Recently, Bram Hubbell of the teaching newsletter, "Liberating Narratives," recommended The First and Last King of Haiti. Here is a short exerpt:

"I previously wrote about teaching the short-term effects of the Haitian Revolution. One of the challenges is that the aftermath of the revolution was politically messy. Although all the leaders of the state agreed on the abolition of slavery and preventing France from taking over again, they had competing economic and political visions. Teaching those competing visions got easier this year. Julia Gaffield published I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Haiti’s Fight for Freedom in July. In January, Marlene Daut published The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe. Both books are excellent, and they can help teachers better understand how these two individuals influenced the outcome of the Haitian Revolution. As world history teachers, we often want students to know the causes and effects of historical events. We need to become more familiar with Dessalines and Christophe to understand the effects of the Haitian Revolution fully.

Textured Narratives of the Haitian Revolution

Daut and Gaffield are not writing traditional biographies that focus only on the lives of their subjects. They begin by establishing context, which is so critical to good world history. Their early chapters help teachers better understand why the Haitian Revolution began and how it unfolded.

Both authors comprehensively describe what French Saint-Domingue was like, especially for enslaved Africans. In the case of both Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe, we don’t know conclusively all the details of their early lives. To provide a better understanding of their early life experiences, Daut and Gaffield regularly describe the experiences of enslaved Africans on Saint-Domingue."

Read the rest here: https://www.liberatingnarratives.com/astonish-the-world/