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: "Reinterprets Haiti's postcolonial history to resurface ways of being, knowing, and existing outside of dominant Western conceptual categories. . . . Anglophone readers are now able to access a capacious and new approach to Haitian--and global--history, written by a leading Haitian scholar."--Public Books