Blacks in the Diaspora

"The Haitian Revolution of 1789–1803 transformed the Caribbean's wealthiest colony into the first independent state in Latin America, encompassed the largest slave uprising in the Americas, and inflicted a humiliating defeat on three colonial powers. In Haitian Revolutionary Studies, David Patrick Geggus sheds new light on this tremendous upheaval by marshaling an unprecedented range of evidence drawn from archival research in six countries. Geggus's fine-grained essays explore central issues and little-studied aspects of the conflict, including new historiography and sources, the origins of the black rebellion, and relations between slaves and free people of color. The contributions of vodou and marronage to the slave uprising, Toussaint Louverture and the abolition question, the policies of the major powers toward the revolution, and its interaction with the early French Revolution are also addressed. Questions about ethnicity, identity, and historical knowledge inform this essential study of a complex revolution." - publisher

"The essays assembled in Crossing Boundaries reflect the international dimensions, commonalities, and discontinuities in the histories of diasporan communities of color. People of African descent in the New World (the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean) share a common set of experiences: domination and resistance, slavery and emancipation, the pursuit of freedom, and struggle against racism. No unitary explanation can capture the varied experiences of black people in diaspora. Knowledge of individual societies is illuminated by the study and comparison of other cultural histories. This volume, which grew out of the Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora Symposium held at Michigan State University, elaborates the profound relationship between curriculum and pedagogy."--BOOK JACKET.

Gender was a decisive force in slave society. Slave men's experiences differed from those of slave women, who were exploited in both reproductive and productive capacities. They did not figure prominently in revolts because they engaged in less confrontational methods of resistance, emphasizing creative struggle to survive dehumanization and abuse.

"This volume examines several slave societies in the Greater Caribbean to illustrate the pervasive and multi-layered impact of the revolutionary age on the region. Built precariously on the exploitation of slave labor, organized according to the doctrine of racial discrimination, the plantation colonies were particularly vulnerable to the message of the French Revolution, which proved all the more potent because it coincided with the emergence of the antislavery movement in the Atlantic world and interacted with local traditions of resistance among the region's slaves, free coloreds, and white colonists." - publisher

These essays deepen our understanding of Haiti during the period from 1791 to 1815. They consider the colony's history and material culture as well as it 'free people of colour' and the events leading up to the revolution and its violent unfolding.