Taking Haiti to the people: History and fiction of the Haitian revolution

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Notes

[1] Alyssa Sepinwall's recent H-France review of Dubois’ Avengers of the New World does an excellent job surveying the historiography of the Haitian Revolution and Dubois’ relationship to earlier works (5:24 [February 2005], http://h-france.net/vol5reviews/sepinwall2.html). There is no need to replicate or refine her work here.

[2] White, Metahistory.

[3] All Soul's Rising and Master of the Crossroads. A reader will benefit from reading Bell's novels in order, though the author (or his editor) does a good, only slightly intrusive job of backfilling these plot lines for the reader who encounters the last book first (or whose memory has lapsed in reading the three books over the better part of a decade!).

[4] As Ralph Michel Trouillot so eloquently argues in Silencing the Past, the enslaved people of Haiti and their descendants have, until recently, been largely forgotten by historians, due to the dearth of records in their voices but also because of the lingering effects of racism.

[5] Since many cited passages are drawn from the correspondence of Toussaint Louverture, Bell may also be trying to challenge the ignorance of many readers, who will not realize that a former slave would have the eloquence and means to compose such letters.

[6] Geggus, “Chronology,” 221–3.

[7] On reading the different genres of history and historical fiction, see Peabody, “Reading and Writing Historical Fiction,” re-published electronically with permission: http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/histfict.html.

[8] For example, Julien Raimond and Napoleon Bonaparte. Indeed, Napoleon, a sinister, omnipotent force in Stone, is always offstage, whereas Dubois gives the First Consul central billing, a primary character whose motives and actions are carefully explored.

[9] Sheller, “Sword-Bearing Citizens.”

[10] Kafka, “Action, Reaction and Interaction,” 48–72; Peabody, “Négresse, Mulâtresse, Citoyenne.”

[11] Doby, “Forgotten Data on the Introduction of Aseptic Techniques.”

[12] Bell cites this work thus: Saint-Rémy's Mémoires du Général Toussaint Louverture, Écrits par Lui-Même, Pouvant Servir à l'Histoire de Sa Vie (Paris: Libraire-éditeur, 1859), p. 64.

[13] Yet some recent scholarship seems to accept Toussaint's authorship of the memoirs; perhaps reflexive skepticism is an artifact of a colonialist mentality.

[14] Geggus, “Marronage, Voodoo, and Saint-Domingue.”

[15] See, for example, Danner, “A Reporter at Large.”