Földvári Books

Rare Book on the Haitian Revolution

[Chanlatte, Juste]; Bouvet de Cressé, Auguste Jean Baptiste

Histoire de la Catastrophe de Saint-Domingue, avec La Correspondance des généraux Leclerc (beau-frère de Bonaparte), Henry-Christophe (depuis roi d’Haïti), Hardy, Vilton, etc., certifiée conforme aux originaux déposés aux archives, par le lieutenant général Rouanez jeune, secrétaire d’état, publiées par A. J. B. Cressé, Auteur de Précis des Victoires et Conquêtes des Français dans les Deux-Mondes, de Histoire de la Marine de tous les peuples, depuis la plus haute antiquité jusqu’à nos jours, et de celle de France, sous Louis XV et ses successeurs. […].

Paris: Librairie de Peytieux, Galerie Delorme, 1824. . In contemporary leather. Panels with gilt floral frame, spine gilt with title vignette. Marbled endpapers. Marbled edges. (4) VII (1) 156 p. Binding somewhat worn, rubbed, corners bumped. Light foxing throughout, occasional light stains. Last leaves creased at the upper outer corner. Overall in very good condition.

An extremely scarce work on the history of the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath. The book opens with a condemnation of the injustice of slavery and a defense of blackness, quoting the line from the Song of Songs “I am black and beautiful”. The following chapters describe the brutalities of the Haitian revolution and the crisis followed by. The volume concludes with the publication of the correspondence between Charles Leclerc (1772–1802; Bonaparte’s brother-in-law, Captain General of the Saint-Domingue expedition), Colonel Henri Christophe (later King Henry I), Jean Hardy (1762–1802; General of infantry division of the expeditionary force), and Jean-Louis Vilton(-Belin de Villeneuve; a Haitian “quadroon”, Lieutenant of the expeditionary force [Bardin 2013]). Histoire de la Catastrophe de Saint-Domingue was edited by the French writer Bouvet de Cressé (1772–1843), however, it was written by the Haitian Juste Chanlatte. Chanlatte was born in Jacmel in 1766 into a well-to-do free colored family, and played an important and versatile role in the early independent Haitian literary and political life as an author and a journalist, just as the secretary of Jean-Jacques Dessalines and King Henry I of Haiti. Surviving the death of Henry, and the collapse of the Kingdom, Chanlatte became the chief editor of the reunited Haiti’s main newspaper, Le Télégraphe, the official government publication under President Jean-Pierre Boyer, and after his soon retirement he eventually died in 1828. (Fleischmann 2008, pp. 167–8) (Jenson 2010, p. 109), (Pierrot n.d) Important source of the Haitian Revolution and the early years of independence. RBH records the sale of only one copy (Swann Galleries, 1996). Sabin 6978 Literature: Bardin, P. (2013) Le capitaine Jean Louis Vilton et le général Henri Christophe. In: Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe. Nouvelle série N° 12, 4e trimestre. https://www.ghcaraibe.org/articles/2013-art21.pdf; Jenson D. (2010) The Writing of Disaster in Haiti: Signifying Cataclysm from Slave Revolution to Earthquake. In: Haiti Rising: Haitian History, Culture and the Earthquake of 2010, ed. by Martin Munro (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010), pp. 102–12.; Fleischmann, U. (2008) L’histoire de la fondation de la Nation haïtienne: mythes et abus politiques. In: Haïti 1804 : Lumières Et Ténèbres. Madrid, Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana, Vervuert.; Pierrot, G. (n.d.). The Author. A Life of Words. Kingdom of objects. https://kingdomofobjects.wordpress.com/the-author-bis/.

Price: €5,000.00