The First and Last King of Haiti

November 15, 2024
A biography of the iconic Black revolutionary that tries to separate caricature and idolatry from truth. Daut, professor of French and African diaspora studies at Yale and author ofAwakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution, reminds readers that Haiti was France's most prized colony, an island territory of plantations that led the world in sugar, coffee, and cotton production. It was also an oppressive slave society. Inspired by the French Revolution, enslaved people rebelled in 1791. Although France abolished slavery in 1794, Haitian whites refused to go along and fought back viciously, and Napoleon failed disastrously in an effort to restore slavery in 1802. A minor figure when the rebellion began, Christophe prospered steadily under its leader, Toussaint L'Ouverture. Once independence was achieved in 1804, rebel leaders turned on each other. After plotters assassinated Haiti's first emperor in 1806, Christophe declared himself king of northern Haiti, splitting the nation in two. Energetic if not widely beloved, he created a large system of nobility, built palaces, and instituted a feudal-style forced-labor system to revive the plantations. Ill and facing increasing opposition, he committed suicide in 1820. Daut's research answers peripheral questions (Christophe was almost certainly born in Grenada), but it remains uncertain whether he was born enslaved, and there are frustratingly few details of his service with French forces in the American Revolution, possibly as a drummer boy. Christophe's letters, reports, and proclamations, meanwhile, reveal few character flaws and a great deal of bombast. Scholarly insights into a grandiose historical character who remains an enigma.

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Starred review from December 1, 2024
In her biography of Henry Christophe (1767-1820), Haiti's only king, Yale professor Daut asserts that much of the information has come from those who hated or were ambivalent about him. Born to an enslaved mother, at 12 Christophe fought with the French in the American Revolution. In Saint-Domingue (Haiti's colonial name), he joined the rebels to fight the French, betrayed fellow rebels twice, then rejoined the liberation fight. After defeating the French, he and his rivals established separate governments and fought a long civil war, during which Christophe was crowned king of Haiti. Christophe's royal spectacles and imprisonment or execution of friends and allies led many to defect. Losing support and weakened by a stroke, Christophe died by suicide. He did bring education, health care, and economic stability to people traumatized by the brutality of French colonists and French soldiers sent to reconquer Haiti. Widening the lens, Daut explains how Haitian rulers' decisions, including accepting, at gunpoint, a French treaty recognizing Haiti's independence in exchange for steep payments to exiled French colonists, bankrupted the country. By clearly chronicling Christophe's complex story with detail and nuanced analysis, Daut portrays a crucial, if little-known leader and traces the deep roots of Haiti's ongoing struggles.

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December 1, 2024

Daut (French and African diaspora studies, Yale Univ.) pens a monumental biography of Henry Christophe, the only king of Haiti. Born in 1767, Christophe was both globally famous and influential and changed the fates of nations in complex ways. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from December 16, 2024
Historian Daut (Awakening the Ashes) offers a powerful biography of Henry Christophe (1767-1820), who fought for, defected from, and ultimately ruled over Haiti. She first sketches out Christophe’s sensational life story—born in Grenada, he went from a radical in search of a revolution (fighting briefly in the American one) to a commander of Haiti’s revolutionary forces who crowned himself king—then pokes holes in the myth. Often presented as a cautionary example of revolutionaries’ penchant for turning into dictators, Christophe instead emerges in Daut’s telling as a complex figure in a world gripped by radical transformation. The dramatic hook of her narrative is Christophe’s 1802 defection, when he was briefly wooed by Napoleon’s promise that Haiti would be spared from reenslavement if it rejoined the empire. Because of Christophe’s lapse (“a single bad decision, ricocheting like scattershot,” Daut calls it), France was able to pursue a “war of extermination,” committing atrocities on a scale “it might be hard for the modern reader to contemplate.” The violence, however, reunified the revolutionaries, hardening their resolve. Moreover, according to Daut, as much as Christophe’s kinghood was a betrayal of the revolution’s principles, it was also a safeguard of independence in an era of revanchist monarchy; by facing down the restored Bourbon monarch king-to-king, Christophe proved that Haitians were not “playthings.” The result is an expertly told and richly detailed reexamination of the revolutionary period.