Two books, Daut argues, mark a shift in how nineteenth-century Hispaniola is studied: away from what Europeans and North Americans said about Haiti and toward what Haitians and Dominicans said and did themselves. She notes how rarely scholars in the United States consult Haitian-produced historiography, the Revue de la Société haïtienne d'histoire above all.

Gaffield asks whether other Atlantic governments actually treated Haiti as sovereign after 1804, and shows that France's attempt to cut the new state out of trade failed, commerce continuing with Curaçao, St. Thomas and the Batavian Republic. Eller crosses to the eastern side of the island, tracing how unification loyalties outlasted the separation of the 1840s, how Dominican elites manufactured anti-Haitian feeling and a raceless national identity, and how popular resistance to Spain's 1861 annexation strained Geffrard's official neutrality.

Together, Daut concludes, they dismantle the story of Haitian isolation.