Pétion and Boyer. In contrast, Louis-Joseph Janvier in his 1886 book Les Constitutions d’Haïti
addressed what he saw as numerous errors in Ardouin’s 1865 Etudes sur l’histoire d’Haïti.
According to Janvier, for example, Jean-Jacques Dessalines was the true founder of Haitian
independence and defender of the rights of black peasants.^172 The “noiristes” in Haiti sought to
rehabilitate the contested figure of Dessalines and believed that Haiti’s black majority should
assert its power and interest. Mulatto and black leaders could each find justification for their
views within these different histories which only deepened divisions between the two political
parties. David Nicholls argues that this internal strife intensified between blacks and mulattos to
such a degree as to endanger once again the independence of the country.^173
These internal difficulties coincided with negative responses internationally to Haiti’sexperience as a nation. European writers capitalized on Haitian events to promote racist
ideologies. In the second half of the nineteenth century, much of this negativity can be traced to
the regime of black Haitian leader Faustin Soulouque. Joan Dayan in her book Haiti, History,
and the Gods, details much of the criticism leveled in the European press against Soulouque
when two years into his presidency he assumed the title of Faustin I, Emperor of Haiti, in 1849.
Dayan explains that when Louis Napoléon declared himself Emperor in 1851 (two years after
Soulouque had done so in Haiti), he was often compared to and accused of having imitated the
barbarous Soulouque.^174 As Dayan also mentions, Sir Spenser St. John, a British statesman who
resided in Haiti, generalized the example of Soulouque’s despotism in his sensationalized
travelogue Hayti or the Black Republic published in 1889. These actions, he concluded, were
(^172) Although all of the texts mentioned may be consulted individually, this general information about them is relayed
by David Nicholls at various points in From Dessalines to Duvalier.
(^173) Nicholls 77.
(^174) Joan Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) 12. Dayan refers to
comments made about Soulouque by Karl Marx and the American abolitionist orator Wendell Philips, among others.
Her arguments bring out the irony of the slander against Soulouque, as it is purportedly the imitative Haitians who
are to blame when a French leader follows the example of a Haitian emperor.