Description: "In this sweeping history, leading Haitian intellectual Jean Casimir argues that the story of Haiti should not begin with the usual image of Saint-Domingue as the richest colony of the eighteenth century. Rather, it begins with a reconstruction of how individuals from Africa, in the midst of the golden age of imperialism, created a sovereign society based on political imagination and a radical rejection of the colonial order, persisting even through the U.S. occupation in 1915"--
Brief description:
Jean Casimir, who served as Haitian ambassador to the United States and as a United Nations official, is professor of humanities at the University of Haiti; his most recent book is Haïti et ses élites.
Review Quotes:
"Asks us to reorient our perspectives away from the colonizers and the state in Haiti and instead to look to the Haitian people to evaluate the 'success' of the Haitian Revolution. . . . By centering the worldview of the rural population in the nineteenth century--the 'True Haitians'--Casimir shows us the possibilities of alternative forms of freedom that reject the legacies of colonialism and slavery."--Age of Revolutions