The Unfinished Revolution : Haiti, Black Sovereignty and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World

Unfinished Revolution is the first study to gather nineteenth-century representations and performances of Haitian sovereignty in the Atlantic world. In assembling this undiscovered archive of black power, this book offers compelling evidence of the ways that sovereignty and blackness intersect with unstable processes of modernity to produce an articulation of black authority always, already under threat for eradication or ridicule. Undeterred, nineteenth-century Haitian leaders mounted a century's-long battle to situate Haiti at the centre of the Atlantic world. An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. The Unfinished Revolution: Haiti, Black Sovereignty and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World addresses post-revolutionary (and contemporary) sovereignty in Haiti. Working through an archive of black politics, The Unfinished Revolution examines the charged upheaval that Haiti's arrival caused in the Atlantic world. Salt revisits this site of contestation in order to critically reflect on the ways that brokers from Haiti and across the Atlantic responded to the political existence of a nation forged from the fires of revolution and consistently racialized as black by other nation-states. These sovereign bodies - who Salt argues took their political cues regarding who can be sovereign from the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) - struggled to accept the existence of the independent nation-state of Haiti. Examining Haiti through the lens of blackness and sovereignty, Salt produces an original and compelling account of the challenges and constraints Haiti has encountered in fighting for its continued political existence. Assembling a wide range of materials - from photographs, newspaper articles, letters, diplomatic documents, essays and objects - Salt produces a cogent and nuanced book that moves beyond the revolutionary period of Haiti's history in order to argue that Haiti remains in the midst of an unfinished revolution over its sovereignty. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 5 List of Figures......Page 7 Acknowledgements......Page 9 Introduction: Sovereignty and Power......Page 13 1: Games of Sovereignty and Opportunity......Page 71 2: Selling Citizenship, Recognising Blood, Stabilising Sovereignty......Page 95 3: Burlesquing Empire: Performing Black Sovereignty on the World Stage......Page 125 4: Welcome to the New World Order: Haiti and Black Sovereignty at the Turn of the Century......Page 165 5: Sovereignty under Siege? Contemporary Performances of Black Sovereignty......Page 203 Bibliography......Page 225 Index......Page 249