conquerors who came to the region to colonize and seek profitable resources. Native Caribbean peoples and African slaves used to work the land have been silenced by traditional history so that it has become necessary for modern Caribbean thinkers to challenge that history and recreate it. Alejo Carpentier and Michelle Cliff challenge traditional Caribbean history in their texts, The Kingdom of This World and Abeng, respectively. Each of these texts rewrites traditional history to include the perspectives of natives and the slaves of Haiti and Jamaica. Traditional history is challenged by the inclusion of these perspectives, thus providing a rewritten, revised history.
He was born a slave. He was called a genius of the rebellion. He was an 18th century rebel named Toussaint Breda, also known as Toussaint L'Ouverture, and he led the Haitian Revolution to abolish slavery. By the way, translated, L'Ouverture means "the opening."
The chant among the enslaved Africans in Haiti was heard, "Coupe tet, boule kay!" and the Haitians complemented the rhetoric with full force-fueled by years of heartache, humiliation, torture, and inhumane treatment. The 500,000 enslaved Africans in Haiti, along with tens of thousands of Maroons, collectively took up arms and defeated the French, awarding Haiti with the title of the first Black Republic in the Western world and becoming the only people to win a slave revolution in the history of the world. The Haitians, with the support of strong leadership, were united physically and mentally. Sealing this collective support was their belief in a religion mustered trom their traditional religion in Africa. An important leader of this revolutionary period was a Voodoo priest, Dutty Boukman. Other leaders during the various stages in the revolution included Toussaint L'Ouverture, Andre Rigaud, Jean-Francois, Biassou, Jeannot, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henry Christophe, many of which were former generals in the French army.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
289 p., Traces expressions of both aesthetic and experiential transcolonial black politics across the Caribbean world, including Hispaniola, Louisiana and the Gulf South, Jamaica, and Cuba.
367 p., Examines the lasting consequences of the anticolonial, antislavery discourses of the Haitian Revolution on the way in which postcolonial Haitians understood the narrative structure of their national history from Independence (1804) to the end of the American Occupation of Haiti (1934). In this study Haitian intuitions of historical time are apprehended through an analysis of nineteenth and early twentieth century Haitian literary and historical works. These texts are scrutinized with respect to (a) formal narrative features such as truncation, ellipsis, elision, prolepsis and analepsis which reveal an implicit understanding of the disposition of the metahistorical categories of "past," "present," and "future" and (b) the analysis of the explicit reflections on history provided by narrators or authors. This dissertation argues, primarily, that the event of the "Haitian Revolution" (1791-1804) was fundamental to Haitian understandings of the emplotment of the whole of Haitian history.
1804-Jean Jacques Dessalines proclaims the independence of Haiti from France. The island nation, after the United States, becomes the second independent republic in the Western Hemisphere. The chief slogan of his independence speech was "Live free or die." The Haitian war of independence had actually begun in August of 1791. The leader and greatest hero ofthat war was a former slave who worked as a carriage driver - Toussaint L'Ouverture. As a general, L'Ouverture was comparable to, and in some respects superior to, America's [George Washington Carver] and France's Napoleon Bonaparte. However, under the ruse of discussing peace L'Ouverture was tricked into traveling to France where he died in prison in April of 1803. The Haitians nevertheless prevailed over the French under the leadership of Dessalines and he was able to declare independence on this day in 1804. 1
After [Jean-Jacques Dessalines]' death, [Henri Christophe] assumed leadership of Haiti, but the mulatto minority South set up its own republic under Pétion. Christophe committed suicide in 1820 amid an uprising over his forced labor policies. Pétion's successor, JeanPierre Boyer, reformed the two republics into one Haiti. Boyer ruled until his government collapsed in 1843 due to political rivalry. Until 1915, only two of the 21 governments since 1843 were not dismantled by coups d'états or political in-fighting. Except for agreement on the abolition of slavery, the state and nation were headed in opposite or different directions before the L'Ouverture adherents took over in 1804. The literature on Haiti, from Trinidadian C. L. R. James' classic book The Black Jacobins, to TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson's An Unbroken Agony, all tell the awful consequences of the "color curtain" in claustrophobic Haiti.
