Basic Plan For Unit Four

The readings for unit four:

This week I am making a light reading assignment for our discussion. This is for two reasons, to give us a chance to all catch up now that most of you are into the "system" of the course, and because next week is the heaviest reading week of the entire course, so I will urge you to begin this week also reading for next week.

The central issue is how the French slave system set the stage for the rebellion of the slaves.

I will ask you to read from our text book LIBERTE, from chapter 1:

Sections 5 - 13, which is pages 26 - 36. The issues discussed are:

• #5: Out of Africa
• #6: Slaves and Profitability
• #7: Torture
• #8: The Maroons
• #9: Poison
• #10: The Field Slaves
• #11: White Society
• #12: The 'Pigmentocracy'
• #13: Boukman Ceremony

This is not much material, only 11 ages of the text, but some important issues come up in them.

LOOKING AHEAD TO NEXT WEEK:

Next week we will focus on the Haitian Revolution. It is such an overwhelming shaping moment for Haitian history that I will be expecting you to do a great deal of reading and discussion. I wrote 4 long essays on the revolution as part of the 200th anniversary of the beginning of it in 1791. I will expect you to read all four of them. They are on my web site, in the history section under Haitian Revolution. The direct address to that place is:

Thus for this week lets:

1. Be sure you are all caught up on reading, including the above assignment.
2. Be sure that all written material is in. We will be making a big transition next week and it would be good to have these earlier periods finished.
3. I would advise that you start reading the four essays on the revolution. It's quite a bit of material and it is complex stuff.

Let's hear from you!

Best, Bob

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