Blog

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...

The work of preparing the renamed capital city, Cap-Henry, for President Christophe to become King Henry happened within the astonishing space of just two months. On March 26, 1811, Christophe issued a proclamation announcing that his council of state had just promoted him from the position of president of the State of Haiti to king of the Kingdom of Haiti. Just one week later, another edict announced the creation of the nobility, with Christophe’s most cherished friends and administrators...

Resistance and Fugitivity on the Island of Saint-Domingue

On December 1, 1773, a 22-year-old enslaved man, about five-feet tall and originally from South Africa, was captured by French authorities in Petit-Goâve, on the island of Saint-Domingue, a French colony at the time. The captive had run away from the man who had enslaved him to become a maroon, or a fugitive from slavery. Upon his capture, when the jailer asked for his name, the man, who spoke no French, said likely the only word he...

Welcome to my blog! I am trying to be really intentional about where I spend my time these days: more time with family, reading, and creating ideas, and working on writing projects, and less time on social media/scrolling the internet. This blog is a part of that effort. Some of what I'll be writing here is stuff that didn't make it into my books, and some of what will be here might end up just as new thoughts I'm working out. Other times, I might talk about some of the aspects of my books...