Avengers of the New World

Avengers of the New World is a 2004 historiography by Laurent Dubois. In it, Laurent traces the development of the Haitian Revolution, which began in 1791 as the island's slaves rose up in revolt against their masters and sought independence. Thirteen years and 100,000 casualties later, Haiti (formerly known as Saint-Domingue) declared independence from France – which, as Dubois details, kicked off a series of events leading to the Louisiana Purchase, the growth of the sugar economy in Cuba, and a complete reshaping of the political landscape in the Caribbean. Indeed, Haiti's independence stabbed at the heart of an inhumane economic system that spread across several continents, uniting the Old and New Worlds. Dubois grounds his historiography in the context of the world economy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in a way that foregrounds the global significance of one island's revolution.

Avengers of the New World covers many aspects of the slow build to the revolution in Haiti. Dubois, for instance, asserts that understanding Haiti's movement towards independence requires rethinking the racial terms generally used in discussions of slavery. Dubois illustrates Haiti was not merely a population of black slaves and white slave owners, delineating several other categories that were significant at the time: whites without land or slaves, blacks from Africa, unenslaved blacks (known as “freed coloreds”), etc. Understanding the various and changing relationships between these groups, Dubois argues, is essential for preventing the imposition of modern presumptions upon the past.

As an example of this dynamic, Dubois offers that when France's National Assembly declared, “men are born and remain equal in rights,” Caribbean slave owners were terrified. Afraid that the slaves of Haiti would rebel, they demanded in 1790 that letters from the mainland addressed to “mulattoes or slaves” be delivered to the municipality office instead. They hoped that by doing this they would prevent Haitian slaves from learning about the declaration and subsequently demanding rights. However, freed coloreds were the first to agitate for the rights of full citizenship – for themselves, not all blacks. Many freed coloreds were tolerant of the practice of slavery. This example demonstrates how complicated and nuanced racial issues were in Haiti at the time.

Once slaves started rebelling, however, they gained ground quickly. Dubois holds that this was because Haitian slaves, unlike the slaves in many other French holdings, had significant prior battle experience from civil wars they had experienced in Africa. This made them a formidable fighting force.

Then in 1793, things became more complicated. The Spanish and British Empires had declared war on France, adding two new players to the ongoing war in Haiti. With the execution of Louis XVI, many slaves joined the French Republic. Slave owners, however, not wanting to lose their captive workforces, asked the British to take control of Haiti to preserve the slavery system. Spain, meanwhile, sought out former slaves as well, hoping to establish a power base in Haiti with which to retake control of a colony that, a century earlier, had been theirs. This combination of both internal and external pressures threatened to sunder the island, creating an international incident.

There was good reason that so many European powers cast greedy eyes upon Haiti. Haiti at this time was the world's top producer of two extremely important crops: coffee and sugar. In fact, Haiti exported as much sugar as Cuba, Jamaica, and Brazil together. It also, by itself, produced roughly half the world's coffee. The Caribbean's economic lynchpin, it was a source of great wealth.

In the final chapters of the book, Dubois describes how the Haitian forces withstood the assault of 80,000 of Napoleon Bonaparte's troops. Napoleon had sent the troops – fifty ships' worth – from mainland France to tamp down the uprising. Miraculously, the Haitians rebuffed his forces, handing Napoleon one of his most stinging defeats – one that would rankle him until his dying day. Napoleon's General Leclerc was convinced that the only way the plantation island could be salvaged was to murder every single adult person of color, building again from scratch, entirely with Africans who had never known what it felt like to have “won their freedom in the New World.”

Leclerc's ominous pronouncement never came to pass, and Haiti became independent in 1804. Dubois is careful to note that this was not the end of Haiti's problems, and in his epilogue, “Out of the Ashes,” he describes how Haiti continued to suffer from various forms of turmoil. Nonetheless, Haiti was and continues to be an inspiration; Dubois's Avengers of the New World situates Haiti's history within the larger history of human rights that has tended to ignore its importance in favor of Western and European struggles (such as the French Revolution).