Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

Aimé Césaire’s Toussaint Louverture et le problème colonial. My mention of Nesbitt’s article

and of the works he examines is not intended to further an understanding of either of those two

texts per se but rather to point out that such reconsiderations have not, thus far, been

complemented by study of Haitian texts themselves. One could conclude that although the

“silence” on the Haitian Revolution has been endemic to both sides of the Atlantic, the

recuperation of its importance is an accomplishment which comes from outside Haiti, and even

this has come slowly. As Nesbitt points out, it was not until Victor Schoelcher’s Vie de

Toussaint Louverture in 1889 and C.L. R. James’ The Black Jacobins in 1938 that works outside

Haiti analyze the events of 1804.

Concerning works within Haiti, Nesbitt notes the obstacles to analyzing the Haitian

Revolution, as he makes this observation:

In the years following the independence of Haiti in 1804, the triumph of the

world’s first postslave republic remained a scandal [...] Haiti was quarantined by

the Western powers [...] Within this context, no sympathetic and articulate

defense of the Revolution would appear until the founding studies of Thomas

Madiou (Histoire d’Haïti 1847-1848) and Beaubrun Ardouin (Etudes sur

l’histoire d’Haïti, 1853-1860).^69

The first histories by Haitians, those by Madiou and Beaubrun Ardouin serve as valuable

resources even for contemporary scholars. However, there are even earlier Haitian texts, in the

form of essays, articles and poetry which are indeed sympathetic and articulate defenses of the

only successful slave revolution in history. The fact that Haitians as early as the 1830s took

stock of their own revolution (and to some extent, in terms different from these later historians,)

seems to remain largely unknown even by Caribbean specialists.^70 The status of current

(^69) Nick Nesbitt, “Troping Toussaint, Reading Revolution,” Research in African Literatures 35.2 (2004): 6.
(^70) According to David Nicholls, Beaubrun Ardouin especially is considered a proponent of the mulatto version of
the past.