The Early Haitian State and the Question of Political Legitimacy

This book explores the different ways in which the early Haitian state was represented in print culture in America and Britain in the early nineteenth century. This study demonstrates that American and British arguments about the most effective forms of governance and political leadership impacted how Haiti's early leaders were presented to transatlantic audiences. From the end of the Haitian Revolution and the moment that Haitian independence was declared in 1804, conservatives and radical thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic used Haiti and its early leaders as central frames of references in discussions of political legitimacy. Against the backdrop of a vibrant and volatile age of revolutions, the different forms of governance adopted by Jean Jacques Dessalines, Henry Christophe and Jean Pierre Boyer were used by writers, playwrights and caricaturists to either support or call into question the legitimacy of America's and Britain's own forms of government.

Auteur

James Forde received his PhD from Griffith University, Australia, in 2017, where he has also taught a range of history subjects. His research interests include transatlantic print culture in the early nineteenth century, and the impact of revolutionary movements on American and British political thought.

Contenu
Introduction
1 Emperor Dessalines and Post-Revolutionary Dynastic Sovereignty2 President Christophe and Commercial Legitimacy3 King Christophe and the Question of Monarchical Legitimacy4 The Death of a New World Monarch: Regicidal Imaginings in Transatlantic Republican Thought5 Boyer and the Promise or Threat of Republican Governance Conclusion