Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

poem evokes “Les brunes Amirantes,” means that they are either another name for “Les

Betjouannes,” les filles d’Afrique, or that the name refers to another group of girls on the

Amirantes Islands. The Indian Ocean is also mentioned by name in this first stanza, and

although the French did engage in slave trade in Eastern Africa and French colonists held slaves

in various parts of the Indian Ocean, this region is separate from that of the West African coast

and the Dahomey kingdom from which most Haitians are believed to have originated.^133

Although most of the poem’s references do have a historical or geographical basis in

name, such a conflation of places and peoples works to inscribe the text more in the realm of

myth. In addition to all the terms mentioned so far, there are many others, including the Sotor

which is an ancient Egyptian reference, the mimosa plant which is native to much of Asia, the

Middle East and Africa, and the “simoun” winds from the Sahara desert.^134 This imagined

setting and story may, as previously suggested, reveal the lack of real connection or knowledge

Haitians in the 1830s had of Africa, these ideas based on scattered European accounts or perhaps

oral histories. The effect, however, perhaps intended, is that such a widespread geography

mirrors how extensive slavery’s reach was, encompassing much of the African continent. In the

same vein, the story of Minora and “Les Betjouannes” extends to multiple societies, not just to

Haiti, whose historical legacy includes slavery.

The poem concludes with “Le départ du negrier,” which describes the slave ship as it

leaves African shores. Minora has been captured by the Bushmen, forced into ‘exile’ with

others. The slave ship, a cruel bird of prey, snatches up its victims:

(^133) Robert Louis Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1979) and Deryck Scarr, Slaving and Slavery in the Indian Ocean (New York: St.
Marin’s Press, Inc., 1998).
(^134) Sotor also spelled Soter in English likely refers to Ptolemy Sotor, Egyptian ruler from 323 BC-283 BC and
founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty. R. W. Beachley states that under the second and third Ptolemies Greek and
Egyptian merchants acquired contact with the East African coast. The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa (New York:
Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1976) 2-6.