I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Haiti’s Fight for Freedom

I Have Avenged America–Full Interview with Julia Gaffield

[00:00:00] Dr. Julia Garfield, welcome back. Thank you ~so much ~for having me again. So this is what we’re going to cover today. I have Avenge America, Jean Jacque, Deline, and Hades, fight for freedom. What, how long did it take you to write this bad boy? Ooh, that’s a tough question because some of it is a buildup of research that I’ve been doing, for the last, I don’t know, almost two decades.

I’ve constantly been interested in him as a person, but also that era of the Haitian revolution. The end of the revolution into independence. I really started. Writing this book in earnest at the end of 2019. I signed the contract for the book in March or April of 2020.

So right after [00:01:00] we went into lockdown for the pandemic. It’s been a five or so year project in earnest, but a much longer research kind of interest of mine. Why him? Why dis Selene? Why dis Selene? It’s a kind of complicated question. From very early on, I was interested in the period after the revolution allegedly ended, right?

There were a lot of accounts that I read that kind of ended with the Declaration of Independence, and they were like, and they won, and that’s it. And then there were these other accounts that said they declared independence and then the country was isolated. And that’s a very simple narrative on the other side.

But as I started reading and learning more, I was like, oh, I think it’s a little more complicated. This end of the revolution, end of the war, and this isolation thesis, right? That after they declared independence, nobody wanted to mess with Haiti. And so they [00:02:00] just isolated the country for, 20 to 60 years.

I was always interested in. How dis lean as a person factored into this complication that even though, he and other generals declared independence, he continued a fight. Both like a military fight but also a diplomatic fight. I found him very complicated as a person, complicated as a leader, really interesting to study, especially when I considered the kind of existing narratives that both public and scholarly works had presented.

I was like, ah, there’s a lot more going on here. So that’s what has always drawn me to studying Deline. But then I also thought that there was a need, particularly in the international world for a biography of Deline. So many people wanted to write about Tous San Lero and I think many people should write about Le of [00:03:00] course.

But I also think that there was space for biographies of other Haitian revolutionaries. Besides the brokers quote unquote biography, which we’ll get into later. Is this the first biography of Deline in English in the last, I don’t know, maybe 50 years or ever? I believe so. There certainly has not been a lot of writing about him in the anglophone world. And I’m not even sure Duca, quote, biography was into English. It was in like German and Spanish. Yeah. But there has been a distinct disinterest in reading and writing about deline in the anglophone world.

Is this from lack of source material, or do you think there’s some other things operating there? And the scholarship specifically? Lack of source material has never really stopped historians. We have creative and innovative ways of studying topics and people, even people who [00:04:00] left very limited source material. But I also think that, Deline left a whole lot of source material as I clearly believe enough to write a biography. So I think the source material is there. I think a lot of it has to do with a two century plus trend of very racist trend of undermining him as a person simplifying portrayals of him, he’s always been, not always, but he’s often a one dimensional character in histories of the revolution.

I think people were wrong to not write about him, so I can’t, explain what their wrong thinking was. But I think that there’s plenty of material and a really good story to tell about his life and legacy, this longstanding very racist tradition of depicting him as a one dimensional figure has impacted both, the desire to write about him, but the like in the publishing industry, the idea that like, oh, his story’s not worth [00:05:00] telling or, and publishing, that there’s no readership for this kind of story.

Did you have a hard time getting this published? And you get a lot of nos before you got a Yes. It’s, interestingly it’s like the answer is yes and no. Academics are the worst for that. I had trouble convincing an agent that this was a project that would sell but I had a lot of interest particularly from university presses that did crossover style books.

So their peer reviewed their academic to a certain degree, but they’re written for broader audiences. And in that sense there was much more interest from editors. You have a personal history that’s tied with this Eileen in 2010, didn’t you? We discussed that a little bit the last time we talked, but I want you to flesh that out for us.

What happened in 2010? Was it in the British Archives? What did you discover? What did you find? The word that I use these days is identify. I identify, [00:06:00] yes, identify because discover suggests that archivists have not, properly.

So when I was doing research for my dissertation at Duke University I identified the only known remaining official copy of the Haitian Declaration of Independence. It’s a printed document. Not a signed manuscript version. What makes it official is that, it was printed by the government printing press. ~And so ~it’s an official document issued by the government, and it says that on the document. And this was part of a kind of bigger research project about Haitian diplomacy after the Declaration of Independence. And so I traced it from it was sent by the Haitian State to the governor of Jamaica first.

And I had done research in Jamaica particularly at the National Library of Jamaica in Kingston, where they have all of the governor at the time, George Nugent all of his papers a totally amazing collection, which has a bunch of original signed [00:07:00] documents by Deline too. And in that collection.

There was a manuscript transcription, but it was like a copy, some secretary had written it down, so not an original, no signatures and, copy. And ~then there, but ~then there were ~kind of ~other letters that suggested ~that ~the governor of Jamaica was sending a whole bunch of stuff to his bosses in London being like, here’s what’s happening in Haiti.

And so when I went to when I went to London the next year, I was looking out for this document in the Jamaican Colonial records, and that’s where it is. It’s cataloged in the CO 1 37 collection, which is the Jamaican colonial records. And this ha you discovered ~this ~around the same time where it became public around the same time, the 2020 earthquake.

~So that kind of, ~that consumed. A lot of the media attention and press. How was that received that you discovered this? Was it positive or negative? I think it was overall positive. One of the, an interesting thing that kind of happened, yeah. Like I, I was, I went to [00:08:00] London very shortly after the earthquake.

And initially, this is one of the interesting things and a, interesting part of my journey as an academic. I initially identified this document and I I. At the end of the day, ~this was when ~there was no wifi in the archive, so I had to wait to log onto a terminal. And I emailed my advisor, Lauren Dubo and one of my committee members, Deborah Jensen. And I, sent them pictures of what I had found and I said, Hey, check this out. And we had conversations about this before and Deborah Jensen has written about the Declaration of Independence being published in American newspapers.

And they were like, great work. Cool. ~And that was it, ~initially. Because ~I think, ~when you’re researching you get like really intensely focused on your own stuff. And what you’re finding and everything you’re finding is really cool. But it’s hard to get out of that bubble and, I don’t know, connect this with other people’s interests and a lot of the stuff you find, you think is really cool and other people are like, [00:09:00] great. Yeah. Until you make sense of it in like a dissertation or a book or whatever I don’t really know what this means. ~And so ~I think I was pretty focused internally about the finding.

But, with my committee and then a few weeks later Laurent I think he met with or talked with Patrick Tia, who’s a important archivist in Haiti. And he, and then Laurent emailed me back and was like, I told Patrick what you found and I just wanna confirm that ~like ~I’m describing what you found correctly.

~And so ~I emailed both of them. ~’cause I ~I knew Patrick and, I sent them images ~and, ~I was like, yeah, here it is. This is what I got. And so then, he was like, oh my goodness, this is, like really cool. It’s through these conversations you’re like, oh other people care about this.

Of course. In 2010, what do you do when you do something cool? You post it on Facebook. And so one of my friends was like, other people might wanna know about this. And anyway, so then I, we got in touch with the news office at Duke, and ~of course, ~once a news office at university gets a hold of a positive story, [00:10:00] they’re like let’s go with it.

But in, in that kind of progression this I was very narrowly focused and then slowly ~I ~expanded the conversation about this research. It ~very ~quickly became clear that like a lot of people ~were like. I ~had never heard of the Haitian, or ~had never ~read the Haitian Declaration of Dependence.

Probably didn’t really know much about the revolution, but they were really keen to learn. ~And ~I had a similar journey in my undergraduate career. ~Like ~I had never learned about the Haitian Revolution, and once I started learning, I was like, I wanted to know more. So I think that there is a real desire to learn more about the Haitian Revolution.

And just the process of identifying the document, but then the publicity surrounding it was ~really ~inspiring in terms of wanting to connect my research with ~kind of ~narratives that connected with broader audiences. You refuse to call the indigenous people Tainos. Why? I don’t think it’s~ like ~a [00:11:00] hard and fast refusal and I think that’s very much part of popular terminology. But I think that, it’s a term that scholars have emphasized that was imposed on the indigenous people of Haiti, and that it was not a term of their own making ~or their own, ~that they didn’t identify themselves that way and that it was much later that they became identified as Taino.

So I just follow that. That tra tradition. Marlena was the first reading that I ran into that she wasn’t comfortable with that either. And now you, and now I’m starting not to be comfortable with it because I’m like, what term am I going to use now? I think, you have a reference of a book to read.

I have that book and I’m gonna check it out to see why you came to that conclusion. I think Keegan’s book. And h Hoffman, I think. Yeah. And Hoffman. Yeah. Okay. I think, it’s one, it’s an example of kind of just thinking about the language that we use and choose, and the history of that language is significant.

Yeah. I don’t yeah. [00:12:00] Was, is this a, the literate? It’s a popular de descrip descriptor for him. But I don’t think so, and I certainly don’t think, whatever we would consider fully illiterate. ~Know, I think ~over the course of the revolution, he said he learned to sign his name.

I think he participated in composing. The letters that he signed. I don’t think he’s having other people write things and signing it, not knowing what’s happening and not contributing to the composition of those documents. But it’s certainly a descriptor that was wield it against him during his lifetime as a way to discredit him to undermine his authority, to undermine his intelligence, to undermine his diplomacy.

And so I’m really hesitant to take those claims at face value. And a lot of what I’ve encountered suggests [00:13:00] that illiterate is not part of the slogan that gets attached to his name. So I would say no.

Okay. Was he born in Africa? I also argue, no. But I also argue that this was another kind of descriptor that was used to undermine and discredit him and to characterize him as somebody who is barbaric. Or savage. And for if, for people who are not watching, those are in scare quotes.

That it’s part of this ~kind of ~very racist description of him. And all of the evidence, most of the evidence points to him being born in con in the north of Oma You mean sets and second tweet, right? Probably, yeah. You put a question mark there probably. It’s amazing because a lot of [00:14:00] details about ~his~ his life, his early life especially, have been debated contested whatever.

But 1758 is a date that is like weirdly not contested and most people seem to be okay with that date. So I think, yes, but. We don’t have the kind of birth records that historians typically use to really pinpoint people’s specific birth dates and days.

So even the month, so if you can’t predict the year, even the month is in question two. So we would’ve been interesting because if he was born in January, 1758, that’s when Macal was captured and executed. If I remember correctly, it would’ve been interesting. Interesting. It’s possible.

I hope I’m pronouncing that what’s the origin of that last name? Was it the ju Where did that last name come from? Any idea? I think we know very little about Gilo, who is the first man who enslaved Deline. He was [00:15:00] allegedly a poor white man who also owned a coffee plantation in he was said to be a very cruel person and who, used violence to punish insubordinate. But we don’t know a whole lot about him~ where the, ~where exactly the plantation that he owned was. So there’s gaps in what we know about dis selene’s very early life. As last time we talked about, I have a slight obsession with footnotes, and ~so ~I’m so glad one of your footnotes led me to Gabrielle Debian’s book, ~and ~that veered me off your book for a while because I was reading his portions of his accounts of how slave naming, which I found completely fascinating.

So can you talk about that? That doesn’t it’s no, there’s no rule. It is they bought the ship and then the captain gives them a name. Can you talk a little bit about the naming the naming of the enslaved [00:16:00] process? For what, for lack of a better term. There’s no as you’re saying, there’s no like kind of consistent.

Rule that you can trace people’s names, by which is, frustrating but also, I dunno, interesting as a historian. Enslaved people ~who were ~born in the colony would’ve been assigned a name by the people who enslaved them. It’s possible that those names might have been in conversation with their family members, so that it might have been, they might have had some input.

But then enslaved people who were captives and imported into the colony through the transatlantic slave trade would’ve also been assigned a name, but they might have throughout their lives, maintained a previous name at least amongst their kind of social and familiar circles.

And then enslaved people often went by the last names of the people who enslaved them. And there’s a really interesting reference in Tomas Me’s 19th Century [00:17:00] history that notes that Deline even when he was going by the name Jean Jacque Deline was still known by some of the people who knew him in his childhood as Dulo.

And they kept that nickname for him because that’s how they originally knew him. And so it’s likely that he, kept the name Jean Jack, but that his last name might have changed over the course of his life. And enslaved people often went by nicknames. And we see throughout the revolution that some pe, some formerly enslaved people for the rest of their lives only went by one name and they dropped the name the last name of their enslave.

And so there’s a lot of people who are just known by one name. One interesting name I find, like Mackay. I was like, that’s not French. It doesn’t sound French. Where did that come from? Yeah. It’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah. You described this alene like this way, what did you mean by the, he embodied the personal and collective or connected for him.

What did you [00:18:00] mean by that? I think like I saw over the course of his life that there’s that there’s a history of kind of personal. Resistance to enslavement that he brings with him in this collective fight during the revolution. That, what he was fighting for and what he was fighting against were deeply personal.

And that this past experience, his own past experiences really shaped his fight for freedom. I’m going to read this is one of the benefits of video of video. Oh, no what did I write? Let’s see. This kinda stood out for me. This is what you wrote. This broad division between those who were enslaved at birth and those who were enslaved later in life resulted in [00:19:00] conflict ridden relationships during the independence period. Based on the two groups, different definitions of freedom born on the island, Creole’s inherited a version of freedom from the colonizers that prioritize the idea of productive citizenship, drawing on their own past lives.

Boal in contrast, prioritized family relations, collective property and relations of reciprocity.

Talk to us about that. I dunno. You remember that passage, I’m sure? Yes. I, yeah, I think that ~there’s, ~one of the things that I try and get into in the book is the ~kind of ~different layers of kind of groups. Alliances divisions, and then the kind of all overlapping and messy, the Haitian revolution is not like a simple fight a simple war. ~And ~one of the things that Deline has [00:20:00] been widely criticized for is that he tried to, sustain the plantation economy as a way to protect the country and independence. ~And ~I think that stems from this kind of upbringing that, like the plantation world was the only world that he had ever known.

He had been forced to live on plantations, to work on plantations for the first three decades of his life. ~And ~the entire ~kind of ~social, political, economic structure that he was used to was based in that world. And so I think there’s a way that, that, he turned to those institutions as in an effort to support his fight, to maintain abolition, to, to maintain independence.

And he was criticized for doing so at the time. And since, and of course, Jean Kir writes about this in the Haitians a de-Colonial history with C Press translated by Lauren Deis. And so I, I encourage your [00:21:00] listeners to read Jean Kazimir if you gotta have ’em on. I need to have ’em on.

Yeah, you need to, yeah. Yeah. Yes. And so I think there, there is this kind of tension ~division ~that stems from his upbringing and goes through the revolution, but also into the independence area, era team. So if the numbers are right about the number of African born enslaved in the colony by 1791 ish I mean they account for sizable two thirds by some accounts of the population.

And if Creole’s like this, Arlene is working with. The majority of the enslaved. ~That way ~there must be some kind of cultural cross pollination. With last count I read somewhere there like 21 different African nations represented in, around that time. So do you do you, did you research, did you find in your research anything particularly African [00:22:00] and his I know they said he was a great dancer, but did you find anything particularly Africanized about him? Is it, for example, is the fact that, his anti-colonial stands or, as part of his personal experience and the collective you talked about ~as well too, so Yeah. ~Did you find anything, ~quote unquote ~African about him?

About the way he approached, the way he moved? His decisions? I think I see it more in, like a version of Creole ness that is much more oppositional antagonistic to France and French colonialism. That there’s an emphasis on speaking Creole rather than speaking French, even though his correspondence is all in French.

Proclamations are in French. And I think there’s ~some kind of, ~diplomatic and strategic reasons for that, but a kind of much firmer rejection of France. And I see it in that [00:23:00] sense that there’s yeah, a tend a tendency to reject France more than I think.

Many other. Creole contemporaries, did that come later in his life, or did you notice it as a incremental kind of, because it was like, what, eight years? He served under the French. I think that’s my, yeah, I think I ed that somewhere. Something. I could be wrong, but yeah, I think it’s one of these things that’s pretty hard to assess.

Especially since we don’t have a lot of material in terms of his movements, his whereabouts, his actions, his thoughts for the start of the revolution. But then I also think that there’s this really understudied per period of his life when he is allied with the French Republic. He is I.

On paper and in his actions fighting for the French Republic, identifying as French Republican. But what I try to explain is that [00:24:00] it’s really hard to determine whether this is true French Republicanism or whatever, true allegiance to France, or whether this is really strategic.

And I see a lot of his actions and a lot of his rhetoric being for kind of throughout the revolution for his entire life being very strategic, right? That he’s interested in advancing his cause and is willing to, bend and break in different ways if it advances the cause.

And so is this a genuine affiliation? Hard to say. Was his allegiance with the cleric expedition? Genuine? Hard to say, but I say unlikely. So there’s these ~kind of ~interesting moments where I think he’s doing what needs to be done and figuring out, exactly. What he’s thinking ~is ~would the Haitian Revolution been delayed, especially in the battle of, if Roshambo wasn’t such an asshole [00:25:00] to decide. Let’s, I usually think, let’s pull Roshambo out of the picture because he was a constant, it’s like the worst kind of boss you could have, right? Yeah. Let’s pull Embo out of the picture and his relationship with Le Cla and some of the other French generals who were like, no telling Embo no.

He’s really on our side, the role of Embo and being a catalytic for a data point that pushed this. Eileen. I know there are some other factors, but I’m just focusing on just that, because I keep thinking like, most people leave jobs. Usually it’s not because of money, it’s because of their boss, like they have an asshole boss.

~Yeah, I think ~I think a lot of people, a lot of the colonial generals really hated cebo. It, the evidence suggests that deline like really hated cebo. ~And to ~Stanley Chu even warns cleric do not put him under Rocha’s jurisdiction. And of course he does.

[00:26:00] And, I think it’s like petty antagonizing at the beginning, he is refusing to respond to his letters. He’s ignoring him, but then it turns into much more direct antagonizing. He’s appointing people that will, get under deline skin and Charles biller too.

He’s constantly like I. Just needling him. He is having people spy on him. He’s writing reports about he’s, how he’s absolutely not loyal, we can’t trust him, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Would Le Clark have kept his allegiance if Embo hadn’t been there?

I, it’s a tough question. I think ~that ~the news of the reinstatement of slavery would have tip the balance regardless. And I think that’s, I don’t I think he was getting along with Le Claire and with [00:27:00] pne another general, but I think it was out of necessity rather than any kind of true alliance or devotion or anything like that. I don’t know, like he didn’t get along with a couple other people. Ave was another guy he just butt heads with and was trying to, antagonize him and there were a couple people he clashed with.

Where did the white people in the colony around this time period ~that’s, ~I’m thinking the 1770s, you talk about the naming that, you know, Xi did that come out of the enlightenment and the naturalists going around the world trying to name every freaking phenomenon and species and stuff like that.

What did this hierarchy of naming the racial naming of human beings? Where did that come from? Did that come outta the enlightenment? That’s just a broad, general question. I’m not, I don’t, this is not my area of expertise. ~Okay. This, for that it’s ~it’s deeply tied to the institution of slavery.

And and a desire to control people and then to [00:28:00] justify that control. This was

shocking. ~What, ~how did that manifest itself in, in, in the daily interactions with with his masters? So this is one of the chapter titles. But also a term used to describe him by a French console who was in Haiti in the 1820s. And he was described, as a bad slave, a Mo because he didn’t do what he’s told.

And he was insubordinate. And he was unwilling to submit. In the way, somebody who would be, would have been described as like a good slave would’ve, and that he was punished severely for this insubordination. But that it characterized his life I think especially under slavery under Gilo.

And the first person who enslaved him, ~so ~after Ju Gilo sold him [00:29:00] to what was the name of Phillip Yame? Felix Yame. ~Okay. Some, ~sometimes with the name de attached de, right? He didn’t change. He, did he change? Did you mention in there that he, ~this ~didn’t change Jean Jack change his last name ~to the Z, ~or he didn’t, right?

There’s no evidence. ~No. Okay. Okay. ~So what was that relationship like for him? And this was around the time where, an Toya comes into the picture, right? No, I think that was before. That was before. Okay. Yeah. Talk about her, basically his kinship network around this time. From the Dulo being on the Dulo plantation to the Jasmine and that, talk about his kinship network.

’cause I, that was very interesting. ’cause that ended up being very important for him later on in his life, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we don’t know like a whole lot about his kinship network. We’ve been, we know more than I think we, we did a little while ago. ~And ~some of this is drawing on research by Jacque Dena who identified some really important documents about his time during slavery.

We don’t know. Anything [00:30:00] about his parents. But he later in life in a very rare moment when he talked about his time during slavery, talked about a woman named Victoria Tu or Toya who he said worked alongside him in the fields. And the person who was recounting this story described their relationship as very close knit, very tight and so tight that their enslave JLo had to sell Toya to a different enslave in a different parish all the way in St.

Mark. We don’t know too much, in, in describing this scene, I. Later in life when he is reflecting on this, it’s, I think it’s 1805. And she dies at that time. And he’s really devastated by this. So these are relationships. This and others also, I’ll talk about the others in a second, but the relationships that he starts when he’s a child and a young man last his lifetime, right?

And this is, you can see this in [00:31:00] this description in Du about his, some of his officers calling him Dulo. That he keeps his, like his people with him for the rest of his life. So then when he’s sold, tome he’s united or reunited with and a kind of extended family. And in this document is the, this is the only document archival document that mentions him by name from the Colonial period.

And he’s just listed as Jean Jacque nephew. ~And ~all of the people on this list are identified in relation to the first person on the list whose name is Itan. ~And ~so that’s his uncle. And so he is enslaved on the Jasmine plantation with an uncle and some aunts and some cousins. Some of the cousins are younger than he is including one named Joseph who comes back into his life or maybe.

Stayed in his life. He come, comes back in the archival record later, Inline’s life when he’s trying to ensure his safety at the end of the revolution. And he’s got family [00:32:00] members around him. We don’t know exactly what their relationship was like in this very different setting on a coffee plantation owned by, and I should say Felipe SME is a black or was a black man.

So he’s enslaved by a free black man with an extended family network. And so his kind of quality of life likely increased when he moved from. To close plantation to the Jazzma plantation. So you’re saying those people identified that as uncles and aunts are not necessarily his biological family members?

You saying they might be. Yeah, they might be. Yeah. Yeah. My, when I was reading that when 8-year-old American born son wa was recently shocked by the fact that his mother’s, my, my wife’s Cameroonian is a best friend, which he had to call Tata Gobi all his life. Find out she was just mommy’s friend.

Like she was, I was like welcome to the [00:33:00] African network. That’s, yeah. When I was reading that, I was thinking about that is it. Yeah, no, on Toya, really, yeah. I think, yeah, sure. It’s possible that Toya was, a blood relative. But it’s also possible that she was kind of family yeah.

In a different sense. And that’s, ~it’s ~possible the same for the other people who were enslaved on the jazz plantation, although they’re described in the document as being of the same family. Okay. So wma by ~the time ~1791, he’s 33 years old by my account by then. If we go by the 1758 contract, what’s his thing, what’s going on with him in that whole planning and execution? We don’t, what do we know? We don’t know. For sure. This is one of the, obviously one of the frustrating things about writing a biography of a person whose life is not fully [00:34:00] documented.

~But ~it’s likely according to secondary sources written in the 19th century and other material that he joined the revolution probably in September of 1791 as it moved into the mountains of KLI Duo where he lived. It’s possible that he participated in the early planning, but those, the proximity and those networks likely were different from the ones that, that he lived in Clivia.

But at what point did he meet, christoff and Lutu around what time period you think? The first inkling in the record? ~No, ~Christoff probably would’ve been, I think I You should ask Marlene about this. Yeah. A few years after the revolution starts, but then Lu he met when he was enslaved.

And this is part of the history of the JA Plantation. Phillipe Ja was married to a woman named Ma and ma dad, [00:35:00] her dad was two son who at the time was going by. And so it’s possible that they met, under those circumstances. But then the document that I referred to before that lists Deline and his extended family, that’s a lease.

For the plantation, the Smay Plantation, Felipe Smay leases it to his father-in-law to San. And for about two and a half years, San Luis kinda runs the plantation where Deline is enslaved. And so they’re in this kind of hierarchical relationship. Lou is not exactly his enslave, but he’s leasing his enslaved labor that Oh, wow, okay.

Which is a very interesting kind of

~That, ~I don’t know how to deal with that part. ~Not that ~it’s ~just the sort of the moral ~the moral thing we put on slavery, which is justifiable. And then you see examples of wait a minute, Luca Tear legally owned [00:36:00] this. It’s a little more ambiguous than, if it’s a lease.

~Legally, ~he legally had control over his enslaved labor. ~Yeah. No, I think, ~it’s super complicated and I think this ties back to what we were talking about in terms of, for people born in the colony, ~that ~the plantation economy was the life that they knew.

~And ~that era, that moment is the beginning of a really complicated relationship between Luchi and Deline. But it’s not I don’t see it as a relationship that was always conflictual ~or whatever, ~there’s a hierarchy. Yes. But for most of their relationship.

I think Deline showed deep respect for Lu ve and Right. He was described as a mo when he was enslaved by Gilo, but I think that, that, relationship with maybe Ja, but with Lu ve is different. And so I think that it’s, his past and throughout the revolution he shows that he is like unwilling [00:37:00] to listen to people he doesn’t respect.

He is quite happy to like, go against those people. But the fact that he continues to follow Lou Ro throughout the revolution I think is a sign of what that relationship was like in the beginning. How did he acquire the last name? De So after the lease ends the plantation goes back to Ja, Ja dies and then remarries.

She marries a man named Jean Deline. And that is where Jean Jacque gets the last name that he ends up keeping for the rest of his life. And I think the fact that he keeps that last name is significant. I don’t know exactly what it means, but I think it is meaningful and suggestive of the kind of relationship they had.

But then I think it’s also suggestive of the qualities in Genevie that Deline might have either respected or learned from Genevie. Deline was in the [00:38:00] colonial militia a lifetime militia man. And I speculate and I emphasize that it’s speculation that it’s possible that Deline would’ve acquired military militia skills and knowledge before the revolution under Jean Deline.

And the spellings are different too. ’cause Ali’s last name does. It is not two S’s, it’s one s, right? Yes. If I remember right. Is there an S on the N two? No, I’m, no. Oh yeah, that’s, yeah. They do spell ’em differently. Yeah. And I go by the spelling that they use in their signatures. And even, but even Jean Jacqueline’s name is not consistently spelled throughout the revolution that he’s got some letterhead.

I think in the late 1790s that doesn’t have the s on the end of his last name, but when he starts signing his own name, it’s two S’s in the middle and one s at the end. ~And ~so that’s what I follow[00:39:00]

heavy is the head that wears the crown. So he’s emperor. I’m jumping. I’m gonna be jumping. Otherwise you have to jump. Otherwise, we’d be here until Yes. Yes. Oh, tell me if I’m going too long. Your listeners won’t have this stamina. They do. Trust me. They do. They love this long form. Yeah.

Okay. Jean Jacque the first or one faced internal and external threats. He’s got about 2000 independent revolutionaries. You call them in the mountains of Haiti. And you’ve got Louis de broker with his media war painting this Arlene, as this monster and this propaganda machine that, that for people who don’t listen, who don’t appreciate history, that you were able to tie the bo the broker with Tucker Carlson.

I like that you brought it forward for us. So talk to us [00:40:00] about the media campaign. Yeah. Against war, really against Hades for the last 200 plus years, but just the sort of internal external forces that emperor Jacques is dealing with around this time period. And we’re talking about 18, 18 0 5, right?

He was crowned 1805. 18 0 4 18. I’m sorry. 1804. ~Okay. ~1804. You’re thinking of the constitution. Yes. Yes, I am. Yeah. Thanks for the save. Yeah. Yeah, during his life the campaign, the, like propaganda campaign against him was not just a campaign against him, it was a campaign against Haiti.

And so there’s a way that the kind of image of the two of them gets, tightly wound. And this book that you’re referring to, Louis Roca’s alleged biography it’s a fascinating book because it’s ~in a lot of ways ~like the same book that UL wrote about Rio the, a couple years earlier, like some parts of it are literally just not copy and [00:41:00] pasted, but the pages are the exact same passages, paragraphs, and he just ~like ~inserts deline into different places.

And you’re like, you’re just, you’re literally just like making this up. ~But ~it gets used at the time, but also ~like ~in the 21st century as a real biography of Deline. And it’s just, ~I think ~it’s mostly fiction. And he’s really interested in ~kind of ~two things. He’s interested in criticizing the British.

~And so ~undermining Haiti and criticizing Deline is one way of doing that because they’re in negotiations and because the British and the French are at war, the British, gave some assistance to the Haitian revolutionaries. ~And so ~he is really interested in attributing Haitian success to the British, not true, but then also criticizing the British for giving that assistance.

And, he’s interested in undermining Haitian sovereignty because of course the French denied that Haiti was independent and continued claiming that [00:42:00] Haiti was a colony French colon. And some of your listeners will be familiar with probably one of the most famous images of Deline, and it’s this, woodcut image of him holding a decapitated white woman’s head.

And if you look on the internet, it’s everywhere still. . And this is, and it gets used in, things like news clips like on Tucker Carlson. And so it it’s an image that kind of keeps coming back and it’s an image that gets inserted into the book in. The second Spanish translation, which, what happened in Mexico in 1806.

So it’s a couple years after the fact when they’re like no, we need to, these descriptions are not doing, doing enough work. We need to in insert these kind of violent images into the book to help us make our point. ~And ~it’s hard to look at these books without really taking in the bigger [00:43:00] context of a kind of very a violent and extensive campaign by the French to undermine Haitian independence. This is like the absolute goal and context of duplicate, but it has this like weird. Lasting impact in the 19th century, ~but ~all the way up to today. ~And ~what I try to work through is, and in a lot of these cases is let’s look at the context of these sources.

What is their goal? What are they trying to do? Where are they getting their information? And what, how can we use this as historians? This is, a lot of what he’s facing is rhetorical war from the French and physical war from the French too. You wrote the whole book on the, like Melinda Ance and we’ll cover that.

Hopefully we’ll have you back to round things up for the series so I can get, a nice playlist for you on, on, on the website. You described you described, oh God, I cut that out. Okay. You described two significant documents this [00:44:00] offered to the world. ~So ~would it be helpful to do a slight compare and contrast between them or just focus on where they overlap?

What do you wanna do? You have to tell me what the documents are. That would help, right? I dunno what they’re there’s so many significant documents. We yeah. So there’s the number 29th, 1803 proclamation. Okay. Yes. Issued collectively, if I remember right, under Christophe, at least they signed off on it August Sinclair.

And of course they decided, so what’s so important about the 1803 documentation and then the next significant one is the January 1st, 1804 act. And upon us, which you said is composed of three elements, and I love s. That’s the oath itself, the speech and dis Arlene’s nomination. Yeah. So these two declarations of independence were issued in two kind of very distinct moments.

They’re a month [00:45:00] apart. But a lot happens in that month. And so the first one, November 29th, 1803 is right after the French evacuate. And then Deline and one of Rocha BO’S officers sign an evacuation agreement. But very importantly in this document, the French do not concede defeat.

It’s an evacuation treaty and it’s not a peace treaty. I think there’s an assumption in some ways that this evacuation kind of signals the end of the war. And signals piece. And a lot of the documents produced around that evacuation suggests like, okay, this is a new era.

We’re turning the page. So the issue that the November 29th Declaration of Independence, which goes under the assumption that, this is an era of peace. The, I think the phrase is like, the Aurora of peace is now upon us. I should memorize all of the [00:46:00] documents.

And the stormy time is now over. I like that. I like that part of it. And they articulate a vision of the relationship with France that’s okay, we’ve turned that page. We can move on. We can be cool. I. And as, as had been the case under Tucson, Luis, they say ~kinda ~white people in their plantations and their property will be secure.

We’re done, we’re over. But then over the month of December, 1803, it becomes very clear that the French have not conceded defeat that the war is not over, and that they’re going to continue threatening~ what, ~in December is still. ~And ~they do this by issuing kind of proclamations.

They do this by attacking foreign shipping. And they do this by communicating with kind of people in the region saying that the French are sending reinforcements, we’re gonna rein, invade. This is our colony. That is not an independent place. And so [00:47:00] then, there’s a realization in December that ~like, oh.~

This isn’t over. This is a different kind of fight. And so I think that, the tone in the January 1st Declaration of Independence reflects that critical month. And then they’re like, okay, you’ve shown that we can’t trust you, that you’re never gonna stop trying to recon the colony.

You’re never gonna recognize your independence. And so this war is going to be eternal. And they say eternal hatred to France. And that’s ~like ~the rally and cry. ~And so ~the January Declaration of Independence is a call to arms because it’s in response to this French insistence that they’re gonna ~rein, ~invade, ~they’re gonna ~reclaim the colony and start fresh.

~And, ~slavery’s gonna be reintroduced. Was to pull my godfather reference for the 1000 time was this Elaine, more of a wartime conciliary than a diplomat ~because ~I keep comparing him to louverture who was more shifty [00:48:00] and, and nimble in a lot of ways. ~Like he was needed.~

I’ve asked Popkin this when he’s been on the show before that, could, that final phase of the Haitian revolution, which is the, the battle of it chair have happened, had it not been a dise in charge of that, because he’s like the pure, and as a combat vet myself he’s ~just ~like the pure definition of a warrior.

~Like ~he punishes people. He’ll shoot you on the spot if you violate, you doing wartime. Was he just not built? For diplomacy. Can we honestly say that and still praise him? This is saying this within the context of all the crap that’s been said about him. That is true. Yeah. So can we say that this Eileen was probably a better mix of warrior diplomat and this Eileen was, can I even make that comparison?

It’s fair to think in those terms. Please educate me professionally. I, I I wanna hear what Popkin said, but I guess I can go back and listen to no. He said yes. He said, yeah, it couldn’t have, it couldn’t have been. He was what was needed at the time.[00:49:00]

So I think, I think he was both the warrior leader and a diplomat. Like I, my, my first book, Haitian Connections was all about his diplomacy. And I think that. Even though, there’s this kind of, ~I think ~he was like a different kind of diplomat. But I do think that he

had aspects ~of kind ~of both of those types of leadership~ both ~during the revolution and after. ~I think, ~the problem was that he never led a colony or country that wasn’t at war. And so he was acting as a military general at the same time as he was acting as a diplomat. And those concerns were very tightly intertwined.

And I think, his negotiations with the governor of Jamaica. This is for, they were negotiating for a trade treaty beginning in late 1803, but especially into 1804. The French and the British were at the war, and the British were like, ~cool ~we’ll sign a trade treaty with you.

But what the British wanted to do was that [00:50:00] they wanted to integrate Haiti into the British Empire, not quite as a colony, but not quite as an independent country. And in Celine’s diplomatic negotiations he asserts Haitian sovereignty and ~he ~insists that any trade treaty was going to have to recognize Haiti as a sovereign country and not integrated into the British empire, right?

And so I think, even though the result is that the British don’t diplomatically recognize Haiti, he is able to secure sovereignty. In a different way. It’s not a recognized sovereignty, but he insists that the British are not gonna occupy any territory in the country. He’s not gonna sign a trade treaty that allows the British to dictate where Haitians can go.

And so I do think that is a ~kind of ~critical component of his diplomacy that is not exactly captured, if we [00:51:00] just think of him as a warrior, a man who was, the man for the job and the war for independence, but not quite the man for the job in independence. During the time that he worked under the French, do you think the French left him rather than he left the French?

Which time? This is in 18. Oh yeah. Like I said, like about seven or eight years, I could be wrong. Where he was like operating under let’s to quelch all the rebellion going on. Okay. So we’re back, you’re back in the 1790s. Yeah. Yeah. Around that time period. Do you think at any point he thought of himself as a French citizen and then he just became disillusioned because they weren’t as supportive of him?

Or do you think all along he was, calculating, which I would be less persuaded by that because you didn’t provide any evidence that was the case. I think it’s at some point he became disillusioned with the way they were going. Did he think of himself as a French citizen at any [00:52:00] point in his life and he became disillusioned later?

Did he think of himself? He certainly claimed to. Yeah. Whether that was strategic. And yeah, and he was accepted, like I think in the 1790s it’s. You need to remember that he was seen as like an essential French Republican general Yeah. In the colony. And he was rewarded.

He was giving gifts and there’s this one reputation that I love that was like, the French will never forget your service to the nation. Of course. I saw, I think the French saw him as useful. Recognized recognized him as being useful. I don’t know that he fully identified as being French but I think he saw the uses of identifying as such.

To what extent was the Haitian revolution a labor dispute? A violent one. What part of that is about labor? Like the treatment of the majority of the [00:53:00] slaves. And, the three day work week, the three days off work week kind of thing. ~Yeah. Which I see historians like mentioned like here and there once in a while, and then the masses were like, wait, you promised us.~

The King of France said we have, and then the king of San gets is had chopped off, whatever. And like how much a part of that is had, had the French, either the planters and the colony or the metropol enforce the, the conditions right of the slaves that it would’ve dampened or pacified the masses even more.

How much of that you think of that as a factor? I’m not asking that to diminish Yeah. The revolution in any way, but I just wanna look at the, like that component of it, if that would’ve delayed things more. Because there was a lot of promises were broken by the French, and ~so ~it precipitated either at the individual level.

With this Arlene, or, all of them, Christoff, their own personal exasperations with, decisions some of the French people were making versus, I think do you know what I’m, am I getting at something that’s worth discussing or am I just full of it right now?[00:54:00]

Never. Absolutely not. Thank you for that. I think, I think yeah, labor and quality of life Yeah. Was absolutely significant, right? And the kind of day-to-day experiences of people who were enslaved was central ~to, ~to the fight. But ~I, ~I think there’s like a thing that kind of goes beyond beyond just straightforward labor dispute.

I’m not a labor historian. And that, racial slavery was the kind of critical part of this fight. That, that a fight against the claim that a person could be enslaved simply because of their skin color, right? And that they could be subjected to this kind of labor, so they’re, they’re intertwined.

It’s all related. Yeah. So I think that’s a key part of it. And there’s, the different labor codes that get promulgated and implemented during the revolution and after I think restrict people’s freedom, but there are, very specific changes that do increase people’s autonomy, [00:55:00] people’s quality of life.

And their working conditions which very much matter. Anything else you want to, you wanna discuss that that we should know? Oh, I wanna talk to you about, so he’s in the east causing mischief and saline decides to invade Santo Domingo. Can you talk about that failed campaign?

Yeah. So since the Declaration of Independence the Haitian State claimed that the entire island was the country of Haiti. And part of that is because the French had acquired the East in 1795. And you know that the, they’re not being a French colony anymore, meant that the entire island was Haiti.

They only in practice had control over the western. Side of the island. And Jean Louis a French officer in the cleric expedition had escaped to the city of Santo Domingo. And from there, [00:56:00] he claimed to be the governor of Santo man. As he continued to call on it claimed that French reinforcements were coming, claimed that he was gonna rein, invade.

And so he was a real threat to Haitian independence and sovereignty. And so in 1805 Delina and the Haitian Army, the AME and attack the city of Santo Domingo in the East. And according to their account it is a failed attack because they see a fleet of friendships arriving in the harbor which they interpret as this, fleet or this kind of new expedition that had loudly been proclaiming was coming. And so they’re like, oh, it’s here. And so they fled back to the western side of the island. And so effectively under Deline, he’s never able to assert dominion over the entire island, even though he always considered it Haiti, the whole island.

And this was on the March, 1805 timeframe, if I remember correctly. [00:57:00] Yes. Yeah. Ah, February, March. February, March. I told you weren’t allowed to quiz me on time.

Article 12 and 14. Oh no. Another quiz. What’s that? I said another quiz. No, I’m just kidding. No. So he comes back after the Senator Santa Domingo campaign? Yes. You said he issued the first Imperial in a series Imperial Constitution, a series of. Of legal codes regarding the military and civilian life, and two, one in particular outta two, the article 12 and 14 is going, I find interesting, which a lot of people are familiar with.

If you describe about white people couldn’t own land, white men couldn’t own land, but ~he, ~it made exception for white women and I think Germans and polls, right? Can you talk a little bit about that? What is that all about? What is that all about? It’s it’s ~a ~part of a kind of broader anti-colonial policy that this [00:58:00] goes back to the Declaration of Independence, eternal Board of France.

French people are not allowed to live here. We can, they can’t be trusted. And so there’s a policy that white people are not allowed to own property in Haiti because they have proven that. If they do, they will try to restrict black people’s rights. And so there’s a kind of blanket policy that white people are not allowed to own property or land.

But then there’s exceptions to this rule. And there had always been exceptions to, that kind of rule before, even before the Constitution. And that there were certain white people ~who ~were considered to be to have earned ha citizenship by proving their loyalty or their usefulness to the nation.

And in, in addition to the Constitution, there are, I I cite this in the book, but there’s an example of a naturalization certificate for a French white person who wants to become a Haitian citizen. And so they’re allowed to become Haitian. So there’s exceptions beyond [00:59:00] the specific groups articulated in that article.

It’s an article that shows or those two articles in, in a pairing. It shows this broader anti-colonial policy, but then that there are there many exceptions to this rule. And there are hundreds of white people who end up living in Haiti and becoming Haitian citizens in 1804 and beyond.

I’m gonna put you on the spot here for a little bit, so I’ll cut this out if you don’t mind. Wait, I haven’t been on the spot the whole time. Where have I been? The Haitian flag? Every May 18th. I want to like, publish an article that I wrote, but I haven’t done it because friends and family keep telling me, don’t do that ’cause you’ll be just as bad as as, they called, they called me all sorts of names for putting this out. That, I was like, wait, I’m Haitian. I can say that, but I, no, I wanna read it. Yeah, you can just send it to me. What is true about, because in the book you mentioned Kaplan flying as a [01:00:00] pop.

~Like ~what is popularly described? Something to that effect. What is true about, I read the GII piece on that for the GII piece on that, about the Haitian flag, and I read other sources on that. I think there’s two Canadian scholars that actually went in depth right about that. What is true, what is myth about how the Haitian flag was created versus what is, popular folklore or mythology, which is important. ’cause if people create whatever history they wanna create, whatever narrative. But as an historian, what do we know factually about the creation of the Hi Haitian flag?

I think they need Tori rip out ~the ~the white part. I think, I think I say in the book, he, it might have happened. ~Okay. ~Could have happened. Yeah. I think there’s, there’s no reason, just because there isn’t solid archival evidence to, to say that it did happen.

I don’t think it’s it means we [01:01:00] shouldn’t take that narrative seriously, ~right? ~And it, I think it is, there’s an aspect of the ~kind of ~symbolism of it. And I think David Geis talks about the Haitian flag too, and that there were like various flags in use.

~Yeah. ~At the time. I don’t, I think we can, we can’t say a whole lot for absolute for Yeah. Absolute certainty.

I think we have enough glorious instances in that we can celebrate in Haitian history I had like very little patience for the mythological aspects of it. I think they created a flag. A flag. A flag was created, right? 1903, ~right? ~And I think that there’s evidence that shows that it was a red and black or a red and blue flag initially. And then, Celine’s flag is red and black, but then, like, how exactly that was created.

There isn’t the kind of archival documentation, but I don’t know. I dread every May 18th because they all Haitians come out, they celebrate it, and then they put this Eileen back in the [01:02:00] box for 364 days ~in ~you mentioned there was in, in one of the documents, ~there’s ~an addendum. Yeah. That to the Gregorian Talk a little bit about that. I’m so glad you noticed this because this is like something that I’ve been nerdy about for a while and I’m like, no.

Yeah. I find that, I find the French revolutionary calendar fascinating. So talk about that, like that addendum, they, the dating system, they stop using the French Republican calendar. And then they start using the Gregorian calendar. This is in Ance, just to clarify, but they stopped, they stopped using the French Republican calendar before Yeah.

Before the Declaration of Independence. Yeah. Yeah. But then in the Declaration of Independence, it starts a new year which importantly, uses the Gregorian calendar. I think that the choice to return, to this, Christian Care calendar is strategic.

That has to do with a whole other research project. ~But~ then they add alongside that January 1st, [01:03:00] 1804 is ~it ~the first day of independence or does it refer to 18? Oh, first, yeah. Yeah. First day. Yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah. The first day. Then every document that they publish in 1804 refers to 1804 as the first year of independence.

And then they keep adding, there’s like, when the empire. Is declared. Then there’s and the first of our reign. And then, like when different governments come in, there’s and the first of the republic. And then, again, it continues. And like under Sukuk there’s, the, like another imperial calendar added to it.

And I think, I don’t know the exact phrasing, but then after the American occupation there’s a reference to like a renewed independence from occupation. I can’t remember exactly what it is, but you should definitely write about this because I find it absolutely fascinating.

Anything else? Professor, I hope you enjoyed this.

I absolutely did. It’s always a total joy and treat to talk with you. And I hope by [01:04:00] some point once this died down we can come back and really dive deep into the a leader. Any key takeaways for on this? Aile? You wanna leave us with that? Non-academics or academics should key takeaways from you from this experience.

Now that you, your ba your baby’s born Oh my goodness. Going right into the world. June the 17th, right? June 17th. Yeah. Available wherever you like to buy your books. And there’s an audio book coming at some point. Awesome. I don’t know when, so you don’t have to walk and read at the same time. You can walk and listen.

Key takeaways. I think that what became apparent to me over the course of researching and writing this book is just what a complicated person he was who lived in a very complicated world. And so any of the very simplistic descriptions and narratives about his life~ just ~don’t account for, the full, the fullness of his of his experiences what he lived [01:05:00] through and his kind of broader contributions to the age of revolutions, but like to modern history.

And one final question that bookshelf behind you that can’t be I’m actually thinking of doing a series of coming you all’s house and then and invade your bookshelves. What’s the deal behind that? How do you organize your bookshelves?

Do you organize them by themes or by dates or these, yeah. Primarily my Haiti related books. And then there’s another bookshelf over there, which I’m not gonna show you because I have not made it video ready are my other books. That’s the idea. Julia, is to catch you in your No, I’m not falling for it.

But I, I work in my office a lot. And so I really wanted to make it a nice place to work. I organized them by color just by color. Yep. So when you need to find something, how do you, I remember what it looks like, and then I find, oh, wow, that’s impressive. I think, I think there’s ~like ~an aesthetic to [01:06:00] arranging your books by color, which a lot of people think is absolutely chaotic.

But I remember what books look like and so I think it’s easier for me to find a book if I’m like, oh, it’s a red book, and ~so ~I just go to the red section. Really? That’s impressive. There’s some aspect to it. Me I have a whole bunch of different shelves, bookshelves around the house, maybe about 10 of them, and they’re by themes, African American history, Haitian history but there’s overlap.

What’s that? There’s overlap. Yeah. Like where do you put Leslie Alexander’s book in that? I don’t know. Yeah, that’s true. May by author. I think sometimes if the author’s African American, then I, but since it’s about Haiti or probably she So your way sounds more chaotic than just organizing by color? I asked Ashley White at the University of Miami, the same question.

Yeah. And her husband is also an academic and actually that’s on one of the shows. Makes bookshelves. No, she said she has her owning as his [01:07:00] own. I was like, who reads whose book? She’s he’s always in mine stuff. I was like, does he put it back? ~She’s ~no he doesn’t. ~I wouldn’t, ~I would not tolerate it.

Couldn’t do it. It absolutely not. Professor Garfield. Thank you Julia. Appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me ~all. ~Take care. Bye-bye.