Reviewed by Richard Feinberg
Published on April 22, 2025
The storied leaders of the Haitian Revolution that erupted in 1791 and led to the country’s independence in 1804—Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henry Christophe—are giants of world history and, at the same time, tragically flawed military despots who contributed to their country’s perpetual troubles. In this authoritative, elegant biography, Daut meticulously combs the torrents of contemporary letters and broadsheets to draw a complex, contradictory portrait of Christophe, also known as King Henry. Although Daut sympathizes with the Black liberators who heroically battled the savage French imperialists to establish a post-slavery order in Haiti, she does not hesitate to chronicle the dizzying internecine conspiracies, betrayals, defections, and insurrections that contributed to the bloodletting. Both the French, who were intent on reimposing slavery, and the Haitian revolutionaries, motivated to exact vengeance and to defend their hard-fought gains, perpetrated atrocities. The surviving revolutionary leaders became fabulously wealthy from the confiscated French estates; King Henry built luxurious palaces and hosted weeklong debaucheries for his newly minted aristocracy. In the end, abandoned by his own troops yelling “Death to the tyrant!” King Henry shot himself in the chest in 1820.
Link to original review in Foreign Affairs: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/first-and-last-king-haiti-rise-and-fall-henry-christophe