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“It must be given its place amid the clamour of countless cries heard throughout the era of Atlantic Revolutions, for more than any other, [the cry of Vertières] embodies the extraordinary strength of a country that is neither a martyr nor cursed, but determined to survive adversity and internal tension.” Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec, The Cry of Vertières
This February, in celebration of Black History Month, the Canadian government has adopted the theme Canadians of African Descent: Going forward, guided by the past, a theme inspired by the United Nation’s International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). Both initiatives encourage us to further explore our shared history in order to honour the legacies and histories of Black Canadians, both present and past, so that we may promote and protect those of future generations. This endeavour to recover and confront our past histories is wonderfully accomplished in Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec’s new book, The Cry of Vertières, which explores an aspect of Haitian history that has often remained, at times purposefully, concealed.
In The Cry of Vertières: Liberation, Memory, and the Beginning of Haiti Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec investigates why the Battle of Vèrtieres, a battle headed by Napoleon’s troops in 1803 in an attempt to reinstate slavery in Haiti, does not appear in history textbooks and has seemingly been erased from French history. His exploration of this defining moment in the Age of Revolutions exposes and questions many of the prejudices and injustices of history that still impact our politics and society to this day.
Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec, professor of history at the Université de Sherbrooke, is the co-director of the digital project Marronnage in the Atlantic World: Sources and Life Trajectories. Jonathan Kaplansky is a literary translator. He lives in Montreal.
By Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec, Translated by Jonathan Kaplansky
This book tells the story of the Battle of Vertières, fought in 1803 between indigenous Haitian forces under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Dessalines and a French expeditionary army commanded by Napoleon. The battle marked the culmination of a thirteen-year revolutionary struggle to end slavery and the dawn of an independent Haiti. Yet despite its pivotal importance to the history of Haiti, France, and the Americas, the Battle of Vertières has been struck from the record.
The Cry of Vertières is the first book-length study of the battle, drawing from an array of sources including military correspondence, Haitian literature, art, and popular music. The event itself is recounted in vivid detail: it is a dramatic story of a volunteer army of former slaves, seeking the promises of freedom and citizenship held out by the revolution, defeating a colonial power determined to re-enslave them. The book also examines why the history of the battle has been suppressed in France – an act of erasure of a humiliating defeat – and why it remains fragile even in Haiti. Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec explains that today Vertières is both a key lieu de mémoire that embodies reconciliation, pride, and strength for the Haitian people, and a figure of speech exploited by politicians to reinforce their power.
Describing a decisive yet largely forgotten moment in the revolutionary history of the Americas, The Cry of Vertières makes an essential contribution to the complex subjects of race, memory, colonialism, and cultural nationalism in present-day France and Haiti.
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A survey of English and French black Canadian writing and its transnational connections from the eighteenth century to the present.
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