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stephanieridiculous's review against another edition
This book is so interesting, but so academic/dense that I cant really vibe with it right now. I really respect the approach this book takes and will definitely consider picking it up again later, in a slower season of life.
lukescalone's review
4.0
This is a good book, but I'm neither smart enough nor steeped enough in the literature on the black Atlantic or coloniality/decoloniality (theoretical concepts different from colonization) enough to fully get all of it.
From what I've gathered, Casimir's idea of a decolonial history is one where Euro-American ("Western") epistemologies are left behind. The most important conceptual framework that Casimir contests is the primacy of the state in Western historiography. So often, the Haitian Revolution is framed as a political revolution against the French colonial state. The "success," then, is in creating a black republic. Afterward, through Western eyes, Haiti becomes a "failed state." Casimir instead argues that it was impossible for the Haitian Revolution to succeed under a Western definition because Haitians were not seeking out a republican state in the Western liberal model. Sure, they used the language of the French Revolution in contesting the colonial state, but their ultimate aim was to overthrow slavery.
Casimir goes on to make the case the Haitians did not even overthrow slavery through a so-called "standard" slave rebellion. Instead, they succeeded by engineering a wholly new society that supplanted the slave system. To understand this, we need to look at social condition in Haiti immediately before the Revolution. One thing that Casimir finds that historians don't (or won't) recognize is that the vast majority of people in Haiti had only recently arrived in Haiti. When Revolution broke out, Haiti functioned to them a sort of hellscape that divorced them from their home, to which they would never return. Moreover, their earlier cultural traditions were still present--they hadn't been lost to the sands of time. The true Revolution, then, was to build a culturally and ethnically diverse but still characteristically West African society in the Caribbean that Casimir calls le peuple souverain ("the sovereign people"). The basic unit of this new society was the lakou, something that doesn't exist in modern Western societies but does exist in "non-modern" (not "premodern," in the view of Walter Mignolo) cultures throughout the Americans and, really, through much of the world. The lakou is a unit that combines the family (almost always extended, not nuclear) with a plot of land, the family's property (their house, livestock, and goods), and the peristil (a sort of Haitian shrine). To Casimir, the lakou is also connected closely with Kreyòl and Vodou.
I can't really evaluate Casimir on his use of evidence or conclusions--I haven't read enough on Haiti--but he is a well-respected scholar and, from what I see here, what he has to say is sound. He's right to elevate Haitian epistemologies over Western ones in the study of Haiti. Normally, the Haitian Revolution is discussed in tangent with the French Revolution, which has some good reason, but it also isn't the whole story and the Haitian Revolution was far more Haitian than it was French.
I'll probably come back to this after reading a bit further, but it seems to be an important piece of scholarship and his conclusions echo a lot of what I heard at a roundtable on "Haiti Beyond Saint-Domingue" at the French Historical Society's most recent conference.
From what I've gathered, Casimir's idea of a decolonial history is one where Euro-American ("Western") epistemologies are left behind. The most important conceptual framework that Casimir contests is the primacy of the state in Western historiography. So often, the Haitian Revolution is framed as a political revolution against the French colonial state. The "success," then, is in creating a black republic. Afterward, through Western eyes, Haiti becomes a "failed state." Casimir instead argues that it was impossible for the Haitian Revolution to succeed under a Western definition because Haitians were not seeking out a republican state in the Western liberal model. Sure, they used the language of the French Revolution in contesting the colonial state, but their ultimate aim was to overthrow slavery.
Casimir goes on to make the case the Haitians did not even overthrow slavery through a so-called "standard" slave rebellion. Instead, they succeeded by engineering a wholly new society that supplanted the slave system. To understand this, we need to look at social condition in Haiti immediately before the Revolution. One thing that Casimir finds that historians don't (or won't) recognize is that the vast majority of people in Haiti had only recently arrived in Haiti. When Revolution broke out, Haiti functioned to them a sort of hellscape that divorced them from their home, to which they would never return. Moreover, their earlier cultural traditions were still present--they hadn't been lost to the sands of time. The true Revolution, then, was to build a culturally and ethnically diverse but still characteristically West African society in the Caribbean that Casimir calls le peuple souverain ("the sovereign people"). The basic unit of this new society was the lakou, something that doesn't exist in modern Western societies but does exist in "non-modern" (not "premodern," in the view of Walter Mignolo) cultures throughout the Americans and, really, through much of the world. The lakou is a unit that combines the family (almost always extended, not nuclear) with a plot of land, the family's property (their house, livestock, and goods), and the peristil (a sort of Haitian shrine). To Casimir, the lakou is also connected closely with Kreyòl and Vodou.
I can't really evaluate Casimir on his use of evidence or conclusions--I haven't read enough on Haiti--but he is a well-respected scholar and, from what I see here, what he has to say is sound. He's right to elevate Haitian epistemologies over Western ones in the study of Haiti. Normally, the Haitian Revolution is discussed in tangent with the French Revolution, which has some good reason, but it also isn't the whole story and the Haitian Revolution was far more Haitian than it was French.
I'll probably come back to this after reading a bit further, but it seems to be an important piece of scholarship and his conclusions echo a lot of what I heard at a roundtable on "Haiti Beyond Saint-Domingue" at the French Historical Society's most recent conference.
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