The field of Haitian history has evolved in recent years; research has expanded not only temporally, moving beyond the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804 and further into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also paradigmatically due to the contributions of decolonial thought from Caribbean and specifically Haitian scholars such as sociologist Jean Casimir. Translated by historian Laurent Dubois, The Haitians: A Decolonial History represents Casimir's first full monograph published for an English-speaking audience. Despite its title, The Haitians can be thought of less as a straightforward account of Haitian history, but more as a treatise that demystifies the socio-economic politics that motivate the ways Haitian history has been written – one that, in the tradition of Michel-Rolph Trouillot's Silencing the Past (Beacon Press, 2015), will surely influence Haitian studies and decolonial thought more broadly. While many histories of Haiti and the Haitian Revolution centre their analyses on heroes of the state and celebrate their accomplishments, Casimir derides several political leaders and members of the intellectual elite for replicating colonial structures in government and in knowledge production during the nineteenth century, thus alienating the masses of formerly enslaved people from history and from taking a central role in the state.
The Haitians is a theoretical and methodological exercise: it models and urges academics to demonstrate solidarity with subjugated people whose perspective has been excluded from history, and who themselves have been excluded from formal societal structures. Casimir unapologetically aims to use scholarship to advance the cause and collective agency of the sovereign people of Haiti, rather than using the case study of formerly colonised populations to singularly advance intellectual discourse. His historical sociology does not apply mainstream sociological ideas to the case of Haiti, but rather uses local social relations to develop a theory of colonised and formerly colonised people within their particular context. Casimir eschews historical archives of the Haitian Revolution, which are strongly informed by colonial-era geopolitics – while some archival records on the early nineteenth century do reside in Haiti, the vast majority of these materials are housed in the libraries of imperial powers such as France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, etc. – meaning everyday Haitian people typically do not have access to primary sources about their nation's history. Casimir instead exposes the limits of historical archives by grounding definitions of the Haitian Revolution within the lived experiences of the masses of Haitian peoples.
Casimir asserts subjective non-disciplinarity as an essential goal of a decolonial approach, starting from his personal experiences and using the grammar and idioms of the Haitian people to explicate their history, experiences and voices for a larger audience. He argues that, though missing from colonial archives, decolonial thought and action were always evident among the rebellious people who were present and knew who they were, but whose intentions and origins were concealed by colonial language, thinking and power structures. Therefore, Casimir utilises language by generating a grammar of terms from within the Haitian lingua franca to subvert the colonial gaze and place primacy on the perspectives of everyday Haitian people. He uses the concept of the ‘sufferer’ to identify the masses of Haiti's formerly enslaved population, only a generation from abolition, and to redefine their power and to develop a theory of their reality, reading against and even underneath the grain. Casimir refers to peasants as sufferers in alignment with how Haitians, whose lives are characterised by precarity, identify themselves and conceptualise their attempts to make the best life possible despite conditions that they had little to do with and are largely unable to change. The enslaved, African-born ‘bossale’ was the prototype for the sufferer, who occupied the bottom of the socio-economic and cultural hierarchy of colonial society and whose misfortunes similarly were not of their own creation. Both the bossales and sufferers were subject to colonial violence, and were far removed from having recognised links to the state. Alternatively, both the bossales and the sufferers defined themselves as those who used, manipulated or avoided the system through marronage and other acts of subversion without allowing themselves to be altered or manipulated by it. Therefore, Casimir defines the Haitian Revolution not as the ‘most successful slave revolt’, but rather as the ‘destruction of the slave system through the creation of a national community’ (p. 4) – emphasising that this new community was the Haitian people, not the states that formed in the aftermath of independence, such as Dessalines’ empire, Christophe's monarchy or Petion's republic. These Haitian elite figures are cast as the Ginen Haitians, who weaponised their proximity to and shared identity with the masses to manipulate them into defending the elite's interests. The victory of the sovereign people therefore was not the ‘independent Black nation of Haiti’, but their ability to survive and thrive in the conditions of colonial slavery without interference or help from the state. This is the central distinction Casimir draws between the Haitian people and the state, grounded in an analysis of class and power that is continually revisited in The Haitians.
Casimir's perspective on studying the people of Haiti remains close to local history in order to understand how Haitians, and not the French, developed, focusing on how they maintained their social formations in spite of the state. Extended family units, homogeneous villages and regions, rural markets and garden towns, the Kreyol language and the religion of Vodou were encased within the lakou system and formed the basis of the Haitian people's sovereignty in the nineteenth century. Further, Casimir theorises the role of women, their centrality in reproduction, and the family as the driving agents of these life-sustaining institutions. Family was the antithesis of the slave trade, which was predicated on extracting Africans from their homelands, kith and kin; therefore, family life was targeted by the colonial state. Women and family were ancillary to the plantation system because Haiti's population growth came from the slave-trade market, which meant that opposing the logic of the enslavement system was the only way natural reproduction could flourish. Reproduction was an expression of the collective will to live and to reclaim themselves from being considered commodities and property; it affirmed people's humanity and personhood, allowing them to create institutions, sovereignty and self-expression.
The Haitians is a book that challenges readers to embrace the epistemological and ontological realities of any subject of study, especially oppressed peoples. It is not an introductory text to Haitian history, and much of its discussion assumes an existing knowledge about Haiti, the Haitian Revolution, colonial and slave regimes in the Americas, and Caribbean politics; therefore, experts in these areas will find it exceptionally useful. But perhaps more importantly, The Haitians demonstrates the importance of human integrity, particularly in the wake of upheaval, violence and death. It also highlights how to see the collective will of a people and amplify it without romanticising governance structures that too often ignore the plight of the people they claim to serve. The book frequently circles back to the same point about the dangers of reproducing the state rather than reproducing dignity and sovereignty among population masses. The Haitians’ decolonial message is likely to resonate with scholars globally and in disciplines beyond history, especially as social scientists and humanities scholars continue to reckon with the weight of the Haitian Revolution in our modern world and its anti-slavery, anti-colonial and anti-racist principles.
