Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

(Sean Pound) #1

Soulouque (1847-1859) began the “politique de doublure” whereby the power of a black


president was orchestrated behind the scenes by the mulattos in the government. Black and


mulatto relations grew increasingly divisive with the emergence in the late 1860s of two political


parties largely formed along color lines. The predominately black National Party, headed by


figures like Demesvar Delorme, Lysius Salomon, and Louis-Joseph Janvier, claimed populist


interests and believed in a strong head of state and militarism in government. The Liberal Party,


mostly made up of mulattos, believed in a strong legislature and civil government as opposed to


military rule. They had as their slogan “government by the most competent,” understood to be


found in an educated, mulatto elite. The associations between color and political affiliation were


not, however, always clear cut: Frédéric Marcelin was a mulatto who belonged to the National


Party, just as Anténor Firmin, a black, belonged to the Liberal Party. Some politicians and


military generals switched camps based on the leading figure of the time, and divisions surfaced


within both parties with the rise to power of certain leaders.


Not coincidentally, many Haitian historians in the second half of the nineteenth century

began detailing black or mulatto versions of the past which would mirror the increasing


polarization of these two groups in Haitian society. Thomas Madiou, Haiti’s first historian, had


published the first of twelve volumes of his Histoire d’Haïti in 1847. Although a mulatto,


Madiou’s work was for numerous reasons considered out of step with the more official mulatto


view of Haitian history. Proponents of the mulatto ideology turned instead to histories written


after Madiou’s, specifically to the works written in the 1850s and 1860s by Beaubrun Ardouin


and Joseph Saint-Rémy. These historians emphasized the mulatto role in Haitian independence.


This version of the past included highlighting the martyrs of mulatto rights in colonial Saint-


Domingue, Ogé and Chavannes, and emphasizing the policies of mulatto Haitian Presidents

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