Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism

Marlene L. Daut is Associate Professor of African Diaspora Studies in the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies and the Program in American Studies at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789-1865 (2015).

• 1 Introduction: Baron de Vastey in Haitian (Revolutionary) Context.- 2 What’s in a Name? Unfolding the Consequences of a Mistaken Identity.- 3 The Uses of Vastey: Reading Black Sovereignty Through Baron de Vastey in the Atlantic Public Sphere.- 4 Baron de Vastey’s Testimonio and the Politics of Black Memory.- 5 “Baron de Vastey and the Twentieth-Century Theater of Haitian Independence.

“This is a richly documented study of this key figure in the invention of the radical anti-slavery movement and anti-colonialism, and will be essential reading for scholars and students of Haitian Revolutionary studies and postcolonial theory.” (Nick Nesbitt, French Studies, Vol. 73 (3), July, 2019)