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...

In this LitHub article on essential reading for understanding Haitian history, I chose 5 books by Haitian authors. Spanning nearly the entirety of Haiti’s history, from the...

Freedom, Independence and Choice: Finalists for the 2025 Cundill History Prize Announced

The Cundill History Prize, the world’s leading prize for a work of history written or...

LitHub just posted an excerpt from my Cundill Prize shortlisted book, The First and Last King of Haiti: ...

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...

By the end of the second decade of the 19th century, it had become commonplace to describe Haiti as a country split in two, one part ruled by Henry Christophe in the north and the other by Alexandre Pétion in the south. In reality, the political divisions were far more complicated and would have everything to do with King Henry's eventual downfall.

On the northern half of Haiti’s southwestern peninsula lies a mountainous region called Grand’Anse. Until February 1820, when Pétion’s successor...