Personal Narratives of Colonial Tension in the Haitian Revolution

In this episode, Dr. Popkin discusses his riveting book "Facing Racial Revolution: Eyewitness Accounts of the Haitian Insurrection."

We discussed the underdeveloped state of French scholarship on the Haitian Revolution, the controversial accounts of white colonial survivors, and the critical role of literacy and correspondence in maintaining the slave regime.

The Haitian revolution represented the scales of power tipping in an unexpected direction. For the first time in Atlantic history, blacks wielded control over the lives of whites, giving rise to the then unheard of publication of white captivity narratives.