Book Description
While much has been written about the antebellum African American interest in emigration to Africa, the equally significant interest in Haitian emigration has been largely overlooked. Although free blacks spurned attempts by the American Colonization Society to "return" them to Africa, during the 1820s, and again during the 1850s and early 1860s, as conditions for African Americans became ever more precarious, thousands of blacks left the U.S. for Haiti searching for civic freedom and economic opportunity in the world's first independent black republic. Such prospects caught the attention of not only the African American leadership but of the black populace as well. In discussing the growing interest in Haitian emigration, Dixon provides ongoing discussions concerning black nationalism as an ideology. While Haiti was a potent example of the possibility of black liberation, for black leaders such as James T. Holly, the island republic had not reached its true potential and was, therefore, an imperfect example of black nationalism. By carrying Christian civilization to Haiti, these African Americans hoped to transform it into an exemplar of black nationhood. There was, as Dixon argues, a clearly emerging ideology of black nationalism during the nineteenth century. However, the main principles of that ideology were marked by definite condescension toward non-American blacks that reflected many of the racial values of white America. Anticipating material comfort and political equality in their adopted nation, many emigrants instead encountered disease and suffering. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Best Book on the Topic
Chris Dixon has written the best scholarly book yet regarding the U.S. "Civil War" emigration to Haiti. It is not only exhaustive, but deeply analytical. His purpose was to demonstrate how this emigration and the ideas that spurred it reveal to us now the different intellectual and social dynamics of African American nationalisms. A book of serious scholarship, the main concern is African American (U.S. blacks) rather than Haiti. Yet, this book is a "must" for all interested in nineteenth century nationalisms, African American, and Haitian History. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Journal of African American History, published by Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc. on January 1, 2002. The length of the article is 7358 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The response of the African American press to the United States occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934.
Author: Henry Lewis Suggs
Publication: The Journal of African American History (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2002
Publisher: Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc.
Page: 70(13)

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Antioch Review, published by Antioch Review, Inc. on June 22, 1996. The length of the article is 650 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Haiti, History, and the Gods.(Brief Article)
Author: Erika Bourguignon
Publication: The Antioch Review (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 1996
Publisher: Antioch Review, Inc.
Volume: v54Issue: n3Page: p362(2)

Article Type: Book Review, Brief Article

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Social History, published by Thomson Gale on September 22, 2007. The length of the article is 12113 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Complexities of imagining Haiti: a study of national constitutions, 1801-1807.(SECTION II RACE AND NATION)
Author: Julia Gaffield
Publication: Journal of Social History (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 41Issue: 1Page: 81(23)

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Church History, published by American Society of Church History on March 1, 2001. The length of the article is 971 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Our Lady of Class Struggle: The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Haiti.
Author: Karen McCarthy Brown
Publication: Church History (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2001
Publisher: American Society of Church History
Volume: 70Issue: 1Page: 179

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Customer Reviews (2)

Transition from Authoritarianism to People Power, ADifficult Process
Observers of Haiti's political, social and economic development will be brought to reality by Dr. Fatton's work.

"The process of democratization that has marked the modern history of Haiti.... suggest that the transition from authoritarianism to populism was a function of the ascendancy of the civil society and, in particular, popular civil society," says Fatton (pp. 1-2).

He argues that the classical model adopted for the democratization of Haiti has many inherent weaknesses.

While it may have removed military authoritarianism, it has retained the institutionalized structures of dictatorship, legacies of the State, which are deeply entrenched in the society.

Consequently, the Country today, has an unconsolidated, dysfunctional democracy which is characterized by brutality, and the treachery of the bourgeoisie who monopolizes state power and wealth.

This is what Fatton deems to be a "Predatory democracy."

Dr. Fatton is of Haitian ancestry or Haitian by birth.He appears to write not only for the Haitian people but also as one of them.

He is a brilliant intellectual and scholar, not a revolutionary like "Old"Toussaint, Dessalines or Regaud, the lesser.

However, his predictive skills as a political scientist are brilliant.

I do not share all of Dr. Fatton's views on Aristide, bearing in mind the historical difficulties facing that Country and the obvious geo-political problems of that region.

The work is fairly easy to read. I highly recommend it to students and general readers.

See also:

Roots of Haitian Despotism

In-Dependence from Bondage: Claude McKay and Michael Manley: Defying the Ideological Clash and Policy Gaps in African Diaspora Relations

The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution

A well researched look at modern politics in Haiti
This book presents a very thorough explanation of the political situation in Haiti since the fall of the Duvaliers. Because it was published in 2002 it obviously does not discuss the most recent events in Haiti, but the book is a very useful tool in understanding what is going on in that country now. The author actually predicted the events of Jan-Feb 2004 as a possibility of what could happen in that country. I give it a 4-star rating because the language is somewhat dense; the book is not for the casual reader. ... Read more

Book Description
During two centuries of independence from colonial rule, Haiti has developed into a society quite distinct from those found in the rest of the region. Hollywood-derived images of black magic and Graham Greene-inspired conceptions of a "nightmare republic" do scant justice to the reality of life for those who make up the third largest population in the Caribbean. How did the slaves of France's most prosperous colony defeat the armies of Napoleon, Spain, and Britain? Why did the U.S. occupation of 1915-34 fail to establish a plantation economy in Haiti? Haiti in Focus is an authoritative and up-to-date guide to this fascinating country. The guide explores the land, history and politics, economy, society and people, culture and environment, and includes tips on where to go and what to see. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

great info on Haiti
really comprehensive view of politics and life in haiti. useful tips for the traveler to Haiti including where to buy condoms!

Helpful snapshot of Haiti
This book is helping me to understand the situation of Haiti in historical context.Its information, format and pictures strike me as slightly out of date but it certainly will give you a background even if not covering the last few years.Since there aren't a lot of books like this one about Haiti I would recommend this for anyone who wants to know more about it but does not want to read a long in-depth tome.

Right on focus!
You'll be fascinated, impressed, depressed, and delighted with Arthur's succinct introduction to the people, culture, and history of a small nation so very close to U.S. shores and U.S. history, yet so very far from our thoughts. From the joyful cover image to photos of brightly-painted buses to the clear maps and tips for travelers, Arthur delivers more than promised--as does Haiti herself. You'll come back for more, once you taste this brief introduction to the famed Hotel Oloffson, tap-taps and Vodou, rara and compa and rasin music, Sweet Micky & Boukman Eksperyans & Tabou Combo, the "little church" and "the flood," peasant movements and death squads, creole pigs and deforestation, poverty and structural adjustment, Toussaint Louverture & the slave revolution, the Duvalier dictatorship and the Tonton Macoutes, poetry and paintings. This book came just in time to enlighten & amaze students in my class on the prize-winning works of Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat. We all give this little book a two-thumbs-up!

Up-to-the-minute Information for Scholars and the Curious
Sometimes it's hard to be an American, and to look out at what we've done to the rest of the world.

Haiti will soon be celebrating its bicentennial of independence.As the second-oldest nation in the Western Hemisphere and the black nation with the longest uninterrupted history, it should by rights be rich, educated, forward thinking, and a bright light for the rest of the world.However, imperialist forces from abroad, including France, Britain, and most recently the United States of America, have colored its two centuries.Its people have been harangued by Castro's Cuba, Trujillo's Dominican Republic, Bush and Clinton's USA, and even the wildly corrupt Duvalier administration.Its land is stripped, its resources have been plundered, its cities are grossly overpopulated, and its seas are silted.And yet, somehow, Haiti survives.

In the wake of the 1991 coup that unseated President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the 1994 US-led UN invasion that restored him to power, much news was made.Haiti was front-page headliner material nearly every day, a prestigious international hot spot.Names were made and broken in political spheres around the Haiti issue.Debate ran high.And then everything just disappeared.Haiti merited a two-paragraph mention on page twelve if the paper needed filler, and then only in large papers that could dedicate themselves to foreign affairs.For most of us, even those of us who maintained our religious interest in the nation, an entire nation may just as well have dropped off the face of the earth.

British activist Charles Arthur, whose other works on Haiti include "A Haitian Anthology: Libète," identifies himself as a "Solidarity Activist."His latest book, "Haiti in Focus," is subtitled "A Guide to the People, Politics, and Culture," and it lives up to that description admirably.For those interested, the available information is brought up to date through the middle of 2001.Arthur details the current political struggles surrounding the election of Aristide to another term in office; he lets us know about the struggle between Protestant missionaries and vodou adherents for control of the site at which the Haitian Revolution began; and he even gives us pointers on how to tour the country.

This slim, easy-to-read book is deceptively clear.It focuses on what Haiti is today, and on the forces that have made it so.Arthur posits no blame for what's happened to the country; yet observant reading serves to point out several recurrent patterns.Currently, the United States has been trying to micromanage the Haitian economy to the advantage of America, and indeed has been using the Monroe Doctrine as an excuse to do so for some time.This has been happening in force through the last century, though it can be traced overtly to 1862, when the US recognized the country's sovereignty, and more covertly back to Haitian independence, when the US refused to recognize a free black nation.

America is not alone in this treatment, however.Britain immediately recognized Haiti's independence, but apparently only for political advantage and access to the profitable plantations.When the plantation economy went the way of all flesh, Britain appears to have just walked away.France held recognition for ransom, offering it only when Haiti paid massive war indemnities that left the country in financial ruin from which it hasn't fully recovered.The United Nations and the Organization of American States have consistently tried to co-opt Haiti's foreign policy and dictate domestic positions, and the European Union, primarily under pressure from France, is now trying to horn in on Haitian self-determination.As Arthur explains, Haiti remains a small force, battered on all sides by winds it cannot satisfactorily resist.

The country is also riven internally.Though all involved want the country to flourish and thrive, wildly dissimilar ideas persist as to what would make this happen.Christian missionaries, primarily Catholic and Evangelical Protestant, have brought their faith to the country, but even Jesus Himself hasn't preserved the country.Aristide and his coalition have concrete ideas for how to use the government to resolve problems, but his plans are controversial and have stirred up strong negative feelings.Education is usually severely inadequate because of the lack of skilled teachers, disagreements over the importance of French, and the high cost of schooling in a poor nation.Meanwhile, poverty is swelling, illiteracy remains rampant, and nothing is being done about it.

However, in Arthur's estimation, Haiti remains a culturally vibrant land, a noble nation resisting the homogeneity of Western-styled "globalization."The native art, music, and religion of the land are the most African in the Western Hemisphere, and are a celebration of life in the face of poverty.A full-color photo spread in the middle of the book shows the beauty that accrues to everything in the country-the way a tap-tap driver will paint rainbows on the side of his vehicle; the way rara musicians will dance down the street during a festival.Though this is a country damaged and struggling, Arthur makes plain, this is not a country to give up on, not a country to permit to die.

This book is detailed enough to appeal to those intimately interested in Haiti, either those who appreciate the whole nation or those interested in one or two aspects.At the same time, it's clear enough in style and structure to reach out to readers who are being newly introduced to Haiti, and to those who know only the horror stories that recur in motion pictures and the news.Though it will date quickly, for the moment it stands as a strong primer for the condition that is Haiti and a land working for healing in a world that only wants to use it as a tool. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Fascinating and provocative
Clinton in Haiti offers a much-needed appraisal of the 1994 US invasion of Haiti and of Haiti's recent history. Voodoo, cocaine, betrayal, war, CIA, and Clinton: history rarely gets more interesting than this!
JAG

Contemporary history at its best
International, contemporary history at its best, Girard offers a thought-provoking account of the 1994 invasion of Haiti. This is a book of fundamental importance to the history of Haiti and US-Latin American relations. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Review by Jean Michel Daudier
I like this book is well documented with pictures. Good to have if you are interested in the history of Haitian music.

Essential
A sweeping and incisive study of the political implications of Haitian popular music, Gage Averill's "A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti," lays bare for readers the country's proud tradition of songs both as means to party and protest. My only regret is that the book was published before it could take into the critical role music played in the 2000 until present era.

exceptionally rich
An excellent overview of Haitian popular music in the last century.Strong emphasis on lyrics, rather sparse on music.Attempts to weave ethnographic moments into a sweeping history, but tends to give in to anencyclopedia impulse, leaving the reader slogging tree after tree too muchwithout a view of the forest or knowledge of the shape of the leaves.Buttowers above everything else ever written attempting to give a broad viewof Haitian music, an eye(ear)-opener for salsa fans and others who haven'thad the chance to learn about the penetrating beauty of Haitian musicalculture. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Dollars & Sense, published by Economic Affairs Bureau on November 1, 2001. The length of the article is 2812 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Haiti in 2001: Political Deadlock, Economic Crisis: Though factional strife, economic hardship, and discouragement have driven away members, Haiti's popular organizations doggedly continue with hundreds of initiatives large and small.(Statistical Data Included)
Author: Marie Kennedy
Publication: Dollars & Sense (Newsletter)
Date: November 1, 2001
Publisher: Economic Affairs Bureau
Page: 14(5)

Article Type: Statistical Data Included

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Customer Reviews (7)

French Review
"For anyone seriously interested in Haiti, it is an indispensable work. it belongs not only in one's school/college/university library, but in one's personal collection as well." -French Review

Review from the Journal of Haitian Studies
Reviewed by Brian Concannon Jr., Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Libète is a wide-ranging and compelling anthology of writing on Haiti.As the title suggests, the Haitian people's struggle for freedom from oppression is the focus, but the editors manage to weave a lot more than history and politics into the work.The selections are interesting and concise, and well organized into chapters with equally concise introductions.Libète is invaluable as an introduction to Haiti, but also will fill in knowledge gaps for most Haiti veterans, and is a handy reference on the bookshelf.

The book's breadth is striking: 187 selections, mostly excerpts, are grouped into ten chapters, including history, politics, rural and urban life, refugees, culture and literature. The selections are well chosen, and represent much of the best that has been written about Haiti. Selections date from the end of the 15th century to the end of the 20th; their authors hail from Haiti, Europe, North America and the Caribbean. The selections include primary and secondary non-fiction, as well as novels, poetry and photographs. The writers were (and are) participants, chroniclers, anthropologists, scholars and artists.

Libète's brevity is equally impressive: all that is crammed into 352 pages. Each selection can be read in a few spare minutes, each chapter in an hour or two (I first read it over a month of breakfasts). The price of this breadth and brevity is depth: although the editing is skillful, no skill can distill a book adequately into a page or two, especially a great one, nor adequately treat a complex subject in two-dozen pages. In this sense, Libète is not an end in itself, but a starting point. The reader should keep this limitation in mind, and use the book as inspiration and guide to further reading.

Each chapter begins with a short introduction by the editors, which places the selections in context and fills in some of the gaps between them. Libète ends with a comprehensive index and citations for all included material.It does not, unfortunately, contain a bibliography discussing the useful material that did not make the final cut.

Although the various authors represent a diversity of perspectives, Libète is assembled consciously from an activist point of view. The principal editor is the coordinator of the London-based Haiti Support Group, and a long-time supporter of Haiti's democratic transition.The book reflects an activist's adoption of Haiti's poor majority as the starting point for analysis, as well as an emphasis on the adverse impacts of a host of "isms" - colonialism, imperialism, racism and capitalism - on Haitians' struggle for freedom, especially freedom from poverty.

About half of Libète chronicles the series of oppressions that have kept Haiti's majority vulnerable to exploitation.They include outsiders, from Columbus' explorers to the French slave-holders, the occupying U.S. Marines, and the current enforcers of neo-liberal economic policy.They also include home-grown oppression - brutal political and military potentates, and the economic elites they served. The book shows how the poor in Haiti were kept in their place with force, including slavery, war and civilian massacres, but also with law, politics, diplomacy, land tenure, social structures, the economy and the education system.

Libète does not, however, treat Haiti and Haitians as mere objects of these large forces. Its other half chronicles the courage, creativity, resourcefulness and persistence of Haitians as they wage their perpetual uphill battle for freedom. This resistance uses brute force when it has to, but also art, literature, song, politics, social organization, work and even botany where it can. Although it often seems to be losing the war, Libète points out the many areas where the struggle has carved out space for freedom to express, to create, to vote and to live.The book highlights Haitians' agency by featuring Haitian voices, in works of fiction, newspaper articles, interviews and essays, many of them for the first time in English.

Libète does not speak directly to some of the current debates raging about Haiti, but that may be one of its strengths. By focusing on the issues that are important over the long-term, it provides an example of looking past the petty internecine battles that have plagued Haitians' struggle for freedom, to the more vital long-term work to be done. The long view also extends the book's shelf life: by not depending on today's events, the selections, and the editors' analyses ensure their relevance for a long time to come (sadly, until "Libète" is achieved).

Libète is an excellent introduction to Haiti, possibly the best in English.A student, visitor or solidarity activist who had read nothing else on Haiti would have a pretty good idea of what was going on in a variety of fields.It isequally useful for veterans: it points out the gaps that we all have in our knowledge, and shows where we can go to fill these gaps.It is also a good reference for the specialist's shelf, for quick access to subjects outside one's expertise.

Echo...echo... to what has already been expressed.
This book truly is the very best introduction to Haïti I can possibly think of.If you want to learn about Haïti, start here.Each entry is short, carefully chosen, and typically riveting.SIX STARS on this work, and my thanks to Arthur and Dash for putting it together.

Echo...echo... to what has already been expressed.
This book truly is the very best introduction to Haiti I can possibly think of.If you want to learn about Haiti, start here.Each entry is short, carefully chosen, and typicaly riveting.SIX STARS on this work, and my thanks to Arthur and Dash.

If you read one book on Haiti....
"Libete" is a comprehensive and concise anthology of writings on a wide spectrum of topics, including the history, religion, art, and politics of the country.It is a good introduction for those new to Haiti, and shows those wanting to deepen their understanding where to look. ... Read more