The Haitians

“Asks us to reorient our perspectives away from the colonizers and the state in Haiti and instead to look to the Haitian people to evaluate the 'success' of the Haitian Revolution. . . . By centering the worldview of the rural population in the nineteenth century—the 'True Haitians'—Casimir shows us the possibilities of alternative forms of freedom that reject the legacies of colonialism and slavery.”—Age of Revolutions

“Reinterprets Haiti’s postcolonial history to resurface ways of being, knowing, and existing outside of dominant Western conceptual categories. . . . Anglophone readers are now able to access a capacious and new approach to Haitian—and global—history, written by a leading Haitian scholar.”—Public Books

“[Casimir] re-theorizes slavery in Haiti by asking how Africans—living at the apex of European imperialism—were able to instigate a successful revolution and sustain a sovereign state. . . . He provides a sweeping historical narrative. . . . Highly recommended.”—CHOICE

“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.”—Journal of Latin American Studies

“A landmark in the history of colonialism, slavery, and emancipation in the Atlantic World. . . . Nearly every sentence of this book carries enough analytical weight to support a monograph of its own.”—Journal of Early American History

“Prominent Haitian diplomat and writer Jean Casimir offers students and scholars of the Caribbean a corrective to some prevalent depictions of Haiti. . . . [H]e investigates the resilience and perspectives of those enslaved people who defeated imperialism and the way their descendants defied diplomatic and financial impositions.”—New West Indian Guide

“If you start from the heroes and maintain the silence of the ‘sovereign people’ you remain within the colonial politics of knowledge. If you shift the geography of reasoning and let it be guided by your emotional experience, you engage in the growing processes of the decolonial politics of knowing, sensing, believing. . . . There is no need to escape from here: the sovereign people are the nation in its will to live as it pleases.”—from the foreword by Walter D. Mignolo, William Hane Wannamaker Distinguished Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University; his most recent book is On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis, coauthored with Catherine E. Walsh.