Print mattered in post-revolutionary Haiti because the state had almost no other way to exist internationally. Garraway shows that writing under Henry Christophe addressed itself above all to foreign readers, seeking to compel acknowledgement of a sovereignty that no government would recognise until 1825; imagining a community at home mattered less in a country where literacy was narrow. Her main case is Pompee Valentin de Vastey, Christophe's secretary and self-described publicist, whose books repeatedly break into European arguments about Haiti conducted as though Haitians were absent. Reading Le systeme colonial devoile and the replies to Mazeres and Le Borgne de Boigne alongside Ranciere on the equality of speaking beings, she argues that Vastey claims the right to write as proof of a humanity proslavery publicists denied, and exposes the peculiar insult of being covertly addressed while publicly ignored. Writing becomes an act of sovereignty.