Haiti: State Against Nation

Haiti: State Against Nation PDF

Author: Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 0853457565

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In the euphoria that followed the departure of Haiti's hated dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier, most Haitian and foreign analysts treated the regimes of the two Duvaliers, father and son, as a historical nightmare created by the malevolent minds of the leaders and their supporters. Yet the crisis, economic and political, that faces this small Caribbean nation did not begin with the dictatorship, and is far from being solved, despite its departure from the scene. In this fascinating study, Haitian-born Michel-Rolph Trouillot examines the mechanisms through which the Duvaliers ruthlessly won and then held onto power for twenty-nine years. Trouillot's theoretical discussion focuses on the contradictory nature of the peripheral state, analyzing its relative autonomy as a manifestation of the growing disjuncture between state and nation. He discusses in detail two key characteristics of such regimes: the need for a rhetoric of national unity coupled with unbridled violence. At the same time, he traces the current crisis from its roots in the nineteenth-century marginalization of the peasantry through the U.S. occupation from 1915 to 1934 and into the present. He ends with a discussion of the post-Duvalier period, which, far from seeing the restoration of civilian-led democracy, has been a period of increasing violence and economic decline.

Silencing the Past

Silencing the Past PDF

Author: Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2015-03-17

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0807080535

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Now part of the HBO docuseries Exterminate All the Brutes, written and directed by Raoul Peck The 20th anniversary edition of a pioneering classic that explores the contexts in which history is produced—now with a new foreword by renowned scholar Hazel Carby Placing the West’s failure to acknowledge the Haitian Revolution—the most successful slave revolt in history—alongside denials of the Holocaust and the debate over the Alamo, Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers a stunning meditation on how power operates in the making and recording of history. This modern classic resides at the intersection of history, anthropology, Caribbean, African-American, and post-colonial studies, and has become a staple in college classrooms around the country. In a new foreword, Hazel Carby explains the book’s enduring importance to these fields of study and introduces a new generation of readers to Trouillot’s brilliant analysis of power and history’s silences.

Haiti: The Aftershocks of History

Haiti: The Aftershocks of History PDF

Author: Laurent Dubois

Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Published: 2012-01-03

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 0805095624

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A passionate and insightful account by a leading historian of Haiti that traces the sources of the country's devastating present back to its turbulent and traumatic history Even before the 2010 earthquake destroyed much of the country, Haiti was known as a benighted place of poverty and corruption. Maligned and misunderstood, the nation has long been blamed by many for its own wretchedness. But as acclaimed historian Laurent Dubois makes clear, Haiti's troubled present can only be understood by examining its complex past. The country's difficulties are inextricably rooted in its founding revolution—the only successful slave revolt in the history of the world; the hostility that this rebellion generated among the colonial powers surrounding the island nation; and the intense struggle within Haiti itself to define its newfound freedom and realize its promise. Dubois vividly depicts the isolation and impoverishment that followed the 1804 uprising. He details how the crushing indemnity imposed by the former French rulers initiated a devastating cycle of debt, while frequent interventions by the United States—including a twenty-year military occupation—further undermined Haiti's independence. At the same time, Dubois shows, the internal debates about what Haiti should do with its hard-won liberty alienated the nation's leaders from the broader population, setting the stage for enduring political conflict. Yet as Dubois demonstrates, the Haitian people have never given up on their struggle for true democracy, creating a powerful culture insistent on autonomy and equality for all. Revealing what lies behind the familiar moniker of "the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere," this indispensable book illuminates the foundations on which a new Haiti might yet emerge.

The Unexceptional Case of Haiti

The Unexceptional Case of Haiti PDF

Author: Philippe-Richard Marius

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2022-04-19

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1496839056

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When Philippe-Richard Marius arrived in Port-au-Prince to begin fieldwork for this monograph, to him and to legions of people worldwide, Haiti was axiomatically the first Black Republic. Descendants of Africans did in fact create the Haitian nation-state on January 1, 1804, as the outcome of a slave uprising that defeated white supremacy in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. Haiti’s Founding Founders, as colonial natives, were nonetheless to varying degrees Latinized subjects of the Atlantic. They envisioned freedom differently than the African-born former slaves, who sought to replicate African nonstate societies. Haiti’s Founders indeed first defeated native Africans’ armies before they defeated the French. Not surprisingly, problematic vestiges of colonialism carried over to the independent nation. Marius recasts the world-historical significance of the Saint-Domingue Revolution to investigate the twinned significance of color/race and class in the reproduction of privilege and inequality in contemporary Haiti. Through his ethnography, class emerges as the principal site of social organization among Haitians, notwithstanding the country’s global prominence as a “Black Republic.” It is class, and not color or race, that primarily produces distinctive Haitian socioeconomic formations. Marius interrogates Haitian Black nationalism without diminishing the colossal achievement of the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue in destroying slavery in the colony, then the Napoleonic army sent to restore it. Providing clarity on the uses of race, color, and nation in sociopolitical and economic organization in Haiti and other postcolonial bourgeois societies, Marius produces a provocative characterization of the Haitian nation-state that rejects the Black Republic paradigm.

An Unbroken Agony

An Unbroken Agony PDF

Author: Randall Robinson

Publisher: Basic Civitas Books

Published: 2008-05-06

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0465012892

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On February 29, 2004, the first democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was forced to leave his country. The president was kidnapped, along with his Haitian-American wife, by American soldiers and flown to the isolated Central African Republic. In An Unbroken Agony, best-selling author and social justice advocate Randall Robinson chronicles his own cross-Atlantic journey to rescue the Haitian president from captivity in Africa while also connecting the fate of Aristide’s presidency to the Haitian people’s century-long quest for self-determination.

Peacebuilding as Politics

Peacebuilding as Politics PDF

Author: Elizabeth M. Cousens

Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9781555879464

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Examines successes and failures of large-scale interventions to build peace in El Salvador, Cambodia, Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sheds lights on the unique conditions for and constraints on peacebuilding in each country and examines the quality and coherence of international responses. Cousens is director of research at the International Peace Academy. Kumar is affiliated with the Office of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Maroon Nation

Maroon Nation PDF

Author: Johnhenry Gonzalez

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2019-06-25

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0300230087

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A new history of post-Revolutionary Haiti, and the society that emerged in the aftermath of the world's most successful slave revolution Haiti is widely recognized as the only state born out of a successful slave revolt, but the country's early history remains scarcely understood. In this deeply researched and original volume, Johnhenry Gonzalez weaves a history of early independent Haiti focused on crop production, land reform, and the unauthorized rural settlements devised by former slaves of the colonial plantation system. Analyzing the country's turbulent transition from the most profitable and exploitative slave colony of the eighteenth century to a relatively free society of small farmers, Gonzalez narrates the origins of institutions such as informal open-air marketplaces and rural agrarian compounds known as lakou. Drawing on seldom studied primary sources to contribute to a growing body of early Haitian scholarship, he argues that Haiti's legacy of runaway communities and land conflict was as formative as the Haitian Revolution in developing the country's characteristic agrarian, mercantile, and religious institutions.

The Haitian Revolution

The Haitian Revolution PDF

Author: Toussaint L'Ouverture

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2019-11-12

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1788736575

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Toussaint L’Ouverture was the leader of the Haitian Revolution in the late eighteenth century, in which slaves rebelled against their masters and established the first black republic. In this collection of his writings and speeches, former Haitian politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide demonstrates L’Ouverture’s profound contribution to the struggle for equality.

The Dew Breaker

The Dew Breaker PDF

Author: Edwidge Danticat

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0307428397

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We meet him late in life: a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him, and learn that he has also kept a vital, dangerous secret. Edwidge Danticat’s brilliant exploration of the “dew breaker”--or torturer--s an unforgettable story of love, remorse, and hope; of personal and political rebellions; and of the compromises we make to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. It firmly establishes her as one of America’s most essential writers. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Edwidge Danticat's Claire of the Sea Light.

Haiti Fights Back

Haiti Fights Back PDF

Author: Yveline Alexis

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2021-06-18

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1978815409

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Haiti Fights Back: The Life and Legacy of Charlemagne Péralte is the first US study of the politician and caco leader (guerrilla fighter) who fought against the US occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934. Alexis locates rare multilingual sources from both nations and documents Péralte's political movement and citizens' protests. The interdisciplinary work offers a new approach to studies of the US invasion period by documenting how Caribbean people fought back.