Marlene L. Daut

Cundill Prize Finalist Marlene L. Daut Recommends Baron de Vastey, Jean Casimir, Louis Joseph Janvier and More

Marlene L. Daut

October 20, 2025

After waging a thirteen-year revolution against slavery in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, the island’s Black freedom fighters declared their independence on January 1, 1804. In the country’s first constitution, issued one year later, the newly renamed Haiti subsequently became the first nation in the modern world to permanently abolish slavery. In...

In 2002, Haiti’s former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide argued that France should pay his country US$21 billion.

The reason? In 1825, France extracted a huge indemnity from the young nation, in exchange for recognition of its independence.

April 17, 2025, marks the 200th anniversary of that indemnity agreement. On Jan. 1 of this year, the now-former president of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council, Leslie Voltaire, reminded France of this call when he requested that France “repay the...

In this series commissioned by Marlene L. Daut, scholars reveal what 220 years of Haitian independence means for how we tell the story of abolition and the development of human rights around the world.

BY MARLENE L. DAUT

The first land to be colonized in the Americas was Haiti. Europeans first enslaved native Americans and captive Africans there, too. But the first permanent abolition of slavery also happened on Haiti, in 1804: 220 years ago this month. Such abolition only occurred in the rest...

I recently appeared in Mathilde Demoisel's documentary Blood, Sweat, and Sugar (Le Sucre, pour la douceur et pour le pire)

Here is a brief description:

What is the price of...

If you happen to read this review of Rich Benjamin's book, Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History (which I just purchased and I'm looking forward to reading!), you...

How Haitian ordnance wound up in the Adirondack Mountains

New York’s Fort Ticonderoga is celebrated for the artillery it contributed to the American Revolution. Less known,...

By Marlene L. Daut

In my first blog post of 2026, I want to mark the fact that today is the one-year anniversary of the publication of The First and Last King of Haiti. I remember last year at this very time, I was busy trying to finish up my syllabi for the impending semester (check, for this year too!), as I anxiously awaited the possible publication of early reviews and/or for a few podcast episodes I had pre-recorded to drop. In truth, I spent most of the day in a state of ambivalent...

By Marlene L. Daut

I honestly love history podcasts so much, and it was therefore a true honor to talk about Napoléon Bonaparte with Dr. Claire Aubin, host of the widely acclaimed show "This Guy Sucked."

We covered life in the French Caribbean under slavery and Napoleonic rule, and then I filled in all the bits that weren’t covered in high school or their previous Napoléon episode. For example, the Haitian Revolution, the genocidal methods Napoléon's army used to try to restore slavery in...

By Marlene L. Daut

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, I have noticed a lot of misinformation going around, especially in public broadcasts and on social media. As a corrective, I thought I would post a factually correct video from the Open Education Resources Project, which details how the first permanent abolition of slavery happened in Haiti in 1804.

Importantly, this kind of immediate emancipation of enslaved people only occurred in the rest of the Atlantic...