Review by Brian Tanguay
The first work of theater devoted to the life of Henry Christophe was staged in 1821, only a year or so after Christophe took his own life. Since that time, as the brilliant Yale historian Marlene L. Daut notes in the Prologue to The First and Last King of Haiti, Christophe’s improbable story has intrigued artists, novelists and filmmakers across the world. Christophe’s life encompasses every ingredient an artist could ask for: triumph and tragedy, betrayal and conspiracy, benevolence and cruelty, love and hatred. Though much is known about Christophe, it’s fair to say the full arc of his life is less well understood. Good man or tyrant? Hero or villain?
“The tendency of historians, journalists, and artists alike to not just ridicule Christophe in this way,” Daut writes, “but to portray his downfall as both righteous and inevitable has obscured the intricate personal and political events that led to the king’s dramatic demise, making him one of the least understood heads of state in the history of the Americas.”
I don’t know if Professor Daut set out to write the definitive biography of Christophe, but she seems to have done so. Her exhaustive research includes a staggering number and variety of sources — letters, journals, local and foreign newspaper accounts, proclamations. It’s no wonder the book is hefty, more than five hundred pages, often dense, but the end result is simply magisterial. Detail layered upon detail, down to the furnishings in some of the places Christophe lived as he rose to prominence.
As a teenager, Christophe fought in the American Revolutionary War. He was a subordinate of Toussaint Louverture, present when Haiti defied the French Empire and declared itself independent, a military general, a savvy businessman, and a husband and father.
It’s fascinating to read Christophe’s writing and gain insight into how he thought and reasoned. Not only a prolific correspondent, but a highly literate one as well, as this example from an 1806 proclamation shows: “Light has begun to shine upon us, and a beneficent constitution is defeating the schemes and plots of which you were going to be the victims. At last, a wise code suitable to our mores, our climate, our customs, has, so to speak, come out of the chaos, to fix once again the destiny of Haiti.”
A short review like this cannot do justice to a book of this scope, but three broad themes stuck with me. The first is the brutal reality of French rule, the second the role Christophe played at key turning points, and third the long term effect of colonization on Haiti’s development as an independent nation. The French ruled through implacable racism, cruelty, and the devaluation of Black life, whether Creole, mulatto, slave or free. “Black life under French colonial rule,” Daut writes, “was so dispensable…as to make recording even the barest facts of existence — life and death — exceedingly rare.” No doubt this is the reason she so carefully substantiates where Christophe was born and into what social status.
Read the rest of the review here: https://calirb.com/the-first-and-last-king-of-haiti-the-rise-and-fall-of-henry-christophe-by-marlene-l-daut/