[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

5431: [BRC-NEWS] The Haitian Revolution (fwd)



From: P D Bellegarde-Smith <pbs@csd.uwm.edu>
From: Art McGee <amcgee@igc.org>

PUBLICATION:

The American Historical Review

DATE:

February 2000 (Vol. 105, No. 1)

TITLE:

The Haitian Revolution

AUTHOR:

Franklin W. Knight <fknight@jhu.edu>, John Hopkins University

COMPLETE ESSAY:

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/105.1/ah000103.html

EXCERPT:

The Haitian Revolution represents the most thorough case
study of revolutionary change anywhere in the history of 
the modern world. In ten years of sustained internal and
international warfare, a colony populated predominantly by
plantation slaves overthrew both its colonial status and 
its economic system and established a new political state of
entirely free individuals -- with some ex-slaves constituting 
the new political authority. As only the second state to 
declare its independence in the Americas, Haiti had no viable 
administrative models to follow. The British North Americans
who declared their independence in 1776 left slavery intact,
and theirs was more a political revolution than a social and
economic one. The success of Haiti against all odds made
social revolutions a sensitive issue among the leaders of
political revolt elsewhere in the Americas during the final
years of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the
nineteenth century. Yet the genesis of the Haitian Revolution 
cannot be separated from the wider concomitant events of the
later eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Indeed, the period
between 1750 and 1850 represented an age of spontaneous, 
interrelated revolutions, and events in Saint Domingue/Haiti
constitute an integral -- though often overlooked -- part of
the history of that larger sphere. These multi-faceted
revolutions combined to alter the way individuals and groups
saw themselves and their place in the world. But, even more,
the intellectual changes of the period instilled in some
political leaders a confidence (not new in the eighteenth
century, but far more generalized than before) that creation
and creativity were not exclusively divine or accidental
attributes, and that both general societies and individual
conditions could be rationally engineered.

Copyright (c) 1999-2000 American Historical Association.


[IMPORTANT NOTE: The views and opinions expressed on this
list are solely those of the authors and/or publications,
and do not necessarily represent or reflect the official
political positions of the Black Radical Congress (BRC).
Official BRC statements, position papers, press releases,
action alerts, and announcements are distributed exclusively
via the BRC-PRESS list. As a subscriber to this list, you
have been added to the BRC-PRESS list automatically.]

[Articles on BRC-NEWS may be forwarded and posted on other
mailing lists, as long as the wording/attribution is not altered
in any way. In particular, if there is a reference to a web site
where an article was originally located, do *not* remove that.

Unless stated otherwise, do *not* publish or post the entire
text of any articles on web sites or in print, without getting
*explicit* permission from the article author or copyright holder.
Check the fair use provisions of the copyright law in your country
for details on what you can and can't do.

As a courtesy, we'd appreciate it if you let folks know how to
subscribe to BRC-NEWS, by leaving in the first seven lines of the
signature below.]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress - General News Articles/Reports
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe: <mailto:majordomo@tao.ca?body=unsubscribe%20brc-news>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe: <mailto:majordomo@tao.ca?body=subscribe%20brc-news>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Digest: <mailto:majordomo@tao.ca?body=subscribe%20brc-news-digest>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Help: <mailto:worker-brc-news@lists.tao.ca?subject=brc-news>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive1: <http://www.mail-archive.com/brc-news@lists.tao.ca>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive2: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/brc-news>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archive3: <http://archive.tao.ca>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Post: <mailto:brc-news@lists.tao.ca>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
<www.blackradicalcongress.org>  | BRC |  <blackradicalcongress@email.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------