From Playwrights to Editorialists to Historians: The Challenges of Writing the Haitian Revolution, 1804–60

Shortly after independence, Haitian intellectuals responded to the hostile international environment by celebrating in print achievements of African descendants and Haiti’s existence. Representations of the revolution played an integral part in these publications; however, authors did not follow strict disciplinary boundaries. Post-Revolutionary studies of Haiti acknowledge the interdisciplinary nature of printed treatments of the revolution, but do not fully investigate the coterminous creation of Haiti’s national literature and historiography. In addition, scholars frequently ignore nineteenth-century publications, viewing them as French imitations, propaganda, or simply precursors to twentieth-century literature. Nevertheless, nineteenth-century Haitian historians, newspaper editors, novelists, pamphleteers, and playwrights all engaged in debates about how to write the history of the revolution and commemorate the event in print.

Beginning in 1804 with the Act of Independence, I will examine the heated disagreements that arose among authors writing for the southern Republic Pétion and the northern kingdom. The majority of the paper will focus on the explosion of publishing in Paris and Port-au-Prince in the 1850s. First, published in Paris within three years of each other, Pierre Faubert’s play, Ogé ou le Préjugé de Couleur: Drame Historique (1856) and Émeric Bergeaud’s novel, Stella (1859) are two of the earliest literary representations of the Haitian Revolution by Haitian authors. Moreover, their publication occurred concurrently with lengthy historical treatises by Haiti’s early historians, Thomas Madiou, Beaubrun Ardouin, and Joseph Saint-Remy. What accounted for this publishing boom? What historiographic debates do we see emerging concerning the recounting of the revolution? Where do the literary texts fit in representations of the revolution? This paper will explore these questions and the growing engagement of Haitian authors with their French-literate Haitian audience as well as French-literate readers in France, Great Britain, and the United States as they sought to legitimate their new country and its struggle for independence.