4 - The independence of Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Summary

Among contemporary works, Médéric L. E. Moreau de Saint-Méry, Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie française de I’isle de Saint Domingue, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1797–8; 3 vols., Paris, 1984; English version, abridged, edited and translated by Ivor A. Spencer, A Civilization That Perished: The Last Years of White Colonial Rule in Haiti (Lanham, Md., 1985), and Bryan Edwards, An Historical Survey of the French Colony in the Island of St. Domingo (London, 1797) offer the most comprehensive view of the economic, social and political problems of colonial Saint-Domingue in the years immediately before the French Revolution. See also on Haiti before 1808, Thomas Madiou, Histoire d’Haiti, vols. 1–3 (1847–8; Port-au-Prince, 1904). The best and most comprehensive work on the Haitian Revolution continues to be C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York, 1938; and numerous later editions). Other, less satisfactory, works include José L. Franco, Historia de la revolution de Haiti (Havana, 1966), and T. O. Ott, The Haitian Revolution, 1789–1804 (Knoxville, 1973). A book now out of fashion because of its racism, though still retaining some interest, is T. Lothrop Stoddard, The French Revolution in San Domingo (Boston, 1914; reprint, 1982). Among the many biographies of Toussaint Louverture two are now classics: Victor Schoelcher, Vie de Toussaint-Louverture (1889; Paris, 1982), and Horace Pauléus Sannon, Histoire de Toussaint-Louverture, 3 vols. (Port-au-Prince, 1920–33). See also Pierre Pluchon, Toussaint-Louverture, d’esclavage au pouvoir (Paris, 1979). There are contrasting accounts of the military side of the Revolution.