1).
6 For more on the separatist peasants’ region, see Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (New York: Verso, 1988). For one of the many mentions of Bergeaud as Borgella’s secretary, see Ghislaine Rey, Anthologie du roman haïtien de 1859 à 1946 (Sherbrooke, Québec: Editions Naaman, 1982): 18.
7 For more information on laws against Vodou, see Kate Ramsey, The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Ramsey notes that the 1835 Code differs from the 1826 Penal Code, which had outlawed only the selling of macandal rather than “spell-making” (and thereby religious practices increasingly grouped under the term “Vodou”) more generally, in that the 1835 Penal Code “criminalize[d] an entire field of ritual practices” (59–60). Ramsey also notes that the 1835 prohibitions were, compared to similar laws in the colonial Caribbean, relatively mild (59).
8 It was, however, the Americans who established French as the official language of Haiti during their 1915–1934 occupation. French was the sole official language of Haiti from the time of the American occupation until 1987.
9 The phrase “live independent or die” is written in the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Boisrond-Tonnere and announced by Dessalines on January 1, 1804. Significantly, the original motto of the French Republic was “liberté, égalité, fraternité, ou la mort.”
10 Philippe Girard, Haiti: The Tumultuous History—From Pearl of the Caribbean to Broken Nation (New York: Macmillan, 2010): 65–68; Laurent Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012): 4–7. In the words of Philippe Girard, “Northerners were made happy against their will. Southerners were free and poor” (Haiti: 67).
11 France sent envoys to negotiate with Pétion and Christophe. French agents suggested to Pétion that Haiti be put back under the control of France (Dubois, Aftershocks: 79). Former French colonists argued for some kind of return to French rule as late as 1825, the year of France’s recognition of Haitian independence. See, for example, the anonymous text De Saint-Domingue. Moyen facile d’augmenter l’indemnité due aux colons de Saint-Domingue expropriés (Paris: Imprimerie de Goetschy, 1825).
12 Under Boyer, the Haitian government encouraged African American emigration; in the mid-1820s, the government subsidized the travel of six thousand African Americans to Haiti (Dubois, Aftershocks: 93–94).
13 The writings of the man charged with negotiating the indemnity were republished in 2006. See Gaspard Théodore Mollien, Haïti ou Saint-Domingue (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006) and Mœurs d’Haïti (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006).
14 After the 2010 earthquake, several French intellectuals called for France to reimburse Haiti. See, for example, “Un appel pour que la France rembourse à Haïti la dette de son indépendance,” Le Monde (August 16, 2010).
15 In fact, Haiti was originally ordered to pay 150 million francs in gold, although that figure was reduced to 60 million in 1838, when French recognition became official. Furthermore, as a condition of recognition in 1825, the import and export fees levied on French ships and goods in Haiti were ordered at half of all other nations’ fees. While it is difficult to estimate how much money this would equate to in the twenty-first century, the figures run into the billions of dollars. See Joseph Saint-Rémy, Mémoires du général Toussaint L’Ouverture (Paris: Pagnerre, 1853): 138–139; Jean-François Brière, Haïti et la France: le rêve brisé (Paris: Karthala, 2008); and François Blancpain, Un siècle de relations financières entre Haïti et la France (1825–1922) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001).
16 Dumesle was related to Rivière-Hérard, who eventually succeeded Boyer as president of the Republic. Both Dumesle and Rivière-Hérard ended their lives in exile in Jamaica. See Dubois, Aftershocks: 122–133, as well as Matthew J. Smith, Liberty, Fraternity, Exile: Haiti and Jamaica after Emancipation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).
17 From 1844 to 1848, the separate state that had been led by Goman earlier in the century was reestablished by the Piquets. See Michel Hector, “Les deux grandes rebellions paysannes de la première moitié du XIXe siècle haïtien,” in Rétablissement de l’esclavage dans les colonies françaises 1802: Ruptures et continuités de la politique coloniale française, ed. Yves Bénot and Marcel Dorigny (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2003): 179–199, and David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour, and National Independence in Haiti, revised ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996): passim.
18 Guerrier and Riché were both over eighty years old when they became president. Beaubrun Ardouin served on the powerful Council of Secretaries of State, which was established in 1843 after the presidential term was set at four years, during the Guerrier administration, while his brother Céligny Ardouin served on it under Riché. For more on the complicated “politique de doublure” in Haiti, see Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier.
19 See Justin Bouzon, Etudes historiques sur la présidence de Faustin Soulouque (Port-au-Prince: Bibilothèque haïtienne, 1894).
20 Slavery was officially abolished in the U.S. in 1865, in the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba in 1873 and 1886, and in the Empire of Brazil in 1888.
21 See David Luis-Brown, “Slave Rebellion and the Conundrum of Cosmopolitanism: Plácido and La Escalera in a Neglected Cuban Antislavery Novel by Orihuela,” Atlantic Studies 9, no. 2 (2012): 209–230; Werner Sollors, Neither Black nor White yet Both (Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 1999); Michele Reid-Vazquez, The Year of the Lash: Free People of Color in Cuba and the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001).
22 Hénock Trouillot, Beaubrun Ardouin, l’homme politique et l’historien (Port-au-Prince: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, Comisión de Historia, 1950): 29–31.
23 However, many of their members were executed before news of abolition reached Paris in the winter of 1793–1794. Jacques-Pierre Brissot laments in his letters from prison, written in late 1793, that “all our efforts” could not break free the “unfortunate” slaves (excerpt from Brissot’s Papiers inédits: Archives Nationales, 446 AP 15).
24 Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Condorcet published Réflexions sur l’esclavage des nègres with the Société Typographique in Neufchâtel under the pseudonym M. Schwarz in 1781.
