By Julia Gaffield

 

Jean-Jacques Dessalines is one of the Haitian Revolution’s most poorly and least understood heroes. Beginning with his ascent to power and continuing into the twenty-first century, Dessalines has been criticized for his use of violence during and after the Revolution as well as for his alleged political incompetence. Much of the criticism is a product of racist beliefs about his “African” character despite the fact that we do not know with certainty whether he was born in Saint-Domingue or in West Africa. His “Africanness” is almost always pitted against the “civility” and “moderation” of the earlier revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture.

Dessalines’s abilities and successes have been “silenced” in order to cast him as a bad apple in the (now) celebrated Haitian Revolution that changed the course of modern history. This oversimplified version of Dessalines as a revolutionary and state leader ignores his political achievements and reduces the Haitian Revolution to a palatable and whitewashed event during the Age of Revolution. It mirrors a reluctance to study the years after the Declaration of Independence.

Much of the discussion surrounding Dessalines has focused on his illiteracy and whether we should attribute the texts that he signed to him as an “author.” Deborah Jenson has argued that we should consider Dessalines to be the author of the texts that he signed even if a secretary put the ink of the paper. Other scholars have contested this claim. They argue that his secretaries played a much more involved authorial role; that they were not simply scribes. The discussion has been extremely productive in pushing us to reconsider Dessalines’s role in the revolution and then as a state leader.

Recently, I proposed a volume of the texts attributed to Dessalines but the publisher concluded that there was not a market for this material, especially in light of the question of authorship. This response has renewed my conviction that there is a need for broader access to Dessalines’s texts in order to facilitate a larger conversation about his contributions (both positive and negative) to the Age of Revolutions.

With this in mind, I will be posting images or transcriptions of all of the documents/texts that I have gathered over the years including those collected while researching my new book Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution). I will be posting documents signed or said to have been signed (copies or printed versions) by Dessalines. If you’d like to contribute your own sources or transcriptions and especially translations of the documents I—and I’m sure the rest of the scholarly community—will be extremely grateful! Please comment on the sources and tell me how you’re using them either in your research, in the classroom, or in engaging the larger society.

This is a work in progress (I’ll keep adding documents over the next little while) and I hope that it will be collaborative. And I hope that we’ll learn more about Dessalines as a person and therefore more about the Haitian Revolution and the Haitian state.

Documents

1802

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to L.M. Desneiver[?], en chef a Jérémie, le 25 Floréal, an [unknown], National Library of Jamaica.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to Rochambeau, 10 Prairial, an 10, MS Haiti 67-8, Boston Public Library.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to Victor Emmanuel Leclerc, 8 Fructior, an 10, MS Haiti 71-4, Boston Public Library.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to Donatien Rochambeau, 23 Messidor, an 10, MS Haiti 66-102 (10), Boston Public Library.

1803

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to George Nugent, 23 June 1803, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica. AND Jean-Jacques Dessalines to George Nugent, 23 June 1803, CO 137/110, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to George Nugent, 7 Thermidor, an 11/2 August 1803, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to James Walker and Hugh Cathcart, 28 and 19 August 1803, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica. AND Jean-Jacques Dessalines to James Walker and Hugh Cathcart, 28 and 29 August 1803, CO 137/110, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to George Nugent and John Thomas Duckworth, 27 [unknown] 1803, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica. AND Jean-Jacques Dessalines to George Nugent and John Thomas Duckworth 27 [unknown] 1803, CO 137/110, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to George Nugent, 2 September 1803, CO 137/110, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to George Nugent, 6 November 1803, CO 137/110, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Duveyrier, “Armées française et indigène,” 27 Brumaire an 12/19 November 1803, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom. [treaty for the evacuation of French troops between Dessalines and Rochambeau]

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to the citizens and inhabitants of the city of Cap, 27 Brumaire/19 November 1803, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica. [Two copies from the NLJ] AND Jean-Jacques Dessalines to the citizens and inhabitants of the city of Cap, 27 Brumaire/19 November 1803, CO 137/110 AND CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom. [Two copies from TNA]

Jean-Jacques Dessalines, “Journal tenu pendant l’expédition entreprise contre le Port-au-Prince, par le Général en chef de l’armée Indigène” and “Hymne Haytiène,” 10 Frimaire, an 12, CO 137/110, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to George Nugent, 10 December 1803, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica.

1804

Jean-Jacques Dessalines, “Liberté ou la Mort,” [Haitian Declaration of Independence], 1 January 1804, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines, “Armée Indigène,” [Declaration of Independence, transcription], 1 January 1804, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to Edward Corbet, 16 January 1804, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica. AND Jean-Jacques Dessalines to Edward Corbet, 16 January 1804, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to Edward Corbet, 16 January 1804 (second letter on this date), MS 72, National Library of Jamaica. AND Jean-Jacques Dessalines to Edward Corbet, 16 January 1804, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to George Nugent, 20 January 1804, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica. AND Jean-Jacques Dessalines to George Nugent, 20 January 1804, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines, “Ordonnance,” 7 February 1804, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica. AND Jean-Jacques Dessalines, “Ordonnance,” 7 February 1804, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to Edward Corbet, 12 February 1804, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines, “Brevet,” 15 February 1804, MS Haiti 70-21, Boston Public Library.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to Edward Corbet, 26 February 1804, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica. AND Jean-Jacques Dessalines to Edward Corbet, 26 February 1804, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to George Nugent, 26 February 1804, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to George Nugent, 26 February 1804, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom. [second letter on same day]

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to Edward Corbet, 27 February 1804, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica. AND Jean-Jacques Dessalines to Edward Corbet, 27 February 1804, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to the generals of the Armée Indigène, 1 April 1804, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to the Inhabitants of Haiti, 28 April 1804, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom. [transcription of the “I have Avenged America” speech]

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to the inhabitants of the Spanish part of the island, 8 May 1804, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica. AND Jean-Jacques Dessalines to the inhabitants of the Spanish part of the island, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jaques Dessalines to George Nugent, 13 May 1804, MS 72, National Library of Jamaica. AND Jean-Jacques Dessalines to George Nugent, 13 May 1804, CO 137/111, The National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines, “Codes of Hayti,” 26 May 1805, Reserve 4275.68 no.1,  Boston Public Library.