Abstract
This chapter examines the elaboration of an Afrocentric narrative of universal history in postrevolutionary political writings from the early Haitian monarchy of Henry Christophe, notably by Baron de Vastey. Specifically, the chapter interrogates the extent to which a particular conception of the Afro-Egyptian origins and subsequent history of universal civilization furnished Haitian intellectuals with a means by which to critique Western colonialism and the slave trade while staging African cultures as inside rather than outside universal history, thus buttressing their defense of Africanity and demands for diplomatic recognition. Even as Haitians sought to inscribe African-descended peoples as agents of civilization and in the process undermine the presumed superiority of Europeans, who are cast as erstwhile colonized savages, this gesture depended on substantial intellectual engagements with Enlightenment travel narratives by figures such as the Comte de Volney, as well as the anti-racist works of Abbé Grégoire. At the same time, the explicit appeals to English philanthropy that accompanied the narrative of Haitian civilization reflect ambiguities surrounding the place of Haiti in contemporary Atlantic world cultures. The chapter therefore interrogates the extent to which Haiti contested its position as unrecognized sovereign by intervening in Enlightenment discourses of universal history.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Here I am synthesizing the meaning of several uses of “worlding” in the work of Gayatri Spivak. For a helpful discussion of this terminology, see “Worlding,” in Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies, eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffen (London: Routledge, 1998), 241–242. Vociferous critiques of both historicism and universalism abound in postcolonial theory. On the problems raised by the production, in the West, of world, global, or non-European history in particular, and of normative epistemological premises in the discipline of history as a whole, see Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (London: Routledge, 1990); Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Arif Dirlik, “Is there History after Eurocentrism? Globalism, Postcolonialism, and the Disavowal of History,” Cultural Critique 42 (Spring 1999): 1–34. For a critique of postcolonial studies’ own blind spots relative to history that takes into account various positions in the debate, see Frederick Cooper, “Postcolonial Studies and the Study of History,” in Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, ed. Ania Loomba et al. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 401–422.
- 2.
On the appearance and evolution of meanings of the term “civilization” in eighteenth-century France and early modern Europe, see Anthony Pagden, “The ‘defense of civilization’ in Eighteenth-Century Social Theory,” History of the Human Sciences 1, no. 1 (May 1988): 33–45; Brett Bowden, The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); and Jean Starobinski, Le Remède dans le mal: Critique et légitimation de l’artifice à l’âge des Lumières (Paris: Gallimard, 1989). On the genres and forms of universal history in the early modern period, see Tamara Griggs, “Universal History from Counter-Reformation to Enlightenment,” Modern Intellectual History 4, no. 2 (2007): 219–247. For a philosophical and intellectual historical critique of universal history, see Benedetto Croce, Theory and History of Historiography, trans. Douglas Ainslie (London: Ballantine Press, 1921), 51–63.
- 3.
Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, “Discours sur les progrès successifs de l’Esprit humain,” in Œuvres de Turgot, vol. 2, ed. Gustave Schelle (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1914), 587–611; Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat Marquis de Condorcet, Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain, translated as The Sketch, in Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat Marquis de Condorcet, Political Writings, ed. Steven Lukes and Nadia Urbinati (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1–148; Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. Jonathan Wight (Petersfield: Harriman House, 2007). On the backlash against Rousseau, which predisposed some later European thinkers to justify certain inequalities as natural rather than created by society, see Pagden, “The ‘Defense of Civilization’.” For a discussion of conjectural histories celebrating commerce as the pinnacle of progress and civilization in the Scottish and European Enlightenments, see Bowden, The Empire of Civilization, and Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. 2, The Science of Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 330–367.
- 4.
This was especially the case in the early nineteenth century, following the successes of campaigns against slavery in Britain and the Haitian Revolution in the French context. See Pagden, “The ‘defense of civilization’.”
- 5.
“Universal history” is often used as a shorthand for Hegel’s own method of “philosophic” history in the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, a method in which, as the author explains, the history of the world is revealed to be a rational process, itself ascertained by Reason or “speculative cognition.” However, Hegel himself designates as “universal history” a different genre of history, categorized under the general method of “Reflective history,” in which the objective is to traverse long periods of time or gain a view of the entire world. See Georg Wilhem Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Kitchener, ON: Batoche Books, 2001), 17–18.
- 6.
Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 23–30.
- 7.
Hegel repeatedly describes the northern half of the temperate zone as the “true theater of History,” and privileges the “Old” world over the “New,” where Spirit is underdeveloped. Yet he considers that only the “German world,” by which he occasionally means the whole of Western Europe, has attained the fourth, “mature,” phase of World History, due to the resolution there of the antithesis between Church and State and Germany’s more robust recognition of the freedom of all humans. See Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 97, 121, 126–127. On the meanings of Hegel’s notion of “the Germanic World” in relation to later nationalisms, see Lydia Moland, Hegel on Political Identity: Patriotism, Nationality, and Cosmopolitanism (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2011), 113–115, and 150–160.
- 8.
Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), 116.
- 9.
Antonio Y. Vásquez-Arroyo, “Universal History Disavowed: On Critical Theory and Postcolonialism,” Postcolonial Studies 11, no. 4 (2008): 458.
- 10.
Ranajit Guha, History at the Limit of World History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 6, 29–30.
- 11.
On the rise of biological explanations for the diversity and inequality of societies in the context of debates about the superiority of European civilization, see Pagden, “The ‘defence of civilization,’”40–43.
- 12.
While some mystery has surrounded his proper name, research on Baron de Vastey has flourished in recent years with pathbreaking work by scholars such as Chris Bongie, Marlène Daut, Laurent Quevilly, and myself, exploring aspects of his biography, politics, and poetics. This chapter is, to my knowledge, the first study of his work in relation to the production of narratives of universal or world history.
- 13.
From Georg Wilhem Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction; Reason in History, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), quoted in Guha, History at the Limit of World History, 35.
- 14.
It is worth noting that Vastey was preceded by one Haitian writer in suggesting an ethnic affiliation between Egyptians and blacks, and that was Juste Chanlatte, who made a passing suggestion of the same in the first chapter of his Le Cri de la nature; ou, Hommage haytien au très vénérable abbé H. Grégoire …. (Au Cap: P. Roux, 1810). Subsequent nineteenth-century Haitian writers would develop even more extensively Vastey’s arguments, notably the anthropologist and Egyptologist Anténor Firmin, thus anticipating the twentieth-century Africanist discourse on ancient Egypt. See Joseph L. Celucien, “Anténor Firmin, the ‘Egyptian Question’ and the Afrocentric Imagination,” Journal of Pan African Studies 7, no. 2 (August 2014): 127–154.
- 15.
Born in 1781 in the north of Saint-Domingue to a French father from Normandy and a Creole woman of color, Vastey served under Dessalines and later Christophe as a private secretary and as tutor to Christophe’s son, Victor-Henry, the royal prince. On Vastey’s personal biography, see Chris Bongie, “Jean Jouis Vastey (1781–1820): A Biographical Sketch,” in The Colonial System Unveiled (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014), 11–27.
- 16.
On the circumstances surrounding the Dauxion Lavaysse expedition, see Chris Bongie, “Introduction,” 43–56; Jean Coradin, Histoire diplomatique d’Haïti, 1804–1843 (Port-au-Prince: Éditions des Antilles, 1988), 67–84; and Baron de Vastey, Essai sur les causes de la révolution et des guerres civiles d’Hayti (Sans Souci: Imprimerie royale, 1819), 204–224.
- 17.
Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismonde de Sismondi, De l’intérêt de la France à l’égard de la traite des nègres (Geneva and Paris: J. J. Paschoud, 1814). The “Réflexions” were appended to the third edition of the original work.
- 18.
F. Mazères, Lettres à Sismonde de Sismondi sur les nègres, la civilisation de l’Afrique, Christophe et le comte de Limonade (Paris: Renard, 1815), 19–22. Endnotes of this and all French-language sources cited in this article are my own unless otherwise indicated.
- 19.
Mazères, Lettre à Sismonde de Sismondi, 36. The Comte de Limonade had relayed the toast offered by Christophe to King George III of England in his 1811 account of Christophe’s coronation: Julien Prévost comte de Limonade, Relation des glorieux événements qui ont porté Leurs Majestés Royales sur le trône d’Hayti; suivi de l’histoire du couronnement et du sacre du roi Henry 1er, et de la reine Marie-Louise (Cap-Henry: P. Roux, 1811).
- 20.
On the progressive deployment of “the standard of civilization” as a criterion for exclusion of non-European states from the international community beginning in the early nineteenth century, see Bowden, The Empire of Civilization, 15–20, 103–128; and Antony Anghie, “Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century International Law,” Harvard International Law Journal 40, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 1–80.
- 21.
Baron de Vastey, Le système colonial dévoilé (Cap-Henry: P. Roux, 1814), 21.
- 22.
Baron de Vastey, Réflexions sur une lettre de Mazères, ex-Colon français, adressée à M.J.C.L. Sismonde de Sismondi, sur les Noirs et les Blancs, la civilisation de l’Afrique, le Royaume d’ Hayti (Cap-Henry: P. Roux, 1816), 35–36.
- 23.
Vastey, Réflexions, 15.
- 24.
On the pitfalls of comparative thinking, see Radhika V. Mongia, “Historicizing State Sovereignty: Inequality and the Form of Equivalence,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 2 (April 2007): 384–411.
- 25.
Vastey, Réflexions, 32.
- 26.
Constantin-François Chassebeuf comte de Volney, Voyage en Égypte et en Syrie [1799], ed. Jean Gaulmier (Paris: Mouton et Co., 1959), 62–63. On the history of European ideas about ancient Egypt, see Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. 1, The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785–1985 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987).
- 27.
Volney, Voyage, 63. Volney does not provide the title or direct quotations from the Blumenbach source, so I am quoting from John Frederick Blumenbach’s findings in his article, “Observations on Some Egyptian Mummies Opened in London,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 84 (January 1, 1794): 191.
- 28.
Volney, Voyage, 64. According to Abbé Grégoire, Volney was preceded in making the argument that “Negroes were our masters in science” by George Gregory in Essays Historical and Moral (London: J. Johnson, 1785). See [Abbé] Henri Grégoire, De la littérature des nègres; ou, Recherches sur leurs facultés intellectuelles, leurs qualités morales et leur littérature … (Paris: Maradan, 1808), 12.
- 29.
Grégoire’s first chapter is devoted largely to the defense of the idea of the ethnic commonality of “black” peoples throughout the African continent, as opposed to their division between different races, but his view is not devoid of ambiguities and contradiction.
- 30.
On the influence of politics, ideology, and race on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century debates about Egypt’s role in the origins of Greek civilization, see Bernal, Black Athena, 25–28, 201–300. Grégoire, De la littérature, 12–13.
- 31.
Condorcet made an effort to devalue Egyptian achievements in astronomy and geometry relative to later scientific breakthroughs in the Enlightenment, and insisted that Egyptians only used science to serve the interests of despotic power and superstition. See Condorcet, The Sketch, 24–25.
- 32.
Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt resulted in the establishment of the Institut d’Egypte, a team of Orientalist specialists in all disciplines, and a 23-volume Description de l’Egypte. On the growth of Egyptomania and Orientalist colonial fantasies spawned by these developments, see Patrice Bret, ed., L’Expédition d’Égypte, une entreprise des Lumières 1798–1801 (Condé-Sur-Noireau: Corlet Imprimeur, 1999); Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 76–91.
- 33.
Vastey, Réfléxions, 34.
- 34.
Vastey, Réflexions, 40.
- 35.
Vastey, Réflexions, 35.
- 36.
Vastey, Réflexions, 42. Vastey was preceded in his criticism of the savagery of Gauls and Druids by Voltaire, who provocatively opened his 1756 Essai sur les mœurs with an account of the savagery of pre-historic Europeans. See the preface to François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l’histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à Nos Jours, vol. 1 (Genève: Cramer, 1756). On perceptions of the Gauls’ savagery, see chapter “The Enlightenment and the Politics of Civilization: Self-Colonization, Catholicism, and Assimilationism in Eighteenth-Century France” in this volume.
- 37.
Vastey, Réflexions, 46.
- 38.
Vastey, Réflexions, 50–51.
- 39.
Vastey, Réflexions, 82.
- 40.
Vastey, Réflexions, 87.
- 41.
Accounts of the brutality of Henry Christophe abound in historical and contemporary sources, particularly in reference to coerced labor at his building projects and on the plantations. For an overview in English of his regime and its authoritarian tendencies, see Hubert Cole, Christophe: King of Haiti (New York: Viking, 1973).
References
Anghie, Antony. “Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century International Law,” Harvard International Law Journal 40, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 1–80.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffen, eds. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. London: Routledge, 1998.
Bernal, Martin. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. Vol. 1, The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785–1985. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987.
Blumenbach, John Frederick. “Observations on Some Egyptian Mummies Opened in London,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 84 (January 1, 1794): 177–195.
Bongie, Chris. “Jean Jouis Vastey (1781–1820): A Biographical Sketch.” In The Colonial System Unveiled, edited by Chris Bongie, 11–27. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014.
Bowden, Brett. The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Bret, Patrice, ed. L’Expédition d’Égypte, une entreprise des Lumières 1798–1801. Condé-Sur-Noireau: Corlet Imprimeur, 1999.
Buck-Morss, Susan. Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009.
Celucien, Joseph L. “Anténor Firmin, the ‘Egyptian Question’ and the Afrocentric Imagination,” Journal of Pan African Studies 7, no. 2 (August 2014): 127–154.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Chanlatte, Juste. Le Cri de la nature; ou, Hommage haytien au treès-veéneérable abbeé H. Greégoire, auteur d’un ouvrage nouveau, intituleé De la litteérature des Neègres; ou, Recherches sur leurs faculteés individuelles, leurs qualiteés morales et leur literature; suivies de notices sur la vie et les ouvrages des Neégres qui se sont distingueés dans les sciences, les lettres et les arts. Au Cap: P. Roux, 1810.
Cole, Hubert. Christophe: King of Haiti. New York: Viking, 1973.
Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat Marquis de. “Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain, translated as The Sketch.” In Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat Marquis de. Political Writings, edited by Steven Lukes and Nadia Urbinati, 1–148. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Cooper, Frederick. “Postcolonial Studies and the Study of History.” In Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, edited by Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton, and Jed Esty, 401–422. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
Coradin, Jean. Histoire diplomatique d’Haïti, 1804–1843. Port-au-Prince: Éditions des Antilles, 1988.
Croce, Benedetto. Theory and History of Historiography. Translated by Douglas Ainslie. London: Ballantine Press, 1921.
Dirlik, Arif. “Is there History after Eurocentrism? Globalism, Postcolonialism, and the Disavowal of History,” Cultural Critique 42, no. (Spring 1999): 1–34.
Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. Vol. 2, The Science of Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.
Grégoire, [Abbé] Henri. De la littérature des nègres; ou, Recherches sur leurs facultés intellectuelles, leurs qualités morales et leur littérature: Suivies de Notices sur la vie et les ouvrages des Nègres qui se sont distingués dans les Sciences, les Lettres et les Arts. Paris: Maradan, 1808.
Gregory, George. Essays Historical and Moral. London: J. Johnson, 1785.
Griggs, Tamara. “Universal History from Counter-Reformation to Enlightenment,” Modern Intellectual History 4, no. 2 (2007): 219–247.
Guha, Ranajit. History at the Limit of World History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
Hegel, Georg Wilhem Friedrich. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction; Reason in History. Translated by H.B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Hegel, Georg Wilhem Friedrich. The Philosophy of History. Translated by J. Sibree. Kitchener, ON: Batoche Books, 2001.
Limonade, Julien Prévost comte de. Relation des glorieux événements qui ont porté Leurs Majestés Royales sur le trône d’Hayti; suivi de l’histoire du couronnement et du sacre du roi Henry 1er, et de la reine Marie-Louise. Cap-Henry: P. Roux, 1811.
Mazères, F. Lettre à M. J.-C.-L. Sismonde de Sismondi, sur les nègres, la civilisation de l’Afrique, Christophe et le comte de Limonade. Paris: Renard, 1815.
Moland, Lydia. Hegel on Political Identity: Patriotism, Nationality, and Cosmopolitanism. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2011.
Mongia, Radhika V. “Historicizing State Sovereignty: Inequality and the Form of Equivalence,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 2 (April 2007): 384–411.
Pagden, Anthony. “The ‘Defense of Civilization’ in Eighteenth-Century Social Theory,” History of the Human Sciences 1, no. 1 (May 1988): 33–45.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978.
Sismondi, Jean-Charles-Léonard Sismonde de. De l’intérêt de la France à l’égard de la traite des nègres. Geneva: J. J. Paschoud, 1814.
Smith, Adam. The Wealth of Nations. Edited by Jonathan Wright. Petersfield: Harriman House, 2007.
Starobinski, Jean. Le remède dans le mal: Critique et légitimation de l’artifice à l’âge des Lumières. Paris: Gallimard, 1989.
Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques. “Discours sur les progrès successifs de l’Esprit humain.” In Oeuvres de Turgot, vol. 2, edited by Gustave Schelle, 587–611. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1914.
Vásquez-Arroyo, Antonio Y. “Universal History Disavowed: On Critical Theory and Postcolonialism,” Postcolonial Studies 11, no. 4 (2008): 451–473.
Vastey, Baron de. Le système colonial dévoilé. Cap-Henry: P. Roux, 1814.
Vastey, Baron de. Réflexions sur une lettre de Mazères, ex-Colon français, adressée à M.J.C.L. Sismonde de Sismondi, Sur les Noirs et les Blancs, la Civilisation de l’Afrique, le Royaume d’Hayti, etc. Cap-Henry: P. Roux, March 1816.
Vastey, Baron de. Essai sur les causes de la révolution et des guerres civiles d’Hayti. Sans Souci: Imprimerie royale, 1819.
Volney, Constantin-François Chassebeuf comte de. Voyage en Égypte et en Syrie [1799]. Edited by Jean Gaulmier. Paris: Mouton et Co, 1959.
Voltaire, François Marie Arouet de. Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l’histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à Nos Jours, Vol. 1. Genève: Cramer, 1756.
Young, Robert. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. London: Routledge, 1990.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Garraway, D.L. (2017). Black Athena in Haiti: Universal History, Colonization, and the African Origins of Civilization in Postrevolutionary Haitian Writing. In: Tricoire, D. (eds) Enlightened Colonialism. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54280-5_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54280-5_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-54279-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-54280-5
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)