A Concise History of the Haitian Revolution. Jeremy D. Popkin

Series Editor’s Preface

      Each book in the “Viewpoints/Puntos de Vista” series introduces students to a significant theme or topic in Latin American history. In an age in which student and faculty interest in the global South increasingly challenges the old focus on the history of Europe and North America, Latin American history has assumed an increasingly prominent position in undergraduate curricula.

      Some of these books discuss the ways in which historians have interpreted these themes and topics, thus demonstrating that our understanding of our past is constantly changing, through the emergence of new sources, methodologies, and historical theories. Others offer an introduction to a particular theme by means of a case study or biography in a manner easily understood by the contemporary, non‐specialist reader. Yet others give an overview of a major theme that might serve as the foundation of an upper‐level course.

      What is common to all of these books is their goal of historical synthesis. They draw on the insights of generations of scholarship on the most enduring and fascinating issues in Latin American history, and through the use of primary sources as appropriate. Each book is written by a specialist in Latin American history who is concerned with undergraduate teaching, yet has also made his or her mark as a first‐rate scholar.

The books in this series can be used in a variety of ways, recognizing the differences in teaching conditions at small liberal arts colleges, large public universities, and research‐oriented institutions with doctoral programs. Faculty have particular needs depending on whether they teach large lectures with discussion sections, small lecture or discussion‐oriented classes, or large lectures with no discussion sections, and whether they teach on a semester or trimester system. The format adopted for this series fits all of these different parameters.

      In this fifth volume in the series, Professor Jeremy Popkin provides an interpretation of the Haitian Revolution of 1791, at once a massive slave revolt and the second successful independence movement in the New World. The volume provides a clear and concise introduction to a historical process that, by raising the twin specters of freedom and violence, reverberated through the Atlantic world. Popkin discusses the legacy of the Haitian Revolution in global terms: the movement profoundly shaped other independence movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, and affected the political discourse in early nineteenth‐century Europe. A singular strength of this book is its chronological scope, encompassing the nineteenth century and beyond. The author makes the case that the Haitian Revolution was a process of global historical significance, and that it deserves equal billing with the much more widely studied revolutions in France and British North America.

      Jürgen Buchenau

      University of North Carolina, Charlotte