22847: Garrigus: Recent researchon Toussaint (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: John Garrigus <john_garrigus@yahoo.com>

Let me add a few more citations to the list of works
that describe Toussaint’s life as a free man before
the revolution. David Geggus is the pre-eminent
historian of Saint-Domingue and the Haitian
Revolution; he has published both widely and deeply on
nearly aspect of the revolution with a powerful
devotion to archival research. His Haitian
Revolutionary Studies {Indiana University (2002)
brings together some of his most important articles.
You can find a complete list of all his publications
at http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/dgeggus/Index.htm

Focusing on the free people of color in the North
province, in Blue Coat or Powdered Wig: Free People of
Color in Pre-Revolutionary Saint Domingue (Athens, GA:
University of Georgia Press, 2001), Stewart King makes
an important (though still debatable, in my opinion)
argument for the existence of a free black “military
leadership class” in this part of the colony, at
least, before the Revolution. He provides further
details on Toussaint’s pre-revolutionary life, though
interestingly he doesn’t classify Toussaint in this
category.

Another scholar who is just beginning to publish on
this subject based on the same kind of deep archival
research undertaken by King is Dominique Rogers. Her
publications have so far been mostly in French, but
English articles will be forthcoming, one assumes. See
her "De l'origine du préjugé de couleur en Haïti,"
Outre-Mers (Paris) 90, 340-341 (2003): 83-101, which
also focuses on differences between free blacks and
mulattos before the Revolution.

Finally, everyone interested in this subject should
read Laurent Dubois’s well documented and powerfully
written narrative, Avengers of the New World: The
Story of the Haitian Revolution. (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2004).

John Garrigus
Jacksonville University
http://users.ju.edu/jgarrig





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