Comment From Revolution to Recognition

When in 1959 R. R. Palmer published the first volume of his foundational work The Age of Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800, references to the Haitian Revolution within its pages were few and far between.1 In a text overwhelmingly dominated by the American and French Revolutions, the slave rebellion-turned-unforeseen revolution, which shook the foundations of the Western Hemisphere’s status quo, was referred to merely a handful of times. Its impact upon other Atlantic and world events of the time went largely unnoticed, and the vital struggle for independence and international recognition that followed it was disregarded. Fast-forward six decades, and the situation could hardly be more different. Although it took some time, Haiti and the Haitian Revolution are today at the core of studies on both the Age of Revolution and the Atlantic World. Every year, dozens of new articles and books examining this exceptional event are written and published in various languages.2 More to the point, the study of the Haitian Revolution has now moved beyond a period of genealogical navel-gazing, during which justifying its very existence seemed to be necessary, and has blossomed into a field marked by wonderful and innovative research.3 Whereas the period immediately before the 1791 uprising in Bois Caïman, the revolutionary phase, and the actual independence in 1804 have been at the epicenter of this new scholarship, the post-independence years have received less attention from Haitian Revolution scholars, in part due to the allure of the events that signaled the preceding decade and a half, but perhaps also because of the quantity, quality, and availability of primary sources for the post-1804 period

Democratic revolution · Independence · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis