Haiti’s History and the Life and Times of Edwidge Danticat 1

Laurent Dubois: Well, Haiti's history really is intertwined from the very beginning with the history of the new world. Actually, Columbus, on his very first journey, stops in Haiti, in the northern part of the country, and it's colonized. The island of Hispaniola, which is what it's called by the Spanish, is colonized very early by the Spanish, eventually becomes split into two parts: one Spanish and one French colony. And then from there, its history becomes intertwined with the 18th and 19th century in very important ways. Haiti is the one country in the world founded out of a slave revolution starting in 1791. The enslaved people in Saint-Domingue, which was the French colony, rose up and created their own nation in 1804. And really all our visions of Haiti and the many visions of Haiti that circulate in the United States, I think, are very much rooted in that history and the fact that this country posed a sort of threat and a challenge to the American system of slavery. The first citizens of Haiti are really the group that overthrows slavery and creates a new order in its place. This is a population that 90% of them are enslaved. Actually, the majority of people in Haiti in 1804 were born in Africa, survived the middle passage, and have had an experience of slavery in the colony. There are also a small group of people who were free before the Revolution, most of them of African descent as well. So those are the new citizens who create this country, and they create this country with a reference to all kinds of different experiences to their African experience—not just an African past, but literally their own life experience—as well as to their experience within the plantation colony.