Villanova University’s Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest hosted a panel entitled, “Haiti and the West: Engineering the Failure of Democracy” on Tuesday, March 28th. The event was hosted by Dr. Maghan Keita, the Director of Africana Studies at Villanova University. Keita introduced the three scholars who served as panelists for the discussion: Dr. Nathalie Pierre, Dr. Brandon Byrd and Dr. Marlene Daut. All three scholars’ expertise focuses on Haitian history in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and have all extensively researched Haiti’s Revolution and Global Diplomatic Relations. 

An assistant professor of history at Howard University, Pierre is writing her first book, entitled ‘The Vessel of Independence… Must Save Itself’: Haitian State Formation, 1757 – 1815. 

Pierre began her presentation by reading an excerpt from Effluent Engine, a short story by N. K. Jemison. The story focuses on a character named Jessaline who travels to New Orleans in an “attempt to commodify noxious waste produced by rum distillation.” Pierre explained how the story ignited thoughts about “Haiti’s role in constructing the West.”

“Slavery in the Americas is one of the engines that birthed modern capitalism,” Pierre said, as coffee, tobacco, sugar, and other “slave-produced cash crops fed the global market” and generated lots of wealth for European countries. 

Dr. Byrd, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University and author of The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti told the story of Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett, an African American man who became the United States Minister Resident to Haiti. As Bassett was strongly for Haitian sovereignty, he urged Frederick Douglass to do the same by persuading him to stay in Haiti and “stave off imperial forces.”

“What is the responsibility of the world as we think of Haiti in the past, present, and future?” Byrd asked the audience, especially those who were U.S. citizens.

“France and the U.S. were key players in the insurgency that [led to Haitian] civil war… it’s incumbent for us to take that seriously due to the role our nation has had in Haiti’s history,” Byrd said. 

Dr. Daut, a French and African diaspora studies professor at Yale University, was the next scholar to speak. In her presentation, she wanted to acknowledge the “intricate moments that show what Haiti’s leaders had to deal with,” such as dealing with diplomacy and how to achieve recognition from the other world powers. 

She explained Haiti’s historic two forms of war as “discursive war” and “physical war.”  Daut spoke about Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s empire around 1805. Dessalines was the Haitian Revolution’s leader and Haiti’s first leader as an independent nation in the early 19th century. 

Henri Christophe, one of Dessaline’s confidants, was strongly against the U.S.’s trade restrictions with Haiti and used surveillance tactics such as unsealing mail to learn what was happening in the U.S. and out of fear that France was planning another invasion. 

Eventually, the trade restrictions between the U.S. and Haiti were passed by Congress. The restrictions “did not end trade completely but led to scarcity on the island,” Daut said. Upset by the decision, Christophe wrote in a letter how there was “no flour at all and the sick in our hospitals are barely hanging on.” 

Daut told the audience how, at that point, France still occupied the eastern side of the island. 

Later this year, Daut’s book, Awakening the Ashes, described as an “intellectual history of Haiti, will be published.

Keita brought up the topic of Haitian restorative justice and the unwillingness of the U.S. to provide it, even in the modern day. 

Within the global community, “Haitians are framed as not being worthy of restorative justice,” Daut said. 

“In addition to Haiti not being forgiven because of its Blackness, Haiti is not forgiven because it refuses labor exploitation on a fundamental, philosophical level,” Pierre said.

She warned that if the global audience cannot confront this issue in systematic ways, it will become the “template for contemporary labor exploitation.”