Marlene L. Daut

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...

An exiled revolutionary, André Rigaud’s return to the island of his birth changed Haiti’s political destiny. Was he sent back to help reinstate slavery? His enemies would have us believe so.

In 1893 the Black American playwright William Edgar Easton published Dessalines, a Dramatic Tale: A Single Chapter From Haiti’s History, a play about the Haitian Revolution. Ostensibly a biopic of independent Haiti’s founder General Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the play prominently featured another of the...

It’s that time of year when PW’s editors compile a selection of gift-worthy titles for children and adults alike. Our picks include doorstop histories and up-all-night...

CBC’s Jennifer Clibbon takes us through the three books up for the 2025 Cundill History Prize.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/audio/9.6954303

By Marlene L. Daut

The month of October was a very busy one for me. First, my colleague Pierre Saint-Amand and I hosted a conference to analyze, discuss, and deliberate the implications of the bicentennial of the 1825 indemnity “agreement” with France that impoverished Haiti. Participants included Julia Gaffield, Daniel Desormeaux, Jean Casimir, Chelsea Stieber, Grégory Pierrot, Jean-Marie Théodat, Kaiama L. Glover, Yanick Lahens, Malick Ghachem, and Lewis Clorméus.

The conversations were...

By Marlene L. Daut

On this date we remember Haiti’s founder Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who was killed by members of his own army less than three years after becoming the first world leader in the Americas to permanently abolish slavery.

Below, I introduce you to two Haitian poets who, many decades following the assassination of Dessalines, and each in their own particular way, commemorated the death of Haiti’s first emperor.

In “The Red Bridge,” Coriolan Ardouin (December 11, 1812-July 12, 1835),...

By Marlene L. Daut

Did you know that at the age of only twelve-years-old Henry Christophe, Haiti's first and only king, found himself participating in the American Revolutionary War? Christophe fought at the Battle of Savannah, which took place on October 9, 1779, under the command of the famous French general known as the Comte d’Estaing.

Christophe was not the only Black soldier from the Caribbean to fight for U.S. freedom. Joining him was Louverture’s storied rival André Rigaud and fellow...