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...

April 17th is the 200th anniversary of the independence of Haiti — but also of the indemnity agreement with France that was a condition of independence. Over the next 122 years,...

Recalling the life of Henry Christophe, Haiti’s first and last king

In a new book, Yale’s Marlene Daut follows the remarkable trajectory of Christophe’s life and Haiti’s...

Hosted on WTNH/ABC's Good Morning Connecticut, scholar Marlene L. Daut unravels the enigma that was Henry Christophe, the revolutionary, freedom-fighter, and only king of Haiti....

The process of selecting a book cover can be quite stressful. Authors usually have some idea of what they want or don't want, but much of the process relies on instinct, intuition, and commonsense. Yet there is also the much thornier question of love.

Every author I have ever talked to wants to absolutely and unequivocally LOVE the cover of their book. For many reasons, though, sometimes you just don't love the cover that the editorial and/or marketing team finds to be amazing.

As the author...

April 7 will perhaps forever remain a dubious day in Haitian history. On that day in 1803, Toussaint Louverture was found dead by his French jailers at the Fort de Joux prison in the Jura mountains of France. I wrote at length about how the French caused his death in an article for History Today magazine called "The Wrongful Death of Toussaint Louverture." The article is available without a paywall by clicking on the hyperlink above.

But while the date of Toussaint Louverture's death is fairly...

How a utopian vision of Black freedom and self-government was undone in a world still in thrall to slavery and racism

After declaring independence from France on January 1, 1804, Haiti became the first state anywhere to permanently outlaw slavery and ban imperial rule. By establishing a land of freedom in a world of slavery, Haiti’s founders – the generals Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Henry Christophe and Alexandre Pétion – challenged the contradictions of the western European Enlightenment, whose...