Bulldozia Projects

Remembering the Freedom Riders

Sun, 13 May 2012 20:55:57 +0100

In 1961 Mother's Day in the United States fell on May 14th. Two groups of civil rights campaigners were half way through the second week of their bus journeys south from Washington, designed to test a Supreme Court decision of the previous year that declared the segregation of inter-state transportation unconstitutional.

With the black and white passengers deliberately sitting together, and ignoring the signs that directed them to different facilities at rest stops, they expected to face suspicion and hostility, but apart from an ugly incident in Rock Hill, South Carolina, they had not run into any serious trouble. But in Alabama, things suddenly turned nasty.

As it left Anniston, the Greyhound bus was pursued by a convoy of angry whites who, when it pulled over for a flat tyre, attacked the vehicle, set it ablaze, and assaulted passengers as they emerged from the smoke. The Trailways bus, carrying the second group, arrived later and, after on-board segregation was forcibly established, were allowed to continue to Birmingham, where many of the passengers were brutally set upon by members of a large crowd which was waiting for them.

Shaken and injured the campaigners were nevertheless determined to continue to Montgomery the next day. But when the Alabama authorities refused to guarantee their safety, the riders reluctantly agreed to complete their journey to New Orleans by plane. Thus ended the first Freedom Ride.

When I wrote a piece recently on two writers - John Lewis and Gary Younge - who had revisited the sites of some of the most momentous scenes of that first ride, in what I argued were politicized variants of the popular 'footsteps' genre of travel writing, I looked for an appropriate image to illustrate it, and found this:

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Historic marker at 4th Avenue N and 19th St N, Birmingham, Alabama: photo by kschlot1

The marker was erected in 1995, close to the site of the old Trailways bus terminal (now occupied, somewhat inevitably, by a bank). The site of the bus burning in Anniston was memorialized in 2007, although both were privately funded: evidence perhaps of Alabama's official reluctance to come to terms with parts of its past it would prefer to forget.

But what I didn't immediately notice about the plaque is how inaccurate and misleading it is. That it refers to the Greyhound, rather than Trailways, terminal is perhaps of no great consequence, although it must surely puzzle those passers-by who know that the Greyhound terminal is several blocks north and must wonder why the marker is placed here and not there.

The use of the word 'youth', though, demands a little more attention. Not only is it simply misleading to imply that the riders were all young people - five of the fifteen riders who arrived in Birmingham that day were over 40 (indeed three of them were over 50) - it's a very curious choice when applying it to a very specific group of individuals, for it is neither a plural nor a collective noun. It is as if in the struggle to find a wording that everyone would find acceptable, no one knew what to call them.

The 'klansmen' who attacked them have a certain familiarity, as do the 'police' who stood by and watched, and yet - perhaps to compensate for this reckless admission of official collusion - the riders themselves become a strangely disembodied, abstract entity, the personification of one of the stages of life. It makes it easier for us to feel the kind of sympathy that is born of condescension rather than solidarity; it marks them as immature, easily swayed by manipulative others (the acronym CORE - surely opaque to many who read the notice - serving perfectly in this respect).

Above all, it codes them as feminine in contrast to those hyper-masculine thugs who participated in their humiliation. Or it would, if it weren't for that final clause that suddenly and unexpectedly has them 'standing their ground' - a phrase that has circulated with particular speed these last few weeks, but which for a century or more has conjured up the image of an armed white patriarch defending his private property against intruders. Here, in a brilliant twist, it is being used to honour non-violent protesters (black, white, male, female) seeking to assert their right to occupy public spaces together.

Evidently, there is more than one way to stand your ground.

Louis Joseph Janvier (1883)

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:37:21 +0000

Louis Joseph Janvier (1855-1911) was one of the leading Haitian intellectuals of his day. He spent much of his adult life in the diplomatic service in Paris and London, where he wrote a number of substantial essays, including L'Egalite des Races (1884), Ha�ti aux Ha�tiens (1884), Les Affaires d'Haiti (1885) and Les Constitutions d'Ha�ti (1886).

Perhaps the best known is La R�publique d'Haiti et ses visiteurs (1883), a lengthy response to a series of travel articles entitled 'De Paris � Ha�ti' in La Petite Presse by a black Martinican author, Victor Cochinat. Here is an extract from Chapter III which takes issue with his remarks on Vaudoux.

Chapitre III Vieux Contes et Vieux Comptes

En nous parlant du Vaudoux en Ha�ti (Petite Presse des 21 et 22 Septembre), M. Cochinat nous apprend que: [109]

�...... les sectateurs de cette superstition primitive, import�e d�Afrique, adorent une couleuvre. La couleuvre qui est ador�e avec tous les signes de la plus humble soumission (?) est souvent de la grosseur d�un boa et m�me d�un python, et elle se nourrit de lait et de poulets.�

Tout ce que M. Cochinat raconte du Vaudoux en Ha�ti est de pure invention. On en peut juger, in globo, par cette assertion que la couleuvre ador�e est grosse comme un boa ou m�me comme un python. Le boa mesure, en moyenne, de 7 � 8 m�tres de longeur (Vorepierre) et quelquefois 25 centim�tres dans le plus grand diam�tre de son corps (Tramon). Le python a une longeur moyenne de 8 � 10 m�tres (Dum�ril); il atteint quelquefois 13 m�tres de longueur (Adanson). Les couleuvres d�Ha�ti, au contraire, - les naturalistes le savent � sont des Tropidonotes de petite esp�ce, et il est excessivement rare de rencontrer dans cette Antille des individus qui mesurent plus de trois m�tres de longueur.

On voit bien que le chroniqueur de la Petite Presse est rhumatisant ou goutteux, eu�il n�est jamais sorti de Port-au-Prince et qu�il n�a jamais vu les Coluber d�Ha�ti.

M. Cochinat a assist� � en r�ve apparemment � a une c�r�monie de Vaudoux, il en d�crit l�aspect:

�Le jour � ou plut�t le soir � de la grande c�r�monie, on tue une poule noire ou un cabri et on donne � chacun des fr�res de la secte une gorg�e � boire du sang de la b�te [110] tu�e. La foule des affili�s jouissent alors, apr�s ces incantations, de l�inappr�ciable faveur de voir le dieu. Ce soir-l� donc, dans quelques bois d�Ha�ti, au milieu d�une plaine qu��clairent les rayons de la lune, vers minuit, et dans le plus profond secret, une assembl�e compos�e pour la plupart de campagnards, mais aussi de gens de la ville ayant le mot de passe, se livre � des contorsions d��paules et � des d�hanchements, � des tours de reins qui les animent et leur excitent les sens. Peu � peu le bruit du tambour allume dans leurs t�tes un vertige dont on voit les signes dans le blanc de leurs yeux hagards, dans la bave qui s��chappe de leurs l�vres contract�es, dans les cris inarticul�s qu�ils poussent et dans tout un tressaillement r�v�lateur des troubles hyst�riques qui agitent leurs corps. Leurs dents blanches brillent de lueurs lascives, les batteurs de tambours redoublent alors de vigueur et d��nergie, ils enflent outre mesure le volume de son de leurs tambours qui semblent aussi avoir une �me. Un vent de folie pousse les uns vers les autres ces sectateurs [c�est sectaire qu�il faudrait, � voir les Dict. de Littr� et de Lafaye � d�cid�ment, je suis tent� de croire que M. Cochinat n�a aucune cure des fines nuances qui existent entre les mots synonymes de la langue fran�aise ¹], ces sectateurs enivr�s du dieu qui les poss�de, les clairi�res retentissent de cris �tranges, et pendant les prostrations qui succ�dent � ces ivresses, les pr�tres, jouissant de leurs privil�ges, font parfois des sacrifices humains en tuant et en d�pe�ant quelques petits enfants que des associ�s leur ont livr�s, et, enfi�vr�s d�une joie infernale, ils se partagent dans un repas plus horrible que celui d�Atr�e les membres sanglants de la victime.�

Je sais bien que Gustave d�Alaux et Paul d�Hormoys ont racont� de fa�on tr�s fantaisiste toutes [111] les invraisemblances qui leur avaient �t� d�bit�es sur le compte des soi-disant sectaires du Vaudoux, lesquels, disent-ils, vivaient encore en Ha�ti, il y a quelque trente ans, mais je n�aurais jamais voulu croire que M. Cochinat, qui est fils de n�gre, et n�gre lui-m�me, pourrait se faire l��cho des calomnies dont on a tant abus� salir ses cong�n�res d�Ha�ti et pour leur contester la facult� de pouvoir se gouverner eux-m�mes.

Apr�s les deux aventuriers dont j�ai plus haut cit� les noms, M. Cochinat prend la peine de nous mander que ces choses-l� se passent dans le plus profond secret, � minuit, en plein bois; qu�il faut avoir le mot de passe pour assister � la r�union et puis � avec la na�vet� d�un enfant sans malice, comme on dit dans l�Histoire sainte de Dupont � il nous d�crit cette r�union absolument comme s�il y avait assist�. On ne se moque pas de ses lecteurs avec plus de d�sinvolture que ce chroniqueur fallacieux ne le fait.

Voyons, � Cochinat trop plein de d�sinvolte, ou vous nous faites assister � une r�union que votre imagination a invent�e, ou bien c�est un Ha�tien qui vous a racont�, � sa mani�re, une sc�ne de Vaudoux � laquelle il aurait collabor� comme sectaire ou � laquelle il aurait figur� dans la personne d�un de ses parents ou d�un de ses amis tr�s intimes et celui-ci sectaire lui-m�me.

On raconte qu�il y a quelques tr�s rares Ha�- [112] tiens � un sur dix mille � qui croient, avec une simplicit� sans seconde, qui m�dire de leur patrie c�est se grandir aux yeux de l��tranger, en ayant l�air de n��tre pas Ha�tien. Les �trangers m�prisent souverainement ces sortes de gens, ces niais contempteurs de leur pays, et ils ont raison ..... �tant donn� que celui qui jette de la boue � la face de siens ou qui soul�ve la robe sale de sa m�re est un �tre ignoble, vil, ignominieux. �Petits esprits et grands dr�les�, ainsi sont-ils d�finis par ceux devant lesquels ils viennent d��taler cyniquement et sans pudeur les ulc�res de la famille sociale dont ils font partie. J�ajoute, � l�adresse de ces certeaux pointus, quoique obtus, que, si quelqu�un est n� et vit durant longtempts au milieu de sauvages et de cannibales, il est impossible que, par h�r�dit� parentale ou par influence du milieu social o� il vit, il est impossible qu�il n�ait pas un peu de cannibalisme dans le sang. C�est clair. Lisez Jacoby et Ribot. Et ce qui est vraiment �tonnant, vraiment incroyable, c�est la facilit� avec laquelle sont admises, r��dit�es, r�p�t�es et perp�tu�es toutes ces bourdes grosses comme des cath�drales, toutes ces inventions autrefois �closes dans l�esprit d�un bimane en d�lire, tous ces racontars faits, dans le principe, par un blanc-bec � cervelle de cynoc�phale, et qui durent pendant des centuries, et qui �claboussent, pendant des d�cades, la r�putation de tout un peuple, parce qu�on [113] les d�truit d�autant plus difficilement qu�ils ont facilement pris naissance et que les ignorants leur ont accord� toute cr�ance.

Moreau de Saint-M�ry, Paul d�Hormoys et Gustave d�Alaux lui-m�me � ce dernier si malveillant � ont � peine os� affirmer que les sectaires du Vaudoux offraient des sacrifices humains � la soi-disant divinit� dont ils pratiquaient le soi-disant culte.

De plus, Monsieur the chroniqueur de la Petite Presse, quant � ce que vous racontez du noir Tony, de la commune de Jacmel, lequel aurait, d�apr�s vos dires, tu� une vieille femme et l�aurait mang�e en un seul repas (?), c�est � s�il est vrai � un acte d�anthropophagie exactement sembable � celui qui s�est pass� en Corse, il y a quelque temps. C�est un acte de folie pure, un acte de d�mence. Si je voulais fouiller � nouveau la collection de la Gazette des tribunaux, je pourrais retrouver, pour vous le raconter par le menu, le cas plus monstrueux de cet Auvergnat qui tua sa femme, en d�pe�a le cadavre, le sala et, durant un mois, en fit sa nourriture quotidienne. Il n�entera pourtant jamais dans l�esprit de personne d�insinuer que les Auvergnats et les Corses sont des anthropophages.

Si vous vouliez faire croire que les Ha�tiens, parce qu�ils descendent d�Africains, sont plus susceptibles d��tre cannibales que d�autres peuples, je vous rappellerais que vous aussi vous �tes Afri- [114] cain, et que, pour cela, on doit �tre quelque peu cannibale � la Guadeloupe et � la Martinique. Paul d�Hormoys, dans son livre intitul�: Sous les Tropiques, ne raconte-t-il pas l�histoire d�une vieille Martiniquaise qui vendait � ses clients de Saint-Pierre des petits p�t�s faits avec de la chair de cadavres enterr�s la veille, qu�elle allait d�terrer nuitamment dans un cimeti�re?

J�ajouterai � pour les blancs � que, d�apr�s Darwin, Herbert Spencer, John Lubbock, de Nadalhac, Letourneau, Mortillet, d�apr�s tous les anthropologistes et tous les ethnographes et arch�ologues, dans les temps primitifs, l�homme fut cannibale sur toute la terre. Je ne veux pas parler des matelots naufrag�s et press�s par la famine, des Tziganes, et de tous autres gens anthropophages par occasion. Aux temps de leurs guerres contre les Romains, les Carthaginois, encore qu�ils fussent tr�s civilis�s, faisaient des sacrifices humains � Hercule Melkarth (Gustave Flaubert, Salammb�). Les druides gaulois sacrifiaent aussi � Hercule Teutat�s.

Plus pr�s de nous � Michelet nous le dit, en des pages magistrales � durant les grandes famines du Moyen-Age, en France, on ne se g�nait mie pour manger des enfants. Pendant que Henri IV assi�geait Paris une m�re mangea son enfant.

Voyez-vous, mon cher Monsieur Cochinat, [115] croyez-moi, les Ha�tiens ne sont plus cannibales que les Martiniquais et les Bretons.

C�est pour votre �dification que je cite ici Letourneau: �Schiller rapporte qu�� la fin de la guerre de Trente Ans les Saxons �taient devenus cannibales. En France, en 1030, durant une famine de trois ans, on allait, comme le faisaient les contemporains d�Abd-Allatif, � la chasse � l�homme. Un homme fut condamn� au feu pour avoir mis en vente de la chair humaine sur le march� de Tourmay. Dans sa chronique si curieuse, Pierre de l�Estoile nous parle, en donnant d�int�ressants d�tails, du cannibalisme des Parisiens pendant le si�ge de Paris par Henri IV, le bon roi Henri, en 1590: c�est une dame riche, qui, ayant vu mourir de faim ses deux enfants, en fait saler les cadavres par sa servante, avec laquelle elle les mange; ce sont des lansquenets qui pratiquent la chasse � l�homme dans les rues de Paris et font des festins de cannibales � l�h�tel Saint-Denis et � l�h�tel de Palaiseau, etc. Plus tard encore des gens du peuple exhum�rent le cadavre du mar�chal d�Ancre, le lendemain de son assassinat, et l�un d�eux fit cuire le coeur sur des charbons et le mangea en l�assaisonnant avec du vinaigre.

�On le voit, nous aurions tort de trop nous enorgueillr de notre civilisation actuelle, si imparfaite d�ailleurs. La b�te n�est pas bien loin derri�re nous; elle est m�me encore en nous � l��tat latent. [116] N�anmoins, la revue anthropophagique que nous venons de faire a un c�t� consolant. A sa mani�re, elle atteste une fois de plus que l��volution du genre humain est progressive.

�L�homme commence par �tre un animal comme les autres, et il n�est pas le moins f�roce. Alors, pour ce pauvre �tre, affam� et grossier, le besoin de ses proches, de sa femme, de sa famille et de ses enfants; puis il ne mange plus gu�re que ses ennemis, c�est-�-dire ses rivaux des tribus voisines. Il est alors cannibale presque uniquement par vengeance et par gourmandise, mais cette derni�re passion ne s�assouvit plus que sur des prisonniers ou des esclaves. Enfin le cannibalisme rev�t la forme juridique, c�est-�-dire devient assez rare. A partire de l�, il est de plus en plus condamn�, r�prouv� par la morale publique, et l�on n�y a plus gu�re recours que dans les plus dures extr�mit�s de la famine, ou dans l��tat de folie, quand, l�intelligence et la moralit� ayant sombr�, la b�te se d�cha�ne � nouveau.²�

Vous racontez, Monsieur Cochinat � apr�s Paul d�Hormoys et Gustave Aimard � vous racontez le crime de Jeane Pel�, vieux de dix-huit ans.

Croyez-vous qu�il soit plus horrible � toutes choses �gales d�ailleurs � que ceux suivants qui [117] ont eu Paris pour th��tre, et ce, dans ces six derni�res ann�es: Moyaux, jetant sa fille dans un puits et la laissant se noyer, encore qu�il entendit les cris et les supplications de l�enfant; Billoir, coupant un �tre humain en morceaux; Barr� et Lebiez, deux �tudiants, deux bourgeois instruits, d�pe�ant le cadavre d�une femme qu�ils avaient assomm�e pour lui voler son or; Pr�vost, sergent de ville, d�valisant un bijoutier apr�s l�avoir assomm� et divisant son cadavre en plusieurs tron�ons; Gilles et Abadie, de sinistres gredins, n�ayant pas � eux deux trente-cinq ans, chefs d�une bande de voleurs et assassins; Menesclou, attirant dans sa chambre une fillette, non encore pub�re et la tuant apr�s l�avoir viol�e; Schonen, en faisant autant sur un petit gar�on; etc., etc.

Si l�on ne citait que ces horreurs qui ont fait se soulever de d�go�t toutes les poitrines fran�aises, on dirait � l��tranger que les Parisiens sont des assassins, lorsque, au contraire, ce sont des gens accueillants, affables, hospitaliers et tellement charmants qu�ils conqui�rent tous les coeurs, autant par leurs franches mani�res que par leur exquise politesse.

Pourquoi donc, quand vous parlez d�Haiti, vous tous, ne montrez-vous jamais que les mauvais c�t�s, les verrues, les ulc�res de ce jeune peuple, qui a les siens comme les autres ont les leurs? Pourquoi passez-vous toujours syst�matiquement [118] sous silence les beaux traits de son caract�re, les aspirations nobles, �lev�es et g�n�reuses de ses enfants?...

Cette fa�on de faire n�est pas d�un honn�te homme, Monsieur Cochinat. Louis Veuillot a dit, dans les Odeurs de Paris, ce livre d�bordant de m�prisante ironie o� vos pareils sont fouett�s jusqu�au sang: �Le fran�ais, c�est la langue des honn�tes gens, m�me si l�on est Fran�ais et si l�on a appris � fond cette langue, on ne la saurait �crire du moment que l�on devient un malhonn�te homme.�

Je ne m��tonne plus, Monsieur le correspondant de la Petite Presse, je ne m��tonne plus que vous �criviez si incorrectement la langue de Victor Hugo, de Victor Schoelcher, de Lamartine, de Michelet et de Louis Blanc.

Notes

1. D'Hormoys, d'Alaux et les autres �crivent sectateurs. C'est une faute. Voir Littr� et Lafaye.

2. Letourneau. La Sociologie. Paris, 1880.

Source: Louis Joseph Janvier, La R�publique d'Ha�ti et ses visiteurs 1840-1882:r�ponse � M V Cochinat, etc (Paris: 1883), pp108-118.

The Fire Last Time

Thu, 19 May 2011 12:26:05 +0100

Dany Laferri�re has suggested - with a hint of provocation, no doubt - that the greatest novel of the Duvalier dicatatorship was written by an Englishman: Graham Greene's The Comedians.¹ In the same spirit, perhaps, we might add that the best film of the Haitian Revolution was made by an Italian: Queimada (1969) by Gillo Pontecorvo.

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Pontecorvo, best known for The Battle of Algiers (1966), named Queimada after the fictional Portuguese colony in the Caribbean he chose for its setting. Filmed in Colombia, it is a defiantly unglamorous period drama that tells of the struggle against slavery and colonial rule in the mid-nineteenth century.

William Walker (Marlon Brando) arrives on the island and helps to rekindle a slave rebellion, which he then recommends the white mulatto elite support in order to win independence from the Portuguese. Walker is an British agent whose objective is to get the Portuguese out of the way so that the Antilles Royal Sugar Company can profit from its plantations. Once independence is won (and slavery abolished), Walker persuades his protege, the black leader Jose Delores (Evaristo M�rquez) to convince his men to return to the cane fields. The reluctant mulatto figurehead Teddy Sanchez (Renato Salvatori) becomes president and Walker leaves.

Ten years pass. The sugar company effectively rules Queimada instead of the Portuguese, but precariously. For the last six years, Delores has been leading a guerrilla campaign and has proved unwilling to negotiate. At the government's request, Walker returns. He advises the army to ruthlessly destroy key villages, but the campaign continues. The army stage a coup against Sanchez (who is prepared to capitulate) and General Alfonso Prada calls in the British Army. With their superior fire-power, the scale of devastation multiplies, and the sugar company is concerned that its plantations are being destroyed in the process. With Dolores still at large, it wonders whether the price is worth paying. But Walker reminds the company's representative Mr Shelton (Norman Hill) that even if Queimada is burnt to the ground, it would be worth it, because it would at least stop the revolution spreading to other islands where the company also has sugar interests.

Finally, Dolores is captured, but he maintains an enigmatic silence, and refuses to talk to Walker. The government discusses the preferred form of execution. Walker reminds them that Dolores would be much more dangerous dead than alive. They try to offer him freedom if he leaves the Caribbean but Dolores laughs. He knows the value of martyrdom. And, as he explains to a black soldier guarding him: 'If a man gives you freedom, it is not freedom. Freedom is something you, you alone, must take. Do you understand?' On the day of his execution, Walker offers to allow him to escape, asking for nothing in return, but Dolores again refuses. He is led to the gallows.

Walker leaves before the execution takes place. On the quayside he is approached by a young man offering to carry his bags (as Dolores did in the two scenes that bookend the first half of the film depicting Walker's arrival and departure). Momentarily caught unawares, Walker turns round and the stranger stabs him fatally in the chest.

Two versions of Queimada were released. The original version (132 minutes) is dubbed in Italian. To hear Brando's own voice (and his plum accent), you will have to make do the English-language version that is 20 minutes shorter. Lawrence Russell claims that it was Brando's favourite film, despite the tribulations of the shoot itself, in which the star and the director disagreed over just about everything. It is certainly possible that he was attracted to a script that 'fitted well with his social activism on behalf of the American Indian and the black civil rights movement'. Or admired it as a 'furious Vietnam allegory', as Stephen Hunter has described it.

But its allegorical possibilities do not stop there. The Somali teenager Sagal in Nuruddin Farah's novel Sardines (1981) has production stills of Brando from Queimada on her bedroom wall, along with posters of Che, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, but she cannot explain to her mother the story of the film or which revolt was being depicted. Not surprisingly, perhaps, as its parallels are legion. One reason, no doubt, that, as her mother goes on to inform her, it was only shown once in Mogadishu and then only in a highly censored version.²

And indeed, the parallels may continue to proliferate. For instance, during the second half of the film, it is not hard to think of the current war in Afghanistan and the ten-year search for Osama bin Laden. The title is even a close anagram of Al-Qaida.

But the historical events they most closely resemble are those of the Caribbean itself, notably the struggles that led to the abolition of slavery in the French islands in the 1790s and the brutal attempt to restore it - successfully in the case of Guadeloupe, but not Saint-Domingue, which became the independent republic of Haiti in 1804.

What is striking is the way Pontecorvo captures the complex, shifting political allegiances of metropolitan governments, private companies, white settlers, prosperous free people of colour, and the black slaves. We might have got a sense of this in the film Sergei Eisenstein planned in 1934 to make about Toussaint Louverture, starring Paul Robeson.³ And may still yet in Danny Glover's rumoured-to-be-forthcoming biopic, based - it is alleged - on a screenplay by Med Hondo.

But it is a book - C L R James' The Black Jacobins (1938), his classic study of the Haitian revolution - that Queimada most resembles. In particular, the emphasis on the importance of the decisions that Toussaint made to accept or reject offers of help from those whose commitment to black freedom were suspect. The British and the Spanish for instance. Or even the representatives of the French Revolution, which had promised to abolish slavery, like commissioner Sonthonax. In each case, James spells out the political and military calculations Toussaint had to make when choosing his allies.

In Queimada, these dilemmas are dramatised clearly in a series of three scenes early in the film which show Walker and Dolores preparing to join forces.

The story of Queimada is told from Walker�s point of view, an outsider - like the audience - unfamiliar with the island which he first sees through an eye-glass from the deck of his approaching ship. And yet Walker is ultimately out-manouevred by Dolores. They both die at the end but it is clear that it is Dolores who will be remembered, not Walker.

In this clip, the two characters are at first glance, presented as equals who can help each other, who share a common goal. But in fact the formal equality suggested by the presentation (the scrupulous attention to both partners in the dialogue, filmed chiastically in shot reverse shot), in the end draws attention to their differences.

In the church, Walker proposes they join forces to rob the bank and split the proceeds. But of the 100 million gold reales, fifty go to Walker while the the other half is shared between Dolores and his men.

On the hillside where he outlines his plan, it becomes clear that they won't be escaping together. While Walker intends to flee to England, Dolores and his men dream of Africa.

Once the preparations are complete, Dolores and Walker drink to the success of their mission. They drink each other's habitual tipple (Walker tries rum and Dolores whisky) and toast (separately) 'England' and 'Africa' before finding something they can both pronounce: 'the world'. But it is the thinnest cosmopolitan veneer. Pulling faces, neither manages to down his cup, and, relieved, they switch back. Each to their own. May the best man win.

Notes

1. Dany Laferri�re, Tout bouge autour de moi (Montr�al: M�moire d'encrier, 2010), p127.

2. Nuruddin Farah, Sardines (London: Heinemann, 1982), p29.

3. Scott Allen Nollen, Paul Robeson: Film Pioneer (Jefferson, NC, McFarland, 2010), pp52-3.

The Right Not To Be Understood

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 23:55:38 +0000

With the passing of Edouard Glissant last week, it was a tweet from @public_archive that got me thinking again of that slogan of his: Nous r�clamons le droit � l�opacit�.

We demand the right to ... to what, exactly? Opacit� is no more a household word in French than opacity is in English. It doesn't seem appropriate for the kind of motto you would expect to see sprayed on public buildings or hear chanted in the streets, though that jarring of registers is, I imagine, quite deliberate. And so if we propose an alternative, we should not banish this, the most literal equivalent, from our minds.

The phrase appears in the first section of the opening essay to his Le Discours antillais (1981), a book only partially translated into English: J Michael Dash's Caribbean Discourse (1989).¹

Glissant begins with three anecdotes (two fragments of dark humour and one somewhat dismissive response to a query from a French psychiatrist) that seem to indicate a certain all-pervasive Martinican cynicism or nihilism. This is the dead-end (situation "bl�qu�e") that serves as his starting point.

He does not characterise this mind-set directly, but does indicate that this is the object of his study (l'objet de mon travail): his purpose is to trace (pister) the various aspects of what he calls the web of nothingness (toile de n�ant) in which such an apparently educated people are trapped (s'englue) today. Note the use of the passive voice. The web has been woven for a people (tiss� pour un peuple): Glissant does not suggest who or what has woven this web.

His next paragraph refers to the '"intellectual" effort' that this - his - project requires. In what seems to be a succinct description of his own method and writing style, he refers to repetitions, contradictions, imperfections, and a certain obscurity, as a way of insisting that 'the attempt to approach a reality so often concealed does not proceed simply by means of a series of clarifications.'

And then the celebrated phrase: Nous r�clamons le droit a l'opacit�. What is most immediately striking is that this is the first use of the first person plural in an opening that is relatively free of personal pronouns. Glissant has talked of 'my work' (mon travail) and we might reasonably assume that this 'we' is the royal 'we' of academic discourse, but is perhaps deliberately ambiguous, aligning the work of the single intellectual with broader social forces. After all the form of his slogan is surely meant to remind us of more conventional political slogans (say, a nation insisting on the right to self-determination), which suggests that this '"intellectual" effort' is not exclusively his, but of all those people in the Caribbean who are determined to escape this nihilism.

And this sense of collective endeavour indeed becomes more prominent in the next sentence, when he writes of (to quote Dash's translation) 'the creativity (�lan) of marginalized peoples who today confront the ideal of transparent universality (l'universel de la transparence), imposed by the West, with secretive and multiple manifestations of Diversity.'

Here Glissant seems to align himself more clearly with the energy or momentum of peoples who are marginalized (a rather weak translation of n�antis�s, recalling the toile de n�ant in which they are trapped: the idea is that their very existence is disavowed), and suggests that the opacit� he is referring to is characteristic of - and appropriate to - not only his own project but that of oppressed peoples more generally. The sentence also invokes transparence, the opposite of opacit�, placing the terms in a dramatic relationship that suggests an ongoing struggle between these marginalized peoples on the one hand and the West on the other. The contrast is also a more philosophical one: on the one hand, genuine diversity; on the other a general principle of transparency that insists all difference can be comprehended within a single interpretive scheme.

In her fine essay on Phillis Wheatley, June Jordan notes how the opening lines of her poem 'On Being Brought from Africa to America' partakes of the kind of 'iniquitous nonsense' she had imbibed from her reading of white literature that coded this transition as a passage from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge:

Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Savior too.

But then follows this with 'something wholly her own, something entirely new':

Once I redemption neither sought nor knew

by which, Jordan writes, she asserts: 'once I existed beyond and without these terms under consideration. Once I existed on other than your terms.'²

In translating Glissant's slogan, Dash avoids 'opacity' and prefers 'obscurity'. In some ways this is unfortunate because it could be interpreted as a demand to be forgotten or ignored, which is rather too close to the marginalization or annhiliation that opacit� is supposed to resist. The demand for opacity is not a demand for invisibility but an insistence that I exist on other than your terms. It is an assertion of the right not to be understood.

When President Mubarak recently berated Barack Obama: 'You don't understand the Egyptian culture and what would happen if I step down now ... If I resign today, there will be chaos.' As zunguzungu and others so eloquently pointed out, this is to 'understand' Egyptian culture entirely within the familiar terms of western orientalism. And terms which one will find it hard to dissociate from the other word Dash uses for opacit�: 'inscrutability' (a characteristic normally reserved for the Chinese).

All too often, we seem obliged to think of people as either just like us (or what we think is 'us') or the exact opposite. Or indeed as somewhere in between. Nowhere on this continuum will we find anything really different that might trouble our imagination or test our intelligence. If that is what being 'understood' entails, then the logic of Glissant's position surely begins to make sense.

And this includes the famously 'difficult' nature of his writing, full of poetic allusion and conceptual invention rather than empirically testable propositions. Glissant's work often seems to aspire to the condition of music and other non-representational forms. Invoking the art of the drummer, he speaks of the value of repetition, its capacity not to clarify ideas but to render them more opaque.

Much later in the book Glissant appears to celebrate a raw energy that is (stereotypically) a hallmark of African-derived cultures - 'the rhythm of the drum, the provocative intensity of the scream'. But then he goes on to target the 'pathetic lucidity' of folk-tales in a demonstration of just how conservative 'transparency' actually is. In the breathless thrust of their narratives, the landscape is never described or worked-on. The trickster does not pause to consider his or her surroundings, and as a result the tales suggest not merely a resignation to colonial rule but a justification of it.

For Glissant the reactive development of Martinican Creole in the shadow of French meant that it gradually lost its distinctiveness. Nowadays it offers a poor basis for a radical poetics. The best we can do, he says, is to render the two languages opaque to each other (les rendre opaques l'une � l'autre). Which is one reason he chooses to write in French.

But it is not that he avoids Creole completely. It's just that when he does - in his play Monsieur Toussaint, for example - the chants and incantations he incorporates are syntactically incoherent and indiscriminately mix sounds from Haiti, Guadeloupe and Martinique. They are not meant to be decoded. Above all they signify 'the unbridled pleasure of finally writing down a language as it is heard.'³

Notes

1. Eduouard Glissant, Le Discours antillais (Paris: �ditions du Seuil, 1981); Edouard Glissant, Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays, translated with an introduction by J Michael Dash (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1989). The passages I discuss here are pp11-13 and pp238-45 (translation: pp1-4 and 120-34). Translations from the French my own unless otherwise indicated.

2. June Jordan, 'The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America or Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley', On Call: Political Essays (London: Pluto Press, 1986), p91.

3. Edouard Glissant, Monsieur Toussaint [1986], revised edition (Paris: Gallimard, 1998), p12.

The Guinea's Stamp

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 01:19:18 +0000

When Robert Burns published his first book of poems, he intended it as a parting shot before leaving Scotland for good. A position had been arranged for him on a plantation in the West Indies, and he was due to set sail from Greenock in September, 1786. ''Twas a delicious idea that I would be called a clever fellow,' he wrote in a letter of August 1787, 'even though it should never reach my ears a poor Negro-driver.'

But he never did cross the Atlantic. Instead he set out for what he called the �new world� of literary Edinburgh to follow up his recent success there and exploit the tempting prospect of a second edition. Today Burns is more likely to be remembered as the friend of liberty, man of the people, and composer of the sentimental abolitionist song 'The Slave�s Lament': �It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral / For the lands of Virginia-ginia O.�

In 1846, fifty years after his death, he was paid homage by someone who had travelled in the opposite direction to escape the long arm of American slavery. In a letter from Ayr printed in the New York Tribune, the fugitive wrote animatedly of the romantic setting of his Monument. He took delight in being able to see with his own eyes the places named in 'Tam o� Shanter' and 'Ye Banks and Braes.' And he was honoured to meet Burns� 80-year-old sister, 'a spirited looking woman who bids fair to live yet many days.'¹

The author was Frederick Douglass, already well-known in the United States following the appearance of his autobiography the previous year. Its graphic descriptions of life on a Maryland plantation, and of the cruelties he witnessed as a child and later endured himself, made the book an instant classic. It told how, against all odds, he taught himself to read and write, and - barely out of his teens - engineered his escape, equipped with forged papers, to the free North. In New England he hooked up with radical anti-slavery campaigners and became one their leading spokesmen.

But in publishing his story, he increased the chance of being identified and recaptured. So in 1845 the fiery abolitionist sailed for Britain, where he stayed nearly two years. Douglass captivated audiences at hundreds of speaking engagements across the country. He made several extended tours of Scotland, where the anti-slavery societies were especially active. His slogans were carved on the turf of Arthur�s Seat and his visit celebrated in popular ballads of the time.

In his letter from Ayr, the former slave made common cause with the former ploughman who saw through the empty rhetoric of the 'bigoted and besotted clergy' and the 'shallow-brained aristocracy', and 'broke loose', as he put it, 'from the moorings society had thrown around him.' But he acknowledged his faults too. 'Like all bold pioneers, he made crooked paths', he observed - perhaps alluding to some of his own.

Both men rose from lowly origins to become figures of major historical importance. Douglass himself went on to hold government posts during the Civil War and afterwards, including that of Minister to Haiti. His books are nowadays required reading in schools in the United States. And he has become a cultural and political bone of contention, claimed by black nationalists on the one hand and those who think of him as more a typical American on the other - in much the same way that Burns can appear in turn the quintessential Scot and the hybrid cosmopolitan.

Douglass was not the only African American writer to have found much to admire in Burns. In James Weldon Johnson's introduction to the Book of American Negro Poetry (1931), his work was held up as an example of how sophisticated a vernacular literature could be, comparable to that of Paul Lawrence Dunbar:

The similarity between many phases of their lives is remarkable, and their works are not incommensurable. Burns took the strong dialect of his people and made it classic; Dunbar took the humble speech of his people and in it wrought music.

The Caribbean-born poet and novelist of the Harlem Renaissance, Claude McKay, was dubbed the 'Jamaican Burns' for his early dialect verse, though it is possible that Louise Bennett might be more deserving of the title (so long as we also allow that Burns might be the 'Scottish Bennett'). More recently, Maya Angelou celebrated the Burns bicentenary in 1996 with a visit to his homeland, the subject of a fascinating documentary made for television.

Douglass' interest in Scotland did not stop at Burns, though. His surname - adopted after his arrival in Massachusetts - he took from the hero of The Lady of the Lake. A rather cheeky gesture, perhaps, given the popularity of Walter Scott among the Southern planters he left behind. In view of the continued appropriation of Scottish emblems on the part of white supremacists in the United States - from the pseudo-celtic rituals of the Ku Klux Klan to the tartan wallpaper that adorns Confederate websites - his choice invites us to imagine a different Scotland, one less amenable to fantasies of racial purity and ethnic exclusion.

Another Scot who inspired Douglass was Lord Byron, particularly the lines from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage:

Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?

As far as I can tell, he quoted them first in an article entitled, appropriately enough, 'What are the Colored People Doing for Themselves', published in the North Star, the newspaper he founded on his return to the United States in 1847. No doubt a certain impatience with white abolitionists contributes to its subsequent reappearance in his fictionalization of the 1841 mutiny aboard the slave ship Creole in The Heroic Slave (1852) and at the end of the chapter that records his triumph over the notorious slave-breaker Covey in his second autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom (1855).²

But if Byron provided the slogan for an emergent black radicalism breaking free of white patronage, it was the words of 'A man's a man for a' that' by that other Scots poet which were called on time and time again to underscore Douglass' robust egalitarianism.³ Most poignantly perhaps in an address at a Burns Supper in Rochester, New York in 1849.

He began by admitting that 'I am not a Scotchman, and have a colored skin, but if a warm love of Scotch character - a high appreciation of Scotch genius - constitute any of the qualities of a true Scotch heart, then indeed does a Scotch heart throb beneath these ribs.' He described to his listeners his recent travels in the country - where 'every stream, hill, glen, and valley had been rendered classic by heroic deeds on behalf of freedom' - and his memorable visit to the poet�s birth-place.

'And if any think me out of my place on this occasion,' he concluded, pointing to the portrait of Burns on the wall, 'I beg that the blame may be laid at the door of him who taught me that "a man�s a man for a� that."'⁴

Notes

1. Frederick Douglass, 'A Fugitive Slave Visiting the Birth-place of Robert Burns', extract from a letter dated 23 April 1846, New York Tribune, 9 July 1846, reprinted in Alasdair Pettinger (ed), Always Elsewhere: Travels of the Black Atlantic (London: Cassell, 1998), pp95-7.

2. Frederick Douglass, 'What are the Colored People Doing for Themselves', North Star, 14 July 1848, reprinted in Philip S Foner (ed), The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. Volume 1: Early Years, 1817-1849 (New York: International Publishers, 1950), p315; The Heroic Slave [1852] in William Andrews (ed), The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p157; My Bondage and My Freedom [1855] (New York: Dover, 1969, p249. The lines also appeared in Henry Highland Garnet, An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America [1843] (New York: Arno Press, 1969), p93; they were used as masthead of Martin Delany�s paper The Mystery, launched New York, 1843) (see Robert S Levine (ed), Martin R Delany: A Documentary Reader (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2003), p27); cited in James McCune Smith, �Outside Barbarians�, Frederick Douglass� Paper (25 Dec 1851), reprinted in John Stauffer (ed), The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p80; and featured as the epigraph to Chapter III of W E B DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk [1903] in Writings (New York: Library of America, 1986), p392.

3. Frederick Douglass, Letter to William Lloyd Garrison, London, 23 May 1846, reprinted in Philip S Foner (ed), The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. Volume 1: Early Years, 1817-1849 (New York: International Publishers, 1950), pp170-1; 'The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered: An Address Delivered in Hudson, Ohio on 12 July 1854', reprinted in John W Blassingame (ed), The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series One: Speeches, Debates and Interviews. Volume 2: 1847-54 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1982), p523; 'Our Recent Western Tour', Douglass' Monthly, April 1859, reprinted in Philip S Foner (ed), The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. Volume II: Pre-Civil War Decade, 1850-1860 (New York: International Publishers, 1950) p451.

4. Frederick Douglass, 'On Robert Burns and Scotland: An Address Delivered in Rochester, New York on 25 January 1849', reprinted in John W Blassingame (ed), The Frederick Douglass Papers. Series One: Speeches, Debates and Interviews. Volume 2: 1847-54 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1982), pp147-48.

(Revised and expanded version of an article first published in the Sunday Herald, 23 January, 2000).

Jack Chase and Sandy Jenkins

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 01:39:09 +0000

I just came across this paper I gave at the Herman Melville and Frederick Douglass conference, held in New Bedford, Mass. in June 2005. I suppose it has been waiting for me to turn it into something more substantial, but I doubt I ever will. So here it is, in its flawed, elliptical original state.

What follows is the summary of an experiment: a report of the results observed when two characters from Melville and Douglass are placed alongside each other. One day, perhaps, Jack Chase and Sandy Jenkins will have their own conference. Until then, they can briefly make an appearance in the shadow of their creators.

The �incomparable� Jack Chase, I hardly need explain, is one of the more engaging figures in Melville�s White-Jacket (1850). You may recall him using his impressive powers of eloquence to persuade the captain to grant the crew of the Neversink a day�s liberty ashore in Rio de Janeiro. With a cool blend of flattery, entreaty, and some choice quotations from Shakespeare and Pope�s translation of the Odyssey, he succeeds in winning the concession, and the scene ends with his shipmates crying out, �Jack Chase forever!� �Who can talk to commodores like our matchless Jack.�

In My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Douglass tells us how a group of slaves planning to escape north by canoe are arrested and suspicion falls on former co-conspirator Sandy Jenkins as their betrayer. Although he has little evidence, the literate Douglass singles out the dialect-speaking Jenkins who � the previous year � had persuaded Douglass to carry the root of a certain herb in order to protect himself from the cruelties of his master. This, and the fact that Jenkins had withdrawn from the plot following a dream in which he saw Douglass attacked by a swarm of angry birds, seems to confirm that he alone of the group remained in thrall to what he calls �slaveholding priestcraft�.

Both books draw on the familiar idiom of ante-bellum reform � condemning institutions (naval flogging, chattel slavery) with the objective of securing their abolition. We might even argue that this idiom helped to secure their popularity: they addressed a readership already receptive to such sentiments. But they also tell us a good deal about the strategies by which sailors and slaves negotiated the power relationships of men-of-war and plantations on a daily basis. After all, desertion and mutiny, flight and revolt were the last resort of a minority. Most of the time, sailors and slaves settled for less dramatic measures, that had the more limited objectives of making their lives more dignified and their hardships easier to bear.

If the institutions appear to be susceptible to a moral critique (giving us a stark choice between good and evil), the strategies seem to belong to the much less clear-cut world of everyday ethics (enjoining us to attend to the grey area between better and worse).

White-Jacket and My Bondage stand out from most contemporary nautical reminiscences and slave narratives, I would argue, because of the extent to which they introduce novelistic techniques to the non-fictional forms that they draw on. I�m particularly interested in the ways in which they create significant, complex secondary characters � apart from the first-person protagonists. How these characters choose to respond to their circumstances is a matter of some importance.

Melville and Douglass pay unusually close attention to the dynamics of what might be called �ethical authority�: in particular the rhetorical skills employed by individuals to manage or intimidate subordinates, to win concessions and respect from superiors, to provide comfort and support to their peers. In doing so, White-Jacket and My Bondage might be said to threaten or undermine antebellum programmes of reform by dwelling on the nuances of conduct that the moral condemnation of institutions insists are irrelevant distractions.

Very briefly, I would like to argue that these texts engage with ethical authority on two levels.

Firstly, they depict the rhetorical strategies used by sailors and slaves. Jack Chase and Sandy Jenkins serve as models of admirable and misguided conduct respectively. The former is shown using his skill to win concessions not only for himself but for his shipmates. The latter cowardly withdraws from the runaway plot due to his backward belief in the supernatural and is assumed to have betrayed his fellow slaves. While the one sets an example of how to negotiate relations of power to common advantage, the other shows how a refusal to engage with them can leave one�s comrades exposed to danger.

Secondly, White-Jacket and My Bondage depict these strategies in such a way as to validate the strategies used by their own narrators, which are (in the case of Jack Chase) modelled on - or (in the case of Sandy Jenkins) in direct opposition to - those highlighted in the story they tell.

When they came to write their books, of course, Melville and Douglass were no longer sailor or slave (and were free to pass judgement on their former tormentors from the safety of the printed page). But, as authors struggling to make an impact in the literary marketplace, facing a potentially sceptical reading public as a worker might face a demanding, even unreasonable, perhaps tyrannical employer, they had to choose their words carefully. To the extent that White-Jacket was indeed (as Melville himself famously suggested) a �job� written for money, then his preference for the popular form of the anti-flogging nautical reminiscence was a shrewd one. Douglass, too, followed his first, successful slave narrative, with another work in the same vein.

However, they knew their books were much more than the routine record of simple recollections, important as the empirical accuracy of their representations of ships and plantations were. Not only do they complicate the moralistic rhetoric of institutional reform with a more ambivalent - novelistic � ethics of individual character, they do so within complex symbolic and allegorical frames. The prefaces of both works betray a certain anxiety that the cost of such sophistication might be a loss of credibility. They are haunted by the spectre of readers who will refuse to accept that Melville or Douglass were once sailors or slaves at all.

In these circumstances, Jack Chase and Sandy Jenkins serve a very useful purpose.

If the conventional anti-flogging tale demanded a rather na�ve narrator � not too clever or serious � the very title of White-Jacket already hints at different requirements. The jacket itself promises Carlylean probings of surface and depth, its patchwork character alluding to its unusual method of composition, its colour suggesting the presence of an allegory in which race plays an important role. To develop such propositions within a first-person account by a common sailor would strain credulity if it weren�t for the evidence of just that sort of erudition in one of the men on board the Neversink. Just as Chase uses his rhetorical skills to persuade the captain to give the crew �liberty� ashore at Rio, so the narrator of White-Jacket (who � in the interval since the events he describes � appears to have modelled himself on his former shipmate) deploys a similar �off-hand, polished, and poetical style� in order to win over potentially sceptical readers.

In My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass hints at the kind of slave narrative preferred by his former abolitionist mentors when he refers to the advice that his 1841 lectures should restrict themselves to the unvarnished facts and could benefit from �a little of the plantation manner of speech�. It was advice he very soon found difficult to follow, as he was by then already, as he says, �reading and thinking.� If Douglass� refusal to toe the line was already evident in his 1845 Narrative, it was more boldly set out ten years later in My Bondage, which ruffles feathers not only by denouncing slavery as well as describing it, but also denouncing prejudice and discrimination in the North. It seems entirely fitting that Sandy Jenkins � as a representative of the kind of narrator Douglass was expected to be but couldn�t - plays a correspondingly enlarged role in the later work. On almost every appearance � Jenkins is introduced as the �root man� as if to make sure the reader understands that superstition, the vernacular, cowardice and betrayal are virtually synonymous. And by implication aligning the standard-English narrative voice with reason, bravery and integrity.

As an important closing qualification, I�d like to raise the the possibility that their respective narrators are perhaps a little too smitten by Jack Chase or a little too harsh on Sandy Jenkins. After all, Melville and Douglass � wittingly or not � give us enough to question their narrators� assessment of these important characters.

On the one hand, Jack Chase is not quite as heroic as he seems. For instance, when his friend White-Jacket is �arraigned at the mast�, he is only bold enough to step forward and defend him, after Colbrook, the corporal of the marines, has done so first. And the one man to stand up to the captain�s �massacre of the beards� is not Chase (for all his indignation and bravado when he submits to the barber�s shears) but �old Ushant� � who is flogged and imprisoned for his resistance but who is rewarded with the �unsuppressible cheers of all hands� when he disembarks in Richmond.

On the other, perhaps Sandy Jenkins is not quite the fool he is made out to be. If his offer of the �root� is supposed to represent a response to slavery that is as backward and ineffectual as Douglass� bold fight against Covey is modern and effective it still leaves open the possibility that it is actually the root that gives Douglass the confidence - if not the power - to win the fight, as he reports Jenkins later claiming.

If we take these apparent inconsistencies seriously, we might be forced to reconsider not only what kind of conduct Melville and Douglass are implicitly praising and condemning among sailors and slaves; but also what kind of voice, what form of address, works for them as writers.

Run This Way � 1

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 12:52:33 +0000

A young child � as parents will know � makes no strict distinction between walking and running. They do not � as adults do � compartmentalize them and see walking as the normal, default form of self-locomotion with running reserved for special occasions (proverbially, when you�re late, pursuing someone - or being pursued, or doing it as a form of regular exercise or competitive sport).

Small children constantly change their velocity � compared to the regular speed of an adult, they are often frustratingly slow (executing detours, pausing to examine something, or simply to stop and sulk) or worryingly fast (looping off to suddenly chase something or sprinting ahead, usually in the vicinity of a busy road junction). In both cases they force the adult to adjust to their pace and thus, as it were, become children again, if somewhat against their will.

I was thinking of this while reading Barbara Bodichon�s American Diary¹, in which the British feminist artist and journalist recorded her tour of the United States in the late 1850s.

It seemed to me that walking and running carry a certain rhetorical emphasis in her text . Early on she remarks that �slavery makes all labor dishonourable and walking gets to be thought a labour, an exertion�²; in other words it is stigmatized by the privileged elite as something only black � or poor white � people would do.

For this reason then, at least in the South, her and her husband�s fondness for talking walks � and long walks at that � would seem to carry a political charge, as if they were a form of discreet abolitionism. References to their walks appear frequently, although they gather added momentum in New England, starting with a �lovely walk with Mr [Theodore Dwight] Weld� � compiler of the influential American Slavery As It Is (1839) � in New Jersey,³ a walk that becomes a distinctly abolitionist one in that it leads them to the grave of James G Birney.⁴

So much for walking. Running, though, has rather different associations. A Southern woman she meets tells her, �If you teach them [slaves] to read they will run away�.⁵ And the image of the runaway slave recurs at several points in the diary, a figure to which Bodichon is drawn. Indeed at one point she writes, �I hope to paint a picture of a runaway slave in these woods�.⁶

Running, you might think, is a dynamic contrast to the rather muted activity of walking. A suitable figure for immediate rather than gradual emancipation, perhaps, or an emblem of the black radical rather than the white abolitionist. And yet Bodichon�s sentimental eclipsing of the slave's feelings by her own � to paint a runaway would seem to presuppose capturing him or her stalled in flight, perhaps even hiding from pursuers not far behind � allows even less agency to the runner than her Southern companion, who does at least, if somewhat ruefully, allow that they might actually get away. This would also seem to be the view of Marcus Wood, whose survey of 19th-century visual representations of the male runaway concludes:

In its literalisation of the concept of �run-away� it is a negation of the slave�s most radical anti-slavery gesture. The slave does not guilefully depart under shade of night, but stands out bold and supid on the bleak white background of the printed page. He does not steam on a boat .... or travel ... by train, or ride... on a horse. Comic, trivial, pathetic, and always the same, with his bundle of goods and one foot eternally raised, he proclaims his inadequacy for the task he has set himself. The very engraved lines which make up the the slave are running round in circles, running everywhere and nowhere. One arm and the legs form triangles | thrusting forward; the stick, bundle and other arm form another set of triangles hanging back. The net result is that the head � poised, straining, perfectly still � is itself a motionless O.⁷

If the antebellum South coded walking as a form of undignified labour, then running was an expression of cowardice. In Honor and Slavery (1996), Kenneth Greenberg argued that the �man of honour� was expected to betray no fear of death and to be willing to be killed rather than lose face. And so if challenged to a duel he would confront his adversary rather than make himself scarce.⁸ What is interesting is that despite, for instance, Austin Steward�s loud condemnation of the �inhuman practice� of duelling and its �barbarous code of honor� in Twenty-Two Years a Slave (1857), these values were espoused even by slaves themselves, however much they sought to distance themselves from them as adults once they had reinvented themselves as bourgeois Northerners.⁹

Steward himself relates the story of a fugitive slave, Doctor Davis, kidnapped on a boat bound for Buffalo. �Give me liberty or death! Or death!� he repeated, with a shudder� before cutting his own throat with a razor.¹⁰ This motto - of Virginia patriot Patrick Henry ¹¹ - is quoted by both Douglass and Jacobs in the course of narrating their first escape attempts.¹² Related to this are the episodes which permit the writer to express their admiration for a courageous - if ultimately suicidal - defiance of a fellow-slave, such as Big Harry and Ben in the narratives of James Williams and John Thompson.¹³

Thompson proclaims his own allegiance to this code when he refuses to flee from the company of a 'pretty young lady' as a band of patrollers catches up with him on a forbidden visit to a neighbouring plantation. He explains that 'no person is allowed to possess gentlemanly bravery and valor at the South who will run from the face of any man, or will not even courageously look death in the face, with all its terrors.'¹⁴ Similar considerations inform Josiah Henson's and William Parker's choice of the right time to escape. Parker finds that when an opportunity presents itself, he finds he 'did not like to go without first having a difficulty' with his master. 'Much as I disliked my condition, I was ignorant enough to think that something besides the fact that I was a slave was necessary to exonerate me from blame in running away.'¹⁵ Henson, notoriously, delays his departure many years, a 'sentiment of honor' preventing him from succumbing to the temptation of absconding as he escorts eighteen slaves across the free state of Ohio from Maryland to his master's brother's plantation in Kentucky; only much later, when he finds that neither his new master, nor his family, seem to be 'under any, the slightest, obligation' to him for saving his life, does he feel 'absolved' of his obligation to them, and determines to make his escape to Canada.¹⁶

The episode that comes closest to a duel is probably Douglass' celebrated fight with Edward Covey, after which the 'tyrant' never again laid on me the weight of his finger in anger.'¹⁷ Again, its significance is that it allows Douglass to condemn Covey as a 'coward', and to represent himself as one no longer; a slave now only in name, his 'spirit was roused to an attitude of manly independence.'¹⁸ When he does escape, it can no longer be understood as running away; rather it is simply the taking possession of a freedom he has already won in a fair contest.

[To be continued.]

Notes

1. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, An American Diary 1857-8, edited from the manuscript by Joseph W Reed, Jr (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972).

2. Ibid., p56.

3. Ibid., p142.

4. Ibid., p143. For further references to walks and walking, see pp67, 96-7, 111, 115, 122, 124, 135, 145, 146, 147, 152, 154, 160.

5. Ibid., p62.

6. Ibid., p77.

7. Marcus Wood, Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780-1865 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp93-4.

8. Kenneth S Greenberg, Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Death, Humanitarianism, Slave Rebellions, the Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 19960, esp. Chapter Four, 'Death.'

9. Austin Steward, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman (Rochester, NY: William Alling, 1857), pp67, 47.

10. Ibid., p143.

11. In a speech to the Virginia Convention 1775. See William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (Philadelphia: James Webster, 1817), p123.

12. Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom [1855] with a new introduction by Philip S Foner (New York: Dover Publications, 1969), p. 284; Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl [1861] in Yuval Taylor (ed), I Was Born a Slave - Volume 2.: 1849-1866. An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives (Edinburgh: Payback Press, 1999), p99.

13. James Williams, Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave, Who was for Several Years a Driver on a Cotton Plantation in Alabama (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1838), pp53-59; John Thompson, The Life of John Thompson, A Fugitive Slave; Containing His History of 25 Years in Bondage, and his Providential Escape [1856] in Yuval Taylor (ed), I Was Born a Slave - Volume 2.: 1849-1866. An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives (Edinburgh: Payback Press, 1999), p427.

14. John Thompson, op. cit., p444.

15. William Parker, The Freedman's Story [1866] in Yuval Taylor (ed), I Was Born a Slave - Volume 2.: 1849-1866. An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives (Edinburgh: Payback Press, 1999), p751. The 'ignorant' here is the Northern adult chastising the Southern child.

16. Josiah Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada [1849] in Yuval Taylor (ed), I Was Born a Slave - Volume 1: 1770-1847. An Anthology of Classic Slave Narratives (Edinburgh: Payback Press, 1999), pp734, 743-44.

17. Douglass, op. cit., p246.

18. Ibid., p247.

International Diplomacy

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:21:22 +0100

Outside Haiti, the world's mainstream media rarely take notice of the country's elections. Even after the January, 2010 earthquake, the attitude pretty much stayed the same. They continued to repeat the standard line that it is a failed, corrupt state, kept afloat by foreign donations and NGOs. Whatever the result in November's poll, none of this would change.

But then their interest in the election was sparked once Wyclef Jean hinted that he would stand, a hint confirmed on 5 August. Along with 33 others, he waited for the decision of the Conseil �lectoral Provisoire (CEP), Haiti's electoral council, for confirmation that they would be eligible to stand.

The decision was expected on Tuesday 17 August, but at the last minute it was postponed until the Friday. And when it came, the press were all aflutter: Wyclef had been disqualified - although 14 others had too, leaving only 19 candidates to appear on the ballot papers in November.

The next day, in the Miami Herald appeared a piece entitled Banned from ballot, Wyclef remains an inspiration by Edwidge Danticat. In it she admits to initially feeling excitement at the thought of his candidacy. Wyclef had helped to put Haiti back on the front pages again, and no doubt for some he was a refreshing outsider compared to the stuffy intellectual elite.

A cultural outsider maybe, but a political one? His subsequent criticisms of the CEP (subsequently expressed in song) were related to the rejection of his own candidacy, not that of others. And he certainly had nothing to say about its decision to exclude Haiti's largest political party, Fanmi Lavalas, from the Senate elections in April last year, a decision condemned in an open letter (pdf) to Jose Miguel Insulza of the Organisation of American States and Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations. The ban remains in force for this year's elections.

Of course, too stringent criticism of the CEP would undercut his own position in the unlikely event that they reverse their decision. If participating in the election in itself would not be an index of his support for the ruling elite, his notorious remarks in support of the armed rebels who helped overthrow the democratically-elected Aristide in 2004 (which he has not retracted) should leave us in no doubt. And indeed not one of the candidates is guiltless on that score, which is another reason why Haiti Libert� has called it a sham election.

Danticat remains silent on these matters. Perhaps she is too close to her friend to criticize him in public. I am reminded of another Caribbean woman writer seemingly losing courage when the opportunity to take a stand comes available. When Jamaica Kincaid visited Tel Aviv in January 2004, Haaretz reported her response when asked for her thoughts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

'In my opinion, it would be rude to come as a guest into someone's home and tell him how to live,' she says. 'I have opinions, but I express them in private. I am only a guest here.'

The analogy between visiting a country and visiting someone's house is rather forced, to say the least. And in any case, if you discovered that your host was keeping someone prisoner in the basement, you might just think this warranted more than a raised eyebrow.

Reading between the lines, though, she perhaps betrays her opinions all the same. After all, if she wholeheartedly approved of the Occupation she wouldn't have to worry about telling her hosts 'how to live.' But if that is all we can take from this report of her visit, these are slim pickings indeed. One could hardly talk of an bold intervention here.

Danticat on the other hand hints at much more. Her piece indirectly points up a number of other reasons why Wyclef might not be perfect presidential candidate: his poor French, questions about the probity of his Y�le foundation, and indeed his problematic residency status. And yet by not making a meal of them, as a friend, her words may indeed carry weight, and she reminds him - in public and therefore in a way that would make it harder for him to - of his duties. He should bow to the decision gracefully, not to incite violence, and to concentrate on doing what he does best - being a musician and a roving ambassador for the country.

Still, the question remains whether Haitian intellectuals have been unduly reluctant to embrace the cause of popular democracy. The thinly disguised attacks on Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Lyonel Trouillot's novel Bicentenaire (2004) and Raoul Peck's film Moloch Tropical (2009) are perhaps the best-known examples (and taken to task by Le Monde du Sud/elsie-news and Kim Ives respectively).

Danticat's writings are politically much more ambiguous. Her memoir, Brother, I'm Dying (2007) sympathetically records her uncle's radicalism. He embraced Aristide in the late 1980s, seeing in him a version of Daniel Fignol�, ousted by Fran�ois Duvalier in 1957. Fifteen years later, now an old man in poor health, he was eventually forced to leave Haiti when some of Aristide's supporters (wrongly) accused him of collaborating with UN forces and police. In her account, Danticat distances herself from the loaded term chim�res, used to demonize Aristide's supporters, although her choice of nouns in her reference to anti-Aristide 'groups' and pro-Aristide 'gangs' arguably closes that distance.¹

Similarly, perhaps, her narrative of events of 2004 in the essay 'Bicentennial' in Create Dangerously (2010) avoids celebrating Aristide's departure from office (and subsequent exile in South Africa) without actually describing it as a coup d'�tat.²

Given the prevailing balance of power, such apparent even-handedness cannot help but bring comfort to the forces that brought an end to Haiti's precarious decade-long experiment with democracy. It would be hard to think of such reticence among an older generation of Haitian writers, such as Jacques Roumain and Jacques-Stephen Alexis.

Part of the reason must be the legacy of thirty years of dictatorship, during which any form of political dissent within the country was practically impossible, and clearly forced writers and artists to express their resistance indirectly. And another factor must be that - as a dyaspora living in North America - writers like Danticat (as she clearly indicates in her latest book) are caught between the expectations of fellow Haitian-Americans (who frequently take issue when her characters aren't sufficiently 'representative') and the demands of those back home (who feel that as someone who has left the country she has no right to comment on its political scene).

In his book on Aristide and the Lavalas movement, Peter Hallward argued that 'the great majority of intellectuals and academics in Haiti are conservative as a matter of course,' ³. If that is true, then equivocation is hardly sufficient to tip the balance. As Chris Bongie observes (pdf), it seems, in the wake of a 'natural' catastrophe and a 'humanitarian' crisis, that 'taking sides' is entirely inappropriate. But it is precisely under such circumstances that dominant versions of 'historical truth' take hold, blocking the full range of possibilities � or electoral candidates � that lay claim to our consideration.

Notes

1. Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I�m Dying (New York: Vintage, 2008), pp177, 150-1.

2. Edwidge Danticat, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist At Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp97-105.

3. Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment (London: Verso, 2007), p194.

The Payback II

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:53:18 +0100

Responsibility for the spoof Bastille Day announcement promising the repayment of Haiti's 'independence debt' to France (covered in an earlier post) was claimed by a group called CRIME.

The original website at diplomatie.gov.fr was taken down by the authorities, but was quickly replaced by one at diplomatiegov.info and the video of the announcement can now be viewed here.

On 16 July, a message from the @DiplomatieFR twitter account stated:

� Le Comit� pour le Remboursement Imm�diat des Montants Envol�s � d�Ha�ti (CRIME) takes credit for a hoax carried out on July 14.

The acronym works in English too, standing for the Committee for the Reimbursement of the Indemnity Money Extorted from Haiti.

At a press conference in Montreal on 22 July the group promised more action according to this report in the Winnipeg Free Press. And then the issue seemed to disappear from the news.

But on 16 August an open letter to Nicolas Sarkozy was published in the French daily Liberation urging France 'to pay Haiti, the world�s first black republic, the restitution it is due.'

The letter was reprinted on CRIME's own website, both in French and English with a full list of signatories. The issue was also covered by BBC News, the Guardian, and the Toronto Star.

That the signatories included French scholars such as Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar and Jacques Ranci�re may have brought some comfort to Tontongi, the author of La France doit restituer � Ha�ti la ran�on de l'indemnit� (which seems to have been written before the letter was published), who noted the disappointing response of formerly progressive intellectuals such as R�gis Debray and Ren� Depestre to Aristide's renewal of the claim for restitution in 2003.

The substantial article draws on the detailed arguments made by Anthony D Phillips regarding Haiti's Independence Debt and Prospects for Restitution (pdf) which demonstrate the solid legal case behind Aristide's claim. In 1825 President Boyer 'agreed' to pay a 150 million franc indemnity to compensate French planters for the loss of land and slaves as a result of Haiti's independence.

The legality of this agreement could be challenged on several grounds: the fact that negotiations were shadowed by the threat of French military force; the dubious basis on which the amount of the indemnity was arrived at; and the already-established consensus among the colonial powers that slavery and the slave trade were morally wrong - as evidenced by the abolition of the slave trade by Britain and the United States in 1807, the commitment to extend abolition in the Treaties of Paris that ended the Napoleonic Wars; and even the (albeit short-lived) abolition of slavery by the French government itself in 1794.

Furthermore, when it became clear that Haiti could not make the scheduled repayments (it had to borrow the first two installments from French banks), in 1834 the government appointed a commission to review the arrangement. Although the Dalloz Report declared the original ordinance unlawful and argued that it was the responsibility of the French government to compensate the planters, a replacement treaty imposed a schedule that was scarcely less crippling.

Phillips examines the legal grounds for restitution in the light of successful 'unjust enrichment' claims made by Holocaust victims against Swiss banks, and by American states against tobacco corporations. He concludes:

In the recent movement toward addressing historical injustice through legal and political action, Haiti's Independence Debt makes a compelling case. The historical background presents a sympathetic story of profound tragedy and unfairness. The story well fits the traditional elements of a cognizable unjust enrichment claim and presents strong arguments against dismissal on procedural grounds. As part of a concerted, multi-disciplinary approach, a claim for the Independence Debt could realize some relief for the modern-day people of impoverished Haiti and perhaps deliver justice for one of history's most tragic wrongs.

The Christian Science Monitor reprted on 17 August that the French Foreign Ministry had dismissed the petition. But the article makes the following interesting observation:

French officials did not address the legitimacy of the debt, with analysts saying such an admission could open a flood-gate of former colonial claims. France, for its part, has steadily requested that Moscow recompense a group of French investors that prior to 1917 put vast sums into the Russian rail system. Lenin declared the debt void under Soviet rule. But recently Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin agreed to reopen negotiations.

According to a post on The dangers of sovereign debt default, the Soviet government settled with British holders of these so-called Czar Bonds in 1986 'because the Soviets wanted to get hold of large amounts of Czarist money frozen in 1917 that was still sitting in British banks.' And while the Yeltsin government compensated French bondholders to the tune of $400 million in 1996, many have argued that the amount should have been much larger. And the Association F�d�rative Internationale des Porteurs d'Emprunts Russes (AFIPER) continue to press for what they argue is full restitution of the bondholders' investments. (See also this article in Le Figaro in July this year).

If the holders of Czar Bonds are as much victims of violent breaches of international law and custom as the Haitian government, then there is an embarrassing inconsistency in the French government's response to their claims for restitution. But even if the Haitian petition that the government ignores is based on arguments as strong, if not stronger, than those that led to Russian compensation in 1996, what makes such claims compelling is not the logic of their arguments but the relative standing of the two parties in the dispute. In some circumstances, France can compel Russia to bow to international pressure in ways that Haiti could never duplicate in her dealings with France.

But this is not something we are likely to hear the Foreign Ministry say in so many words.

Spencer St John (1884)

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 16:11:27 +0100

Sir Spenser Buckingham St John (1825-1910) was a British diplomat. He began his career with positions in South East Asia, including consul-general at Brunei. He then spent twelve years in the Caribbean, mainly in Haiti, as charg� d'affaires and then as resident minister, between 1863 and 1875. Then followed appointments in Lima and Mexico.

He wrote several books based on his experiences in the Malay archipelago, but is perhaps best known for his notorious Hayti, or, The Black Republic (1884), described by the Dictionary of National Biography as 'a savagely hostile account' and as 'the singly most negative book every written on Haiti' by Bob Corbett, who believes that the claims concerning cannibalism in the second edition (1889) are even more outrageous than those in the first.

The full text of the chapter on vaudoux is reproduced below, although it is a concern throughout the book, which discusses many other topics including history, government, education, law and order, language and literature, agriculture, commerce and finance.

Please note this is a draft transcription, pending final proof-reading.

Chapter V: Vaudoux Worship and Cannibalism

When the news reached Paris of the massacre in Port-au-Prince of the mulattoes by orders of the black President Soulouque in April 1849, it is said that Louis Napoleon took the opportunity of saying at a public reception, in presence of the sable representative of Hayti, 'Ha�ti, Ha�ti! pays de barbares.' Had he known all the particulars relating to Vaudoux worship and cannibalism, he would have been still more justified in so expressing himself.

There is no subject of which it is more difficult to treat than Vaudoux worship and the cannibalism that too often accompanies its rites. Few living out of the Black Republic are aware of the extent to which it is carried, and if I insist at length upon the subject, it is in order to endeavour to fix attention on this frightful blot, and thus induce enlightened Haytians to take measures for its extirpation, if that be possible.¹

It is certain that no people are more sensitive to [184] foreign public opinion than the Haytians, and they therefore endeavour to conceal by every means this evidence of the barbarism of their fellow countrymen. It is, however, but the story of the foolish ostrich over again; every foreigner in Hayti knows that cannibalism exists, and that the educated classes endeavour to ignore it instead of devising means to eradicate it.

The only Governments that endeavoured to grapple with the evil were those of President Geffrard and President Boisrond-Canal, and probably they in some measure owe their fall to this action on their part.

The first question naturally asked is, 'Who is tainted by the Vaudoux worship?' I fear the answer must be, 'Who is not?' This does not necessarily imply that they are tainted with cannibalism, as I shall hereafter explain. It is notorious that the Emperor Soulouque was a firm believer, and that the mulatto general Therlonge was one of its high priests, and in his younger days used to appear in a scarlet robe performing antics in the trees. A late Prime Minister, whose bloody deeds will be an everlasting reproach to his memory, was said to be a chief priest of the sect, and many others whom I will not at present indicate.

If persons so high placed can be counted among its votaries, it may be readily believed that the masses are given up to this brutalising worship. During the reign of Soulouque, a priestess was arrested for having performed a sacrifice too openly; when about to be conducted to prison, a foreign bystander remarked aloud [184] that probably she would be shot. She laughed and said, 'If I were to beat the sacred drum, and march through the city, not one, from the Emperor downwards, but would humbly follow me.' She was sent to jail, but no one ever heard that she was punished.

President Salnave (1867), inclined at first to court the support of the educated classes, kept clear of the Vaudoux. But when he found his advances repulsed, for the gross debauchery at the palace prevented any respectable person from ever willingly entering it, and when the fortunes of the civil war that then raged began to turn against him (1869), he, from some motive or other, whether superstition or the desire to conciliate the mass of his ignorant troops, went to consult a well-known priest living near Marquissant, in the neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince, and there went through all the ceremonies that were required. He bathed in the blood of goats, made considerable presents to the priests and priestesses, and then feasted with the assembly, who all gave themselves up to the lowest debauchery, and kept up these festivities so long that even the iron frame of the President gave way, and he was confined to his bed for many days after.

The fortunes of war still continuing adverse, he again consulted the Papaloi or priest, who insisted that he must now go through the highest ceremony; that the 'goat without horns' must be slain, and that he must be anointed with its blood. If he agreed to this, then the priest assured him of certain victory over his enemies.

[185]Whether Salnave gave in or not I cannot say positively. His enemies of all classes declared he did; his friends among the lower orders confirmed the story; but the few respectable people who adhered to his cause naturally denied the truth of the accusation. I think the weight of evidence was more against him than for him.

To explain the phrase of 'the goat without horns,' I must notice that there are two sects which follow the Vaudoux worship - those who only delight in the blood and flesh of white cocks and spotless white goats at their ceremonies, and those who are not only devoted to these, but on great occasions call for the flesh and blood of the 'goat without horns,' or human victims.

When Hayti was still a French colony Vaudoux worship flourished, but there is no distinct mention of human sacrifices in the accounts transmitted to us. In Moreau de St. M�ry's excellent description of the colony, from whose truthful pages it is a pleasure to seek for information, he gives a very graphic account of fetishism as it existed in his day, that is, towards the close of the last century.

After describing certain dances, he remarks that the Calinda and the Chica are not the only ones brought from Africa to the colony. There is another which has been known for a long time, principally in the western part of the island (Hayti), and which has the name of Vaudoux.² But it is not merely as a dance [186] that the Vaudoux merits consideration; at least it is accompanied by circumstances that give it a rank among those institutions in which superstition and ridiculous practices have a principal part.

According to the Arada negroes, who are the true sectaries of the Vaudoux in the colony, who maintain its principles and its rules, Vaudoux signifies an all-powerful and supernatural being, on whom depend all the events which take place in the world. This being is the non-venomous serpent, and it is under its auspices that all those assemble who profess this doctrine. Acquaintance with the past, knowledge of the present, prescience of the future, all appertain to this serpent, that only consents, however, to communicate his power and prescribe his will through the organ of a grand priest, whom the sectaries select, and still more by that of the negress whom the love of the latter has raised to the rank of high priestess.

These two delegates, who declare themselves inspired by their god, or in whom the gift of inspiration is really manifested in the opinion of their followers, [187] bear the pompous names of King and Queen, or the despotic ones of Master and Mistress, or the touching titles of Papa and Mama. They are during their whole life the chiefs of the great family of the Vaudoux, and they have a right to the unlimited respect of those that compose it. It is they who decide if the serpent agrees to admit a candidate into the society, who prescribe the obligations and the duties he is to fulfil; it is they who receive the gifts and presents which the god expects as a just homage to him. To disobey them, to resist them, is to disobey God himself, and to expose oneself to the greatest misfortunes.

This system of domination on the one hand, and of blind obedience on the other, being well established, they at fixed dates meet together, and the King and Queen of the Vaudoux preside, following the forms which they probably brought from Africa, and to which Creole customs have added many variations, and some traits which betray European ideas; as, for instance, the scarf, or rich belt, which the Queen wears at these assemblies, and which she occasionally varies.

The reunion for the true Vaudoux worship, for that which has least lost its primtiive purity, never takes place except secretly, in the dead of night, and in a secure place safe from any profane eye. There each initiated puts on a pair of sandals and fastens around his body a number, more or less considerable, of red handkerchiefs, or of handkerchiefs in which that colour predominates. The King of the Vaudoux has [188] finer handkerchiefs and in greater number, and one that is entirely red, with which he binds his forehead as a diadem. A girdle, generally blue, gives the finishing-stroke to the tokens of his resplendent dignity.

The Queen, dressed with simple luxury, also shows her predilection for the red colour, ³ which is generally that of her sash or belt.

The King and queen place themselves at one end of the room, near a kind of altar, on which is a box where the serpent is kept, and where each adept can see it through the bars of its cage.

When they have verified that no curious stranger has penetrated into the place, they commence the ceremony by the adoration of the serpent, by protestations of being faithful to its worship and entirely submissive to its commands. They renew, holding the hands of the King and Queen, the oath of secrecy, which is the foundation of the association, and it is accompanied by everything horrible which delirium could imagine to render it more imposing.

When the followers of the Vaudoux are thus prepared to receive the impressions which the King and Queen desire them to feel, they take the affectionate tone of a tender father or mother; vaunt the happiness which is the appanage of those who are devoted to the Vaudoux; they exhort them to have confidence in him, and to give him the proofs of it by taking his counsel in all the most important circumstnaces of their lives.

[189] Then the crowd separates, and each one who may desire it, and according to his seniority in the sect, approaches to implore the aid of the Vaudoux. Most of them ask for the talent to be able to direct the conduct of their masters. But this is not enough: one wants more money; another the gift of being able to please an unfeeling one; another desires to reattach an unfaithful lover; this one wishes for a prompt cure or long life; an elderly female comes to conjure the god to end the disdain with which she is treated by the youth whose love she would captivate; a young one solicits eternal love, or she repeats the malediction that hate dictates to her against a preferred rival. There is not a passion which does not give vent to its vow, and crime itself does not always disguise those which have for object its success. At each of these invocations the King of the Vaudoux appears absorbed in thought. The spirit seizes him; suddenly he takes hold of the box in which the serpent is confined, places it on the ground, and commands the Queen to get on it. As soon as the sacred ark is beneath her feet, the new Pythoness is filled by the spirit of their god; she trembles, all her body is in a state of convulsion, and the oracle speaks by her mouth. Now she flatters and promises happiness, now she bursts into reproaches; and according to her wishes, her interest, or her caprice, she dictates as decrees without appeal everything which she is pleased to prescribe, in the name of the serpent, to this imbecile crowd, that never expresses the slightest doubt of the most monstrous absurdity, and [190] that only knows how to obey what is despotically dictated to it.

After all these questions have received some kind of an answer from the oracle, many of which are not without ambiguity, they form a circle, and the serpent is again placed on the altar. Then his followers bring as tribute the objects they think most worthy, and that no jealous curiosity shall raise a blush, the offerings are placed in a covered hat. The King and Queen then promise that the offerings shall be accepted by their god. It is from this collection that the expenses of the meetings are paid, that aid is afforded to absent members, or to those present who may be in want, or to others from whom the society may expect something in favour of its glory or renown. They now propose and settle their future plans, they consider what is to be done, and all this is declared by the Queen the will of the god; often enough these plans have not for object either good order or public tranquility. A fresh oath, as execrable as the first, engages each one to be silent as to what has passed, to aid in what has been settled; and sometimes a vase, in which there is the blood of a goat, still warm, seals on the lips of those present the promise to suffer death rather than reveal anything, and even to inflict it on any one who may forget that he is thus so solemnly bound to secrecy.

After these ceremonies commences the dance of the Vaudoux.

If there should be a new candidate, it is by his admission that the f�te commences. The King of the [191] Vaudoux, with some black substance, traces a large circle, and in this the notice is placed; and in his hand he puts a packet of herbs, horsehair, pieces of horn, and other trifling objects. Then lightly touching him on the head with a slight wooden wand, he thunders forth an African song, which is repeated in chorus by those who stand around the circle; then the new member begins to tremble and to dance, which is called to practise the Vaudoux. If, unhappily, excess of excitement makes him leave the circle, the song immediately ceases, the King and Queen turn their backs to avert the evil omen. The dancer recollects himself, re-enters the circle, again trembles, drinks and arrives at length at so convulsive a state, that the King orders him to stop, by striking him lightly on the head with his wand, or, should he think it necessary, with a heavy kurbash. He is taken to the altar to swear, and from that moment he belongs to the sect.

This ceremony over, the King places his hand or his foot on the box in which the serpent is confined, and soon becomes agitated. This impression he communicates to the Qeuen, and from her it gains the whole circle, and every one commences certain movements, in which the upper part of the body, the head and shoulders, appear to be dislocated. The Queen above all is a prey to the most violent agitation. From time to time she approaches the serpent in order to add to her frenzy; she shakes the box, and the hawkbells attached to it sound like a fool's bauble, and the excitement goes on increasing. This is augmented by the use of spirituous [192] liquors, which the adepts do not spare. With some, fainting fits follow, with others a species of fury; but a nervous trembling seizes them all, which they appear unable to master. They go on spinning round, and in their excitement some tear their clothes, others bit their own flesh; then again many fall to the ground utterly deprived of sense, and are dragged into a neighbouring dark apartment. here in the obscurity is too often a scene of the most disgusting prostitution.

At length lassitude puts an end to these demoralising scenes, to be renewed again at a date which is carefully settled beforehand.

In reading this account, freely given from Moreau de St. M�ry, I have been struck how little change, except for the worse, has taken place during the last century. Though the sect continues to meet in secret, they do not appear to object to the presence of their countrymen who are not yet initiated. In fact, the necessity of so much mystery is not recognised, when there are no longer any French magistrates to send these assassins to the stake.

Notwithstanding their efforts to keep strangers far from their sacrifices, two Frenchmen succeeded in being present on different occasions.

At a dinner at which I was present, I heard the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince give the following account of what had occurred the preceding week (in 1869). A French priest who had charge of the district of Arcahaye, had the curiosity to witness the Vaudoux ceremonies, and he persuaded some of his [193] parishioners to take him to the forest, where a meeting of the sect was to be held. They were very unwilling, saying that, if discovered, he and they would be killed; but he promised faithfully that, whatever happened, he would not speak a word. They blacked his hands and face, and disguising him as a peasant, took him with them. In Salnave's time the Vaudoux priests were so seldom interrupted, that few precautions were taken against surprise, and the neighbouring villagers flocked to the ceremony. With these the Catholic priest mixed, and saw all that went on. As in the previous description, the people came to ask that their wishes should be gratified, and the priestess stood on the box containing the serpent. At first she went into a violent paroxysm, then, in a sort of half-trance, she promised all that they could desire. A white cock and then a white goat were killed, and those present were marked with their blood. Up to this point, it appeared as if Monseigneur were repeating some pages from Moreau de St. M�ry, but it soon changed. he continued:- Presently an athletic young negro came and knelt before the priestess and said, 'O Maman, I have a favour to ask.' 'What is it, my son?' 'Give us, to complete the sacrifice, the goat without horns.' She gave a sign of assent; the crowd in the shed separated, and there was a child sitting with its feet bound. In an instant a rope already passed through a block was tightened, the child's feet flew up towards the root, and the priest approached it with a knife. The loud shriek given by [194] the victim aroused the Frenchman to the truth of what was really going on. He shouted, 'Oh, spare the child!' and would have darted forward, but he was seized by his friends around him, and literally carried from the spot. There was a short pursuit, but the priest got safely back to the town. he tried to rouse the police to hasten to the spot, but they would do nothing. In the morning they accompanied him to the scene of the sacrifice. They found the remains of the feast, and near the shed the boiled skull of the child.

The authorities at L'Arcahaie were exceedingly incensed with the priest for his interference, and, under pretence that they could not answer for his safety, shipped him off to Port-au-Prince, where he made his report to the Archbishop.

Another Frenchman, who resided in a village in the southern department, witnessed the whole ceremony, and, as he remained silent, was undiscovered; but on its being rumoured that he had been present, his wife's Haytian family insisted on his leaving the district, as his life was in danger.

I have frequently heard similar details from educated Haytians, and a proof will presently be given.

I may notice that the Haytians have corrupted the compounds Papa Roi and Maman Roi into Papaloi and Mamanloi.

The temples of the Vaudoux, called Humfort, are to be found in every district of the country. They are in general small, though one I visited in the interior was [195] spacious, and was papered with engravings from the Illustrated London News, and the walls hung with the picture of the Virgin Mary and of various saints. I may notice that in every one I entered I found similar pictures. In the largest one, a Catholic priest had often said mass during his inland tours. Though he could not prove it, he shrewdly suspected that the Vaudoux worship was carried on there during his frequent absences. He showed me some very curious polished stones of various forms, which he had induced some of his disciples to give up. One was a stone axe in the shape of a crescent; and the negroes said that they had been brought from Africa, and formed part of the relics they worshipped. I believe my informant obtained these stones from a young negress during the absence of her husband, who was very indignant on discovering their loss. The French priest destroyed them, to prevent their falling again into the hands of his congregation.

Beside various Christian emblems, I found in one of the temples a flag of red silk, on which was worked the following inscrition:- 'Soci�t� des Fleurs za Dahom�an,' whatever that may refer to. This flag was said to have been the gift of the Empress, the consort of the Emperor Soulouque.

Once whilst strolling with a friend in the mountains at the back of La Coup�, about six miles from Port-au-Prince, I was shown another small temple. As the guardian was a sort of dependant of the Haytian gentleman who was with me, we were allowed to [196] enter, and were shown a box under a kind of altar, in which we were told the serpent was confined, but we could not induce the man to let us see it, as he feared the anger of the Papaloi.

I have remarked that the temples are generally small. To accommodate the crowd, however, permament or temporary sheds are erected near, and there is generally the guardian's house besides, in which to take shelter or carry on their debauch.

The Papalois may generally be distinguished by the peculiar knotting of their curly wool, which must be a work of considerable labour, and by their profusion of ornaments. We noticed the former peculiarity at the trial of some sorcerers, whilst the jailers probably had relieved them of the latter. I have frequently remarked these knotted-headed negroes, and the attention they received from their sable countrymen.

In general, when incidents are spoken of in society in Hayti relating to the Vaudoux worship, haytian gentlemen endeavour to turn the conversation, or they say you have been imposed upon, or the events have been exaggerated. But the incidents I am about to relate formed the subject of a trial before a criminal court, and are to be found detailed in the official journal of the period, and I was present during the two days that the inquiry lasted.

It occurred during the Presidency of General Geffrard, the most enlightened ruler that that unfortunate country possessed since the time of President Boyer; [197] it too plainly proved that the fetish worship of the negroes of Africa had not been forgotten by their descendants, nor to be denied by any one, and the attention of the whole country was drawn to the subject of cannibalism. As the case greatly interested me, I made the most careful inquiries and followed it in its most minute particulars. It is worth while relating the whole story in its disgusting details, as it is one of the truth of which there is not a shadow of a doubt.

A couple of miles to the west of Port-au-Prince lies the village of Bizoton, in which there lived a man named Congo Pell�. He had been a labourer, a gentleman's servant, an idler, who was anxious to improve his position without any exertion on his own part. In this dilemma he addressed himself to his sister Jeanne, who had long been connected with the Vaudoux - was, in fact, the daughter of a priestess, and herself a well-known Mamanloi - and it was settled between them that about the new year some sacrifice should be offered to propitiate the serpent. A more modest man would have been satisfied with a white cock or a white goat, but on this solemn occasion it was thought better to offer a more important sacrifice. A consultation was held with two Papalois, Julien Nicolas and Flor�al Apollon, and it was decided that a female child should be offered as a sacrifice, and the choice fell on Claircine, the niece of Jeanne and Congo.

This was the account given in court; but it appears also to be an undoubted fact that human sacrifices are [198] offered at Easter, Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, and more particularly on Twelfth Night, or Les F�tes des Rois.

On the 27th December 1863, Jeanne invited her sister, the mother of Claircine, to accompany her to Port-au-Prince, and the child, a girl of about twelve years of age, was left at home with Congo. Immediate advantage was taken of the mother's absence, and Claircine was conducted to the house of Julien, and from thence to that of Flor�al, where she was bound, and hidden under the altar in a neighbouring temple. In the evening, the mother, returning home, asked for her child, when her brother Congo told her it had strayed away; a pretended search was made by those in the plot, and another Papaloi was consulted. This man told the mother not to be uneasy, as the Ma�tre d'Eau, or the spirit of the water, had taken her daughter, but that in a short time her child would be restored to her. The woman believed, or pretended to believe this story, and, by the papa's recommendation, burnt candles before the altar of the Virgin Mary for the prompt return of her offspring, - another proof of the strange mingling of Catholicism and Vaudoux worship.

On the evening of the 31st of December a large party assembled at the house of Jeanne to await the arrival of the child, who had remained for four days bound under the altar. When the chief members of the plot came to the temple to bring her out, she, guessing the fate reserved for her, gave two or three [199] piercing shrieks, which were soon stifled, and gagged and bound, she was carried to Jeanne's house, where preparations were made for the human sacrifice. She was thrown on the ground, her aunt holding her by the waist, whilst the Papaloi pressed her throat, and the others held her legs and arms; her struggles soon ceased, as Flor�al had succeeded in strangling her. Then Jeanne handed him a large knife, with which he cut off Claircine's head, the assistants catching the blood in a jar; then Flor�al is said to have inserted an instrument under the child's skin, and detached it from the body. Having succeeded in flaying their victim, the flesh was cut from the bones, and placed in large wooden dishes; the entrails and skin being buried near to the cottage. The whole party then started for Flor�al's house, carrying the remains of their victim with them. On their arrival Jeanne rang a little bell, and a procession was formed, the head borne aloft, and a sacred song sung. Then preparations were made for a feast.

Roused by the noise caused by the arrival, a woman and a girl sleeping in another chamber looked through some chinks in the wall and saw all that passed, - Jeanne cooking the flesh with Congo beans, small and rather bitter (pois congo), whilst Flor�al put the head into a pot with yams to make some soup. Whilst the others were engaged in the kitchen, one of the women present, Ros�ide Sumera, urged by the fearful appetite of a cannibal, cut from the child's palm a piece of flesh and ate it raw (this I heard her avow in open court).

[200] The cooking over, portions of the prepared dish were handed round, of which all present partook; and the soup being ready, it was divided among the assistants, who deliberately drank it. The night was passed in dancing, drinking, and debauchery. In the morning the remains of the flesh were warmed up, and the two witnesses who had watched the proceedings were invited to join in the repast: the two woman [sic] confessed that she had accepted the invitation, but the girl did not.

Not satisfied with this taste of human flesh, the priests now put the young girl, who had watched their proceedings from a neighbouring room, in the place of Claircine, and she was bound in the temple, to be sacrificed on Twelfth Night. It came out in evidence that she had been decoyed to the house for that purpose, and that the young woman who was sleeping in the same room was in reality in charge of her.

Fortunately for her, the inquiries which Claircine's mother had made on her first arrival home and the disappearance of the second girl had roused the attention of an officer of police, and a search being made, the freshly-boiled skull of the murdered girl was found among the bushes near Flor�al's house, where careless impunity had induced the assassins to throw it. A further search led to the discovery of the girl bound under the altar and the other remains of Claircine.

Fourteen persons were arrested, against eight of whom sufficient evidence could be obtained, and these were sent to prison to answer for their crime before a [201] criminal court. The trial commenced on the 4th of February 1864, and lasted two days. Incidents were related in the course of the evidence which showed how the lower classes are sunk in ignorance and barbarity,and renewed the proofs, if any fresh proofs were required, that the Vaudoux worship is associated by them with the ceremonies of the Catholic religion, even the Papalois recommending the burning of tapers in the Christian churches, and the having crosses and pictures of the Virgin Mary strangely mingled on their altars with the objects of their superstition.

In the dock we saw the eight prisoners, four men and four women, with faces of the ordinary Haytian type, neither better nor worse. Their names were : men - Julian Nicholas, a Papaloi; Flor�al Apollon, another Papaloi; Guerrier Fran�ois and Congo Pell�: the women - Jeanne Pell�, a Mamanloi, Ros�ide Sumers, Ner�ide Fran�ois, and Beyard Prosper. Some had been servants to foreigners, others had been gardeners and washerwomen. The French procedure is observed in all trials in Hayti, and to an Englishman the procedure, as practised in that republic, is contrary to the first principles of justice. The prisoners were bullied, cajoled, cross-questioned, in order to force avowals, in fact, to make them state in open court what they were said to have confessed in their prelminary examinations. I can never forget the manner in which the youngest female prisoner turned to the public prosecutor and said, 'Yes, I did confess what [202] you assert, but remember how cruelly I was beaten before I said a word;' and it was well known that all the prisoners had at first refused to speak, thinking that the Vaudoux would protect them, and it required the frequent application of the club to drive this belief out of their heads. That prisoners are tortured to make them confess is known to be a common practice in Hayti.

However, this may have been in the present case, there, on a table before the judge, was the skull of the murdered girl, and in a jar the remains of the soup and the calcined bones; and the avowals of the prisoners in court and the testimony of the witnesses were too clear and circumstantial to leave a doubt as to their criminality.

As I have remarked, I was in court during the two days' trial, and I never was present at one where the judge conducted himself with greater dignity. His name was Lallemand, and he was one of the few magistrates who had the courage to do justice, even when political passion would have condemned victims unheard.

Among those who gave their evidence was the young girl who witnessed the ceremonies, and for whom was reserved the fate of Claircine. The judge called her up to his side, and gently asked her to tell the court what she had seen; but, with a frightened look, she started and burst into tears, and the judge, looking up sharply, saw the prisoners making the most diabolical grimaces at the poor child. He then turned [203] round to the jury and said, in view of the intimidation attempted, he would do what was not strictly regular; and the child should whisper the story to him, and he would repeat it to the court. He placed her with her back to the prisoners, and putting his arm round her, drew her gently to him, and said in a soft voice, 'Tell me, ch�re, what occurrred.' The girl, in a very low tone, began her testimony, but the silence in court was so profound, that not a word she uttered was lost, and, almost without faltering, she told her story in all its horrible details; but her nerves then gave way so completely, that she had to be taken out of court, and could not be again produced to answer some questions the jury wished to ask.

Then the young woman, her companion of that night, was called, and she confirmed the account, and confessed that in the morning she had joined in the feast; the mother's testimony followed, and that of numerous other witnesses. The guilt of the prisoners was thus fully established, when one of the female prisoners, Ros�ide, in the hopes perhaps of pardon, entered into every particular of the whole affair, to the evident annoyance of the others, who tried in vain to keep her silent. Her testimony was the most complete, and left not a doubt of the culpability of the whole of the prisoners. I did in consequence suggest that her life should be spared, but President Geffrard reminded me that it was she who had confessed, in open court, that she had eaten the palms of the victim's hands as a favourite morsel.

[204]Jeanne, the old woman, though she showed the utmost coolness during the trial, did at length appeal for mercy, saying she had only been practising what had been taught her by her mother as the religion of her ancestors. 'Why should I be put to death for observing our ancient customs!'

They were all found guilty of sorcery, torture, and murder, and condemned to death.

I asked the public prosecutor if he thought that the mother had been really ignorant of the fate reserved for her child. He replied, 'We have not thought proper to press the inquiry too closely, for fear that we should discover that she partook of the feast; we required her testimony at the trial.' After a pause, he added, 'If full justice were done, there would be fifty on those benches instead of eight.'

The execution took place on Saturday, February 13, 1864, the authorities wisely selecting a market-day, in order that the example might have the greater effect. The following particulars relating to it. I received from the American Commissioner, Mr. Whiddon, who was present at this last scene. The prisoners, men and women, were all clothed in white robes and white headdresses, the garments reserved for parricides, and were drawn in carts to the place of execution, and all but one had a sullen look of resignation, and neither uttered a word nor a complaint, whilst the eigth, the young woman Ros�ide, kept up a continued conversation with the crowd around her.

Every effort was made by the Government to give [205] solemnity to the occasion; the troops and National Guard were summoned, for even the word 'rescue' ahd been pronounced; the principal authorities attended; and thousands of spectators gathered round the spot. The prisoners, tied in pairs, were placed in a line, and faced by five soldiers to each pair; they fired with such inaccuracy, that only six fell wounded on the first discharge. It took these untrained men fully half an hour to complete their work, and the incidents were so painful, that the horror at the prisoners' crimes was almost turned into pity at witnessing their unnecessary sufferings. As usual, the prisoners behaved with great courage, even the women standing up unflinchingly before their executioners, and receiving their fire without quailing, and when at last they fell wounded, no cry was heard, but they were seen beckoning the soldiers to approach, and Ros�ide held the muzzle of a musket to her bosom and called on the man to fire.

The Vaudoux priests gave out, that although the deity would permit the execution, he would only do it to prove to his votaries his power by raising them all again from the dead. To prevent their bodies being arried away during the night (they had been buried near the place of execution), picquets of troops were placed round the spot; but in the morning three of the graves were found empty, and the bodies of the two priests and the priestess had disappeared. Superstitious fear had probably prevented the soldiers from staying where they had been posted, and as most [206] of the troops belonged to the sect of the Vaudoux, they probably connived at, rather than prevented, the exhumation.

Among those who attended the trial were the Spanish charg� d'affaires, Don Mariano Alvarez, and the Admiral, Menez Nu�ez, but they were so horrified by the sight of the child's remains on the judge's table and the disgusting evidence, that they had precipiatately to leave the court. For years Congo beans were forbidden at our table.

Mr. Alvarez had a great liking for Haytian society, and lived much with certain families, and was very familiar with what was occurring in the country. I therefore asked him if he had any objection to give me some extracts from his official reports on the subject of the Vaudoux; he freely consented, and authorised me to publish the same in any way I pleased. I propose to insert some extracts in this chapter, as they confirm my own inquiries.

I have elsewhere remakred, but I may repeat it, that all prisoners condemned to death in Hayti, whether their crimes be political or otherwise, are shot, and as but two or three soldiers are told off to each prisoner, the consequence is that almost every execution that takes place resembles, instead of a solemn warning, a frightful and pitiable butchery.

President Geffrard behaved with great courage on this occasion, for though continued appeals were made for pardon, he remained firm. He was warned that such an execution would sap the attachment of the [207] masses, but he insisted that the condemned should be put to death. The example probably deterred others from openly committing such crimes, or from committing them near civilised centres; but when Geffrard quitted power, the sect again raised its head, and human sacrifices became common. We, however, heard little of these dreadful rites after the fall of Salnave. It can scarcely be said that civilisation, is making progress; it is more probable that the authorities, absorbed in their petty intrigues to maintain power, did not care to inquire too closely into the disappearance of children.

I believe that the latter is the true explanation, and that instead of there having been any amelioration, the subject is only ignored, as one likely to give trouble. Instead of the country advancing in civilisation since the fall of Geffrard, it has retrograded. Civil wars and the imbecile Government of Nissage-Saget followed, and then again insurrections and civil war. It cannot be supposed that under the Government of General Domingue (1874 and 1875) the Vaudoux worship was discouraged, when it was openly stated and believed that one of his Ministers was a Papaloi, and head of the sect in the southern province. His brutal character and love of bloodshed would add to the suspicion. Under the next President (1876-78), Boisrond-Canal, a decree was issued forbidding any Vaudoux dances, as, under cover of these, other rites were carried on; but that decree has, I hear, been since repealed. Who is to think of the improvement of [208] the masses whilst struggling to maintain a precarious tenure of power.

Mr. Alvarez's account of the Claircine incident differs only in a few trifles from mine, but he had not the opportunities I had fully to investigate it. he says:- 'I have previously reported on the subject of the fetish sect of Vaudoux, imported into Hayti by the slaves coming form the tribes of the western coast of Africa, and mentioning the crimes of these cannibals. To-day I enclose an extrat from the official Moniteur, in which they have commenced to publish the process against four men and four women, who were shot near this capital on the 13th instant, convicted on their own confession of having eaten, in Bizoton, near Port-au-Prince, on the night of the 10th of December last, a young child of six years old, called Claircine, whose own aunt delievered her to these anthropophagi, and for having another child that they were feeding up to sacrifice and eat on the first days of January, in commemoration of the feast of the King of Africa. I assisted at the trial, and there appeared to have been no doubt that if the public prosecutor had desired to verify the case minutetly, not only the witnesses, but even the mother of the victim, merited the same fate as the cannibals who were proved to have eaten her.'

'President Geffrard, who is not afraid of the Vaudoux, although all the mountains and plains of the republic are full of these anthropophagi, with an energy which does him honour has caused the authorities to [209] throw down the altars, collect the drums, timbrels, and other ridiculous instruments which the Papalois use in their diabolical ceremonies, and in the district of Port-au-Prince has imprisoned many individuals of both sexes, who, on being interrogated, confessed what had been the fate of other children who had disappeared from their homes, and whose whereabouts were unknown.'

As an instance of what occurrred in the time of Emperor Soulouque, I may again seek the testimony of Mr. Alvarez. In 1852, in consquence of a denunciation, Vil Lubin, govbernor of Port-au-Prince, arrested in the neighbourhood of that city about fifty individuals of both sexes. On examining the house in which human sacrifices were offered, packages of salted human flesh were found rolled up in leaves. These were thrown into the sea. During the examination of the prisoners, they declared that among the members of the best families of the city were many associates of the society of the Vaudoux, and that if the authorities desired to be satisfied of this assertion, let them be permitted to beat the little drum. They would present themselves even to the Emperor Soulouque himself, for among the Vaudoux worshippers no one under peril of his life would be wanting to his engagements. This case was allowed to drop.

In part proof of the above statement, Mr. Alvarez tells the following story:- One of the principal ladies of Port-au-Prince, rich, and of good family, was found late at night by General Vil Lubin stretched out at the door of the Catholic cathedral, wearing only the blue dress of the country negresses, without shoes, and [210] going through certain incantations called wanga. The governor accompanied this lady to her house. I knew the person to whom Mr. Alvarez alludes, and certainly she was one of the last women whom I should have suspected to have belonged to the Vaudoux.

I add some further observations of Mr. Alvarez, as they give the view held by a Catholic who represented a Catholic power:- '1862. - The delegate of his Holiness, Monseigneur Testard du Cocquer, has left, much disgusted with this country on account of the corruption of its customs, the dearth of religion among the sectaries of the Vaudoux, and the opposition and want of confidence with which he met in which is called in Hayti civilised society. In order that you may appreciate the accuracy of the incidents which pass here, a simple narration of some of the very recent epoch will be sufficient to show the powerful influence exercised on the inhabitants by the sect or the society of the Vaudoux, so spread throughout the country; this, with other causes inherent in the race, to which it would be tiresome to refer, prove that Hayti is, of all the republics in America, the most backward and the most pernicious in every point of view. From the same motive, I will not stop to speak of the origin of the fetish religion of the Vaudoux, or the worship of the serpent, imported from the tribes of the west coast of Africa by the slaves coming from that country, and I now pass to facts.

'In the month of August past (1862) there died, in the section called Belair, a negro, and his body was [211] taken to the Catholic church. The defunct belonged to the society of the Vaudoux. The men and women who accompanied the corpse began in the temple to scream like those possessed, and they commenced a scene such as might occur in Mid-Africa. The Abb� Pascal tried to re-establish order; his requests that they should respect the sacred precincts were useless; and the Abb� having refused, on account of this scandalous conduct, to accompany the body to the cemetery, the mourners fell upon him, seized him by the collar, and he had to fly to the sacristy, the interference of a foreigner alone saving him from further ill-treatment; but the tumult was so great that even the cross which is used at funerals was broken to pieces. Two women were taken out fainting, and the rabble marched off to the cemetery to bury the body; some arrests were made, but it is not known what punishment was inflicted, as the tribunals always leave unpunished the misdemeanours of the sectaries of the Vaudoux, as I am going to prove.'

Mr. Alvarez then tells a horrible story, to which I shall refer farther on, as it belongs to a different section of this chapter.

'In February 1862 a negro was taken prisoner at Ouanaminthe for having assassinated his father. He was condemned to death by the tribunals; but he defended himself by saying that he had done no more than follow the orders of the serpent. In a few months he was set at liberty.

'It is not long since that in one of the streets of [212] Port-au-Prince was found at early morn the body of an unknown youth, of about twenty years of age, who had a weapon piercing his heart, and attached to that a thin hollow cane. It was supposed that he was assassinated in order to suck his blood. I might cite many other facts of which I have taken note, but what I have related appear sufficient for the object I have proposed to myself. The disappearance of children is frequent at certain epochs or seasons, and it is supposed that they are eaten by the cannibals of this society.

'In the secret ceremonoies of the Vaudoux the drink in use is the blood of animals mixed with white rum, and the Papaloi, either from the immoderate use they make of alcohol mixed with blood, or from the handling of the poisons they use in their devil craft, die in general, although at an advanced age, covered with leprosy and incurable sores.' I myself heard this stated whilst in Hayti, but I fear that a few exceptions have in this case made the rule.

'The people endure every possible oppression from the Papaloi, and if you ask them why they permit these vexations and the abuses which are committed against one another, they answer, 'We are indeed obliged, unhappy that we are; if we denounced our neighbours, certainly we should quickly die.' From which it may be inferred that they tolerate this conduct because they fear, and they fear because they know each other.' This fear of one another is [214] noticed by all foreign residents in Hayti: it extends to the higher classes.

'The society of the Vaudoux, although now (1862, time of Geffrard) not so preponderant as in the time of Soulouque, who was one of its most believing followers, is very extended in all the republic, but there are few initiated into the secrets; they have their signs and symbols, and the society meddles in the politics of every government which has existed in Hayti; they sometimes sustain them, as in certain cases they will act as a secret police, and the Vaudoux is looked on as one of the firmest props of the independence of the country.'

I may notice that the Papaloi lead the most depraved lives. They are feared by all, and the fear inspired is so great, that few women among the lower orders would resist their advances. It may probably be looked upon as an honour. Unlimited drink is the next idea of happiness to a negro, and in this the offerings of their followers enable the priests to indulge to their hearts' content.

After styding the history of Hayti, one is not astonished that the fetish worship continues to flourish. The negroes imported from the west coast of Africa naturally brought their religion with them, and the worship of the serpent was one of its most distinguishing features. St. M�ry speaks of the slaves arriving with a strange mixture of Mohammedanism and idolatry, to which they soon added a little Catholicism. Of Mohammedanism I have not myself [215] observed a trace. When they found the large, almost harmless, serpent in Hayti, they welcomed it as their god, and their fetish priests soon collected their followers around them. The French authorities tried to put down all meetings of the Vaudoux, partly because they looked upon them as political, but they did not succeed in their object. Many of the tribes in Africa are to this day cannibals, and their ancestors imported probably this taste into the French colony. IT was difficult at that epoch to indulge in it, as all the children of the slaves were carefully registered, and their disappearance would have been immediately remarked; they may, however, have made use of the expedients for producing apparent death, to which I will presently refer.

Many persons appear to think that cannibalism is a later importation, and came with the Africans freed by our cruisers. If it were so, the seed fell on good ground, as the practice has spread to every district of the island. This opinion, however, can scarcely be correct, as Moreau de St. M�ry, in naming the different tribes imported into Hayti, says: - 'Never had any disposition more hideous than the last (the Mondongues), whose depravity has reached the most execrable of excesses, that of eating their fellow-creatures. They bring also to Santo Domingo those butchers of human flesh (for in their country there are butcheries where they well slaves as they would calves), and they are here, as in Africa, the horror of the other negroes.'

This is a fitting introduction to the second part of this [215] chapter, in which I must reer to the great knowledge of herbs and antidotes shown by the Papaloi - which, though possibly exaggerated by some inquirers, is no doubt very great - and to cannibalism as not connected with religious reites.

In the following pages from Mr. Alvarez's notes, the first impression will be that there must be gross exaggeration. I thought so when I first read them, but the more my inquiries extended, the less I was inclined to doubt them. If not exactly true, it is the firm belief of all the classes of society that they are so. During thirteen years, I had the best opportunities of hearing the opinion of Presidents, intelligent Secretaries of State, the principal members of the medical profession, lawyers, merchants, both foreign and native, as well as other residents, who had passed a lifetime in the republic, and the testimony was more or less unanimous as to the profound knowledge of the use of herbs possessed by the Papaloi.

'The human imagination cannot conceive anything more absurd, more barbarous, or more ridiculous than the acts committed by these ferocious sectaries, who are called Papaloi, Papa Boco, or other names as studid as they are ill-sounding. They produce death -a pparent, slow, or instantaneous - maddness, paralysis, impotence, idiocy, riches or poverty, according to their will.

'It has happened on occasions that persons have retired to bed in the possession of their senses to awaken idiots, and remain in that state in spite of the aid of sicence, and in a few days to be completely [216] cured, when the causes which have produced the alienation have ceased. One individual struck another; the latter threatened him with impotency. At the end of fifteen days he was paralytic in all his members. ⁴ Following the counsels of a friend, he consulted a Papaloi, who had the coolness to confess that he had himself sold his enemy the philter that had reduced him to that state, but for the sum of about £20 he would cure him. In fact, in a few days, by means of the remedies of the Papa, he was completely restored to health. And if it be doubted that these individuals, without even common sense, can understand so thoroughly the properties of herbs and their combinations, so as to be able to apply them to the injury of their fellow-creatures, I can only say that tradition is a great book, and that they receive these instrucitons as a sacred deposit from one generation to another, with the further advantage that in the hills and mountains of this island grow in abundance similar herbs to those which in Africa they employ in their incantations.'

One case occurred in 1860, which was really so remarkable, and drew so much attention at the time, [217] that there was no possibility of doubting it. It was supported by ample testimony. It was first told me by one of the most eminent medical men in Port-au-Prince, and confirmed by another, who had been an eye-witness of some of the details, and pledged his word as to its truth. I one day mentioned the story in the French Legation, as I was still somewhat sceptical, when, to my surprise, I found that it had been made the subject of an official report. Count M�gan, at that time charg� d'affaires (1867), offered to give me an extract relating to that crime, with permission to publish it in any book I might write.

The following are the particulars:- 'The police having been informed that some shrieks had been heard at night in the cemetery of Port-au-Prince, went there in the morning, and found a grave disturbed, and near it an open coffin, and lying at the side the body of a lady that had been buried on the previous day. A dagger had been thrust into her bosom, and as blood covered her burial clothes, it was evident that she had been buried alive. Many arrests took place, but the affair was hushed up. It was currently reported, however, that the husband had a mistress, whom he neglected after marriage, and that this woman applied to a Mamanloi for aid. She received a sleeping potion which she contrived to give to the lady during her first confinement, and she was hurriedly buried, to be restored to consciousness in the graveyard at dead of night, with her rival armed with a dagger before her. Her shrieks drew the attention of some Jamaica [218] negroes, who ran towards the spot shouting, but whom superstition prevented from entering the vemetery. Their shouts, however, caused the murderers to fly, and leave the corpse where it was found next morning.' This is the story as told me by my medical friends, and it was universally believed to be true, and in fact was true, and was never denied by those in authority with whom I conversed on the subject.

The accounts by my French and Spanish colleagues were more complete, and probably more exact, as they were both in Port-au-Prince when this tragey occurred. My previous French colleague (the Marquis de Forbin Janson) wrote, 2d. August, 1860P-

'Deux jours apr�s mon arriv� � Port-au-Prince, une femme endormie au moyen d'un narcotique et enterr�e le soir au cimeti�re de la ville, fut exhum�e dans la nuit; elle respirait encore, on la tua, puis on enleva la cervelle, le coeur et la foi de la victime, dont on retrouva de d�brid pr�s de la tombe: le lendemain matin une enqu�te fut ordonn�e, on fit plusieurs arrestations, entre autres celle d'une pr�tresse du Vaudoux (Mamanloi). Cette femme fit des r�v�lations y, offrit m�me de livrer � la justice les auteurs du meurtre et de la profanation en les attirant � la prison par une puissance irresistible ou ballant de son tambour d'une mani�re particuli�re. La justice et la police, d�j� effray�es du nombre et de l'importance des personnes compromises, recul�rent devant cette nouvelle �preuve. On ordonna aux journaux de se taire et l'affaire fut �touff�e. On croit que la principale mobile du crime [219] fut un sentiment de vengeance, mais on tient pour certain que les parties mutil�es ont �t� destin�es, � la c�l�bration de quelque myst�re Vaudoux du f�tichisme africain encore pratiqu�, quoiqu'on dise, par la grande majorit� des Ha�tiens.'

I think this case of so much importance, that, at the risk of repetition, I will give the report made by Mr. Alvarez:-

'In July of 1860 there was committed in Port-au-Prince, a horrible, almost an incredible crime. A young woman died suddenly, and was buried on the following day. At night several individuals of both sexes went to the cemetery, dug up the coffin, and opened it. What they actually did is not know, but what is positive is that the unburied began to shriek and shout for help. The guard near the cemetery, composed of Jamaicans, Louisianians, and Creoles, approached, and saw the woman stting in the coffin, and various persons - a torch in one hand and a dagger in the other - vociferating words they could not understand. The Creole soldiers of the country fled dismayed, but the Louisianians, as soon as they had overcome the first feeling of terror, ran to the succour of the unburied; already it was too late, they found her dead from the stroke of a dagger, and her heart and lungs torn from her bosom. The assassins escaped, but subsequently some prisoners were made. In a few days the prisoners were at liberty; and it is related that the lungs and the heart had been cooked and eaten in one of the country-houses in Bizoton.'

[220] My friend, Auguste Elie, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, deplored but could not deny the truth of this story; and having no Vaudoux prejudices himself, having been born and bred in France, conversed freely on the subject, and told us many particulars that had come to his knowledge.

Of the truth of the following story I had the testimony of ocular witnesses. A lady hearing that a child near her house was ill, went down to see it. She found it lying stupefied in the mother's lap. Her suspicions were aroused, and she sharply questioned the mother as to waht had been done to the child. Her answers were so unsatisfactory, yet mournful, that the lady determined to keep a watch on the case. She called in the evening, and was told the child was dead. She insisted on seeing the corpse, and found that though the heart was still and the pulse had ceased to beat, yet that the child did not look dead, and made the remark to the bystanders, but they answered, 'Yes, it is dead.' She told the mother she was not satisfied, and that she would return in the morning with her husband, and that in the meantime the body must not be buried. Next day she and her husband walked down to the house, and asked to see the body. The mother replied that the neighbours having insisted, she had allowed them to bury her child, and pointed out the grave. The French gentleman called to some of his labourers, and had the grave opened. There they found the coffin, but the child's body was absent. Arrests were made, but nothing [221] came of it. It is supposed that it was by this means that the Papalois were enabled to obtain victims during the French colonial period.

It is useless to multiply instances of these horrors; but that they are practised all over the island more or less under every government that has existed in Hayti is certain.

You often hear the expression used in Hayti, 'Li gagn� chagrin,' which, though referring occasionally to a known cause, often applies to a sort of anaemia of the mind, when a person appears to c are for nothing, or for what becomes of him. I have inquired as to what had been done to the man, and the answer, if in company, was, 'We don't know;' if you asked a person privately, he would probably reply that somebody had given him wanga, a generic word for poisons, philters, and charms.

The remark I made when I first began to inquire into this subject may naturally be repeated by others. If the majority of Haytians be tainted by the Vaudoux, who is it that denounces these horrible crimes, and how could a remedy be found? The answer is, that there are in Hayti, as I have before noticed, two sects of Vaudoux worshippers; one, perhaps the least numerous, that indulges in human sacrifices, the other that holds such practice in horror, and is content with the blood of the white goat and the white coack. At one time the police took no notice of the latter, and permitted them to carry on their ceremonies in Port-au-Prince in a large courtyard adjoining a house in [222] which a friend of mine lived. To preserve as much secrecy as possible, the courtyard was hung round with cloth hangings, and watchmen, placed to keep prying eyes at a distance; but my friend, though not curious occasionally got a glimpse of the proceedings. They were much as those described by Moreau de St. M�ry. In the country districts the Catholic priests say this sect calls themselves, 'Les Myst�res,' and that they mingle Christian and Vaudoux ceremonies in a singular manner. The name probably refers to the rites they practise. I have been assured by many gentlemen connected with the Haytian police, that if the followers of this sect did not secretly denounce to them the crimes committed by the others, it would be almost impossible for them to keep the assassin sect in check. It is probable that, acting with these comparatively harmless savages, the Haytian Government might be able to domuch, if ever it seriously desires to put an end to the shedding of human blood.

I have been told that, besides the goat and cock, the Vaudoux, occasionally sacrifice a lamb; this idea they ahve probably taken from the Catholic Church - the paschal lamb; it is carefully washed, combed, and ornamented before being sacrificed.

All that I have hitherto related refers more or less to human sacrifices as connected with reliigon; but there is another phase - cannibalism as practised for the sake of the food which the slaughtering of human beings affords to a vile section of the commnity.

In Mr. Consul Hutchinson's paper on the traits of [223] African tribes, published in the 'Transactions of the Ethnological Society,' New Series, vol. i. p. 338, he states: 'I ahve during the last year seen it stated in a Sierra leone newspaper, on the authority of Mr. Priddy, a missionary of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connection in that colony, not that he had heard of, but that he had seen hampers of dried human flesh carried about on men's backs, to be sold for eating purposes, in the progress of a recent civil war between the Soosoo and Tisnney tribes.' ⁵ This is very similar to what was seen by a lady of my acquaintance in Hayti.

A lady, the widow of a missionary, was forced to stay in the interior of Hayti north-east of Gonaives), after the death of her husband, on account of the civil war in the surrounding districts in the years 1868 and 1869, and she related some horrible incidents which were of her own knowledge. She declared that human sacrifices were constant, that human flesh was openly sold in the market. One would willingly have believed in exaggeration; but similar incidents, which occurred during the reign of Soulouque, related to me by one so intelligent and truthful as Auguste Elie, compelled me to accept as veritable the horrible stories she told in full detail.

[224] Monsieur Desjardins, an eminent French merchant in Poart-au-Prince, remarked to me that, walking near Cap Ha�tien, he met a party of soldiers beating a man with their clubs; he inquired the reason, and they told their prisoner to open his basket, and there he saw the body of a child cut up into regular joints.

Auguste Elie told me he knew the following incident as a fact, which occurred during the reign of Soulouque. A man with whom he was acquainted was visiting in the plains with his wife, when she complained of feeling unwell, and they mounted their horses to return to town. At sunset, a violent storm coming on, they determined to halt at a cottage they saw near. They entered, and found two men and a woman there; his wife becoming worse, he determiend to seek help, but was a long time before he could find any one to accompany him. On his return to the house, he inquired for his wife, and the people said that, becoming uneasy at his long absence, she had followed him. He rode away without saying a word, and calling at the next police station, induced the men to follow him; they surrounded the cottage, arrested the three inmates, and on searching the premises, found the body of the woman, already dismembered, in a cask in an outhouse. A thick layer of salt had been thrown over the remains. The only punishment these assassins received was that administered by the clubs of the police whilst conducted them to prison.

The Haytians occasionally publish accounts of these crimes. I read the following in one of their local [225] papers. At Jacmel, on the southern coast, an old woman, a midwife, was lying on her death-bed surrounded by her neighbours, and they were somewhat surprised at her long struggles and loud groaning. At last she said, 'I cannot die in peace; put aside the bed and dig underneath;' and on doing so, great was their astonishment to come on numerous small skeletons, which the old fiend acknowledged were the remains of children she had eaten. After this confession they say she died quietly. One cannot but be reminded of the horrible picture in the Wiertz Gallery in Brussels of the woman cutting up and cooking the infant. It must have been painted under the influence of nightmares.

That the practice of midwives slaying children for the purpose of eating them is an old one in Hayti is proved by the following story, related by Moreau de St. M�ry:-

'On a eu � Saint Domingue (Ha�ti) des preuves que les Mondongues y avait gard� leur odieuse inclination, notamment en 1786, dans une negresse accoucheuse et hospitali�re sur une habitation aux environs de J�r�mie. Le propri�taire ayant remarqu� que la plupart des negrillons p�rissait dans les huit premiers jours de leur naissance, fit �pier la matrone; on l'a surpris mangeant un de ces enfans r�cemment inhum�, et elle avoua qu'elle les faisait p�rir dans ce dessin.'

As late as 1878, the last year of which I propose to treat, two women were arrested in a hut near Port-au-Prince. They were caught in the act of eating the flesh of a child raw. On further examination it was found that all the blood had been sucked from the body, [226] and that part of the flesh had been salted for later use. In 1869 the police arrested, in that beautifuly valley to which I have referred in my first chapter, about a dozen cannibals, and brought them bound to La Coupe. they had been denounced by the opposing sectaries of the Vaudoux. From the time they were taken from their houses they were beaten in the most unmerciful manner, and when thrown into prison they were tortured by the thumbscrew and by tightened cords round their foreheads, and under the influence of these they made some fearful avowals, in which, however, little confidence could be placed. A French priest, with whom I was on intimate terms, hearing of their arrest, had the curiosity to go and see them. At first they would not converse with him, but when they found him protesting against the inhumanity with whichb they had been treated, and theatening the jailer that he would officially report him should such conduct continue, they placed more confidence in him. He visited them nearly every day, and had many conversations with them in private. They confessed to him that their avowals under torture were true; and when the priest, horrified by the details, said to a mother, 'How could you eat the flesh of your own chidlren?' she answered coolly, 'And who had a better right, - est-ce que ce n'est pas moi qui les ai fait?' ⁶

[227]One of these prisoners died under the torture of the cord tightened round his forehead.

Though the Haytians believe in the mythical ''loup garou,' they have also the fullest fiath in his c ounterpart among their fellow-countrymen. It is the loup garou who is employed by the Papaloi to secure a child for sacrifice in case the neighhourhood does not furnish a suitable subject; and they are supposed to hang about lonely houses at night to carry off the children. I ahve often heard my young Haytian servants rush into my country-house laughingly saying that they had seen a loup garou - their laugh, however, tinged with a sort of dread. They have often said that these human monsters prowl about the house at night, and that nothing but the presence of my dogs kept them in respect. I ahve occasionally seen the object of their fear in an ill-looking negro hanging about the gate, but the sight of my dogs was enough to induce him to move on. The negroes have fortunately an almost superstitious terror of dogs.

There is no doubt that these loup garous do carry off many children, not only for the priests, but for cannibals.They generally look only for native children, and I have only heard of one instance in which they attempted to carry off a white girl. She was snatched from the arms of her nurse, whilst walkingo n the Champs de Mars, by a huge neggro, who ran off with her towards the woods, but being pursued by two mounted gentelmen who accidentally witnessed the occurrence, he dropped the child to save himself.

[228]One of my Haytian friends who had studied botany informed me that the number of poisonous plants to be found on the island is very great, and that it was absolutely certain that the Papalois made use of them in their practices. I believe in some French botanical works lists of these plants have been published, and their medical value would appear to merit further study. It is not more remarkable that the Papalois should know the properties of the plants in Hayti than that the Indians of Peru and Bolivia should have discoverd the properties of the cinchona bark and the coca-leaf.

If it be remembered that the republic of Hayti is not a God-forsaken region in Central Africa, but an island surrounded by civilised communities; that it possesses a Government modelled on that of France, with President, Senate, and House of Representatives; with Secretaries of State, prefects, judges, and all the paraphernalia of courts of justice and of police; with a press more or less free; and, let me add, an archbishop, bishops, and clergy, nearly all Frenchmen, - it appears incredible that sorcery, poisonings for a fee by r ecognised poisoners, and cannibalism, should continue to pervade the island. The truth is, that except during one year of Geffrard's Presidency, no Government has ever cared resolutely to grapple with the evil. If they have not encouraged it, they have ignored it, in order not to lose the favour of the masses.

Notes

1. One thing I wish distinctly to state, that I never heard of any mulatto, except Generals Salnave and Therlongo, who was mixed up with the cannibalism of the Vaudoux, nor of any black educated in Europe.

2. On the African coast the word is Vodun. Burton mentions that the serpents worshipped at Whydah were so respected that formerly to [186] kill one by accident was punished by death. Now a heavy fine is inflicted. Bosman states that the serpent is the chief god in Dahomey, and brown in colour, and the largest was about six feet long, and as thick as a man's arm. Fergusson, in his introductory esay on 'Tree and Serpent Worship in India.' mentions that at a place called Sheik Haredi, in Egypt, serpent-worship still continues, and that the priests sacrifice to them sheep and lambs. On the west coast of Africa,, women, when touched by the serpent, are said to become possessed; they are seized with hysteria, and often bereft of reason; they are afterwards considered priestesses. The whole essay of Fergusson is exceedingly interesting.

3. Red, the royal colour at Adra. - Bosman.

4. Burton, in his 'Mission to the King of Dahomey,' notices that the fetish priests are a kind of secret police for the despotic king, and exercise the same influence as in Hayti. They are supposed to be able to give health, wealth, length of days, and can compass the destruction of the applicant's foes, all for a fee. Bosman, in his account of the slave coast of Guinea, says that a negro who offered opposition to the priests was poisoned by them, and became speechless and paralysed in his limbs; and that if any woman betrays the secrets of the priests, she is burnt to death.

5. Barbot states that the common food of the natives of the kingsom of Ansiko (west coast of Africa) is man's flesh, insomuch that their markets are provided with it, as ours in Europe with beef and mutton. All prisoners of war, unless they can sell them alive to greater advantage, they fatten for slaughter, and at last sell them to butchers to supply the markets, and roast them on spits, as we do other meat (date 1700). - Churchill's Collection, vol. v. p. 479. Barbot also notices that the people of Jagos, Congo, and Angola were also cannibals.

6. Barbot, in his account of the Ansiko kingsom, says: 'That which is most inhuman is, that the father makes no difficulty to eat the son, nor the son the father, nor one brother the other; and whosoever dies, be the disease ever so contagious, yet they eat the flesh immediately as a choice dish.' - Barbot, in Churchill's Collection, vol. v. p.479.

Source: Sir Spenser St John, Hayti or The Black Republic (London: Smith, Elder, & Co, 1884), pp182-228.

Currently Reading

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:10:52 +0100

I'm normally reading two books at any one time. Sometimes three, and occasionally four if I have a collection of poetry on the go or a new issue of a journal I intend to read cover to cover. But right now, for a variety of reasons, I seem to be mid-way through more than a dozen. How did this happen?

Some of them go back to last year. Ian Baucom's Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery and the Philosophy of History (2007) was a recreational read - recreational in the sense that it was not directly related to anything I was currently writing. And I'm not sure what prompted me to buy it (although I'm glad I did). Possibly I thought it might help me think through some of the issues to do with representations of time in an essay on Moby-Dick I had set aside since giving a talk about it in 2004. The bookmark - a folded sheet of A4 scribbled with pencilled notes (such as 'IB's own reconstruc of the Zong case & its participants is an actuarial one - Qbp46') lies between pages 54 and 55, as it has done since December when I needed to begin work in earnest on several projects with looming deadlines.

First I had to make some final revisions to an article on a vodou chant in response to comments by the editors and the publisher's anonymous readers. One suggested I refer to Madison Smartt Bell's All Saints Rising (1995), the first volume of his trilogy on the Haitian revolution, because it quoted the chant in question. I knew of the book, and had been meaning to read it for years, so I now had the excuse I'd been waiting for. The chant did indeed appear on page 118, although I'm not sure there was anything unusual about it that would merit more than a passing mention in a footnote. I ploughed on for another twenty pages, according to the slip of paper, hardly scribbled on at all, for I don't take easily to historical novels. And this one seemed to take just a little too much pleasure in the depiction of violence and suffering, and robbed the story of the narrative impetus I was expecting. I found the non-fictional accounts of historians more gripping, even if C L R James' The Black Jacobins or Aim� C�saire's Toussaint Louverture only hint at the nitty-gritty detail of the day-to-day struggle.

Other things I wanted to revise in the paper included my translation of a passage from Fr�d�ric Marcelin's Th�mistocle Epaminondas Labasterre (1901). The scene, featuring the adolescent protagonist's encounter with young women washing clothes in a river, appears quite early on and I'd sped past, firmly intending to finish the novel at the time - two summers ago now - but, well I must have been sidetracked by something or other. It's a fascinating read, reminding me a little of Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale, and while I did tinker with my English version, I didn't have time to resume the narrative, and this will have to wait until later this summer.

With the vodou chant out of the way, two other obligations took their place. One was a paper on the 'Liberty or Death' motif in the Age of Revolution for the Caribbean Enlightenment conference at Glasgow University in April. I never got to deliver it in the end, as I was taken ill two days before and spent a week in hospital. I'd completed the reading I had set myself for this, except for Laurent Dubois' A Colony of Citizens (2004). I notice I was still several chapters short of the one entitled 'Vivre libre ou mourir!' when Haemophilus influenzae type b breached my defences. I'll return to this when I return to the draft in October and begin to work it into a more substantial piece, if I can.

Alongside my wanderings in the world of political slogans and the Hegelian dialectic, I had been converting a conference paper into a more substantial essay on the literary geography of a tropical hotel. For months I'd been pursuing various themes (the hotel in fiction, travel writing and cultural theory; the philosophies of space; acoustic geographies; heterotopia) like a pup licking bone. Now the full-length text has been emailed to the editors (to be returned for revisions in due course, no doubt), a few half-chewed morsels remain on the bedside table.

One is Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space (1958), a classic that has some intriguing remarks on sounds that I never used: 'It is a salutary thing to naturalize the sound in order to make it less hostile,' he writes, thinking of the way the noises of Paris that keep him awake at night can be transformed into an 'ocean roar.' It is waiting to be resumed at page 38 at some point later this year.

Another is Paule Marshall's The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969): an enormously rich narrative that takes off from the arrival of a US-funded research team hoping to make a difference to an impoverished community on an island in the Caribbean. Project leader Saul, his wife Harriet, and assistant Allen take up residence in a guest-house run by the loquacious Merle, who straddles the racial divisions of the newly-independent country and serves as the ideal 'cultural broker' for the visitors.

I had read Marshall's first novel before, but the friend who recommended this was so on target. I'm only a third of the way through, but it is clear why the guest house should be such an appropriate setting for this Proustian anatomy of the postcolonial condition, this dissection of the souls of white folk. Each time I pick it up, I read less pages, not wanting it to end.

An ongoing project to outline an imaginary anthology of Haitian travel writing - travel writing by Haitian authors, that is, rather than writings about Haiti - has required me to read or re-read a number of fictional works in which the theme of exile and homecoming loom large. But I have also been trying to track down the motif of the everyday in Haitian literature, going back to the oral tradition of the lodyans, recently revived in Georges Anglade's Rire ha�tien / Haitian Laughter (2006), a bilingual edition that combines several smaller collections of these mini stories in one volume.

It's a book that is best suited to dipping into now and again, which means it will be beside my bed for some time. With Dany Laferri�re's Vers le sud (2006), my task is to compare it with his earlier work, La chair du ma�tre (1997) of which this is a revised version, named after the film that was based on some of the stories in the first. At first glance Laferriere has removed ten chapters and added five, not to make it more like the movie, but rather to respond to it, in turn. A sequel, even.

I have read the first novel in Marie Chauvet's Love, Anger, Madness (1968) trilogy, now appearing in English translation for the first time, and now anxious to read the rest of it. But I'm not sure if I should really finish Rene Depestre's Hadriana dans tous mes r�ves (1988) first. I'll decide once I reach the end of Marshall's masterpiece.

Joe Moran's On Roads (2009) I've nearly finished: a brilliant cultural history of the road in 20th-century Britain, especially the impact of the motorway in the 1960s. And quirky too, from its attention to things normally taken-for-granted, such as signage and road-numbering, to the discreet count-down symbols (used on motorways to mark the approach of junctions) that appear in the page-headers towards the end of chapters.

The poetry volume I have on the go - Sean Borodale's Notes for an Atlas (2003)- is prose rather than verse, but demanding enough that it can only be read slowly in short bursts. Described as a '370-page poem written whilst walking through London', it is divided into twenty-five sections, capturing the experience in a series of highly fragmentary impressions of things seen, read and overheard that could almost be absorbed in any order, for the pleasure of the text is in the changing rhythms and startling similes and metaphors that endow each moment with a fragile beauty.

Oh, and there are the latest issues of Studies in Travel Writing and Small Axe that I've only had time to flick through so far. I am particularly looking forward to the interview with Merle Collins.

The Payback

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:34:18 +0100

On Wednesday, many people were taken aback by an announcement from the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of a new 'framework initiative' that would return the 90 million gold francs paid by Haiti from 1825 to 1947.

This indemnity has long been a bone of contention, pressured as Haiti was to pay 'compensation' for the loss of colonial property in return for international recognition of the newly independent state.

When the Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, brought up the question once more, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the death of national hero Toussaint L'Ouverture in a French cell in 1803, his counterpart Jacques Chirac was not impressed.

Even though two years earlier the French parliament had recognized slavery as a crime against humanity, the official response to the bill for $21,685,135,571 and 48 cents (its modern equivalent, with interest) was brusque, even bad-tempered. The foreign ministry commissioned a report on Franco-Haitian relations, which dismissed the claim for reparations as anachronistic and mocked the way in which Aristide had presented it.

There was precious little support even in the left-wing press in France, leading the Haitian writer Louis-Philippe Dalembert to pen an article in Lib�ration wondering why intellectuals in the land of Hugo and Zola had all turned into foreign ministers whose main aim was to defend French interests. Dalembert was no friend of Aristide, and doubted whether Aristide was the best person to raise the issue, but he insisted that the demand for the restitution of an 'immoral and iniquitous debt' should not be allowed to be forgotten.

And indeed it has not. So despite Aristide's enforced departure in the coup of February 2004 and Gerard Latortue's prompt reassurance that the 'illegal' and 'ridiculous' claim would not be pursued, when Nicolas Sarkozy visited Haiti in February this year, he faced angry protests demanding that France pay up and help return Aristide to office.

The announcement of 14 July did not, then, come out of the blue. But, only a day after the National Assembly voted overwhelmingly in support of a ban on wearing the Islamic full veil in public, it was unexpected, to say the least. And, of course, it was too good to be true.

In a manner reminiscent of the tactics of Les Liens Invisibles or The Yes Men, the announcement was carried on a site imitating that of the French Foreign Ministry, backed up by a news release purporting to be from Agence-France-Presse.

'Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will,' goes Gramsci's slogan. For those with too much of the latter, the news may have prompted a flurry of excitement, but disappointment would inevitably follow. Those with an excess of the former may have taken some cynical delight in pointing out that the website was 'fake' or a 'hoax', as if it were therefore of no further account.

But both responses miss something interesting. It is no more 'fake' than a play or a film. The point of the excercise is not to kid people that something has taken place but to make it seem strange that something hasn't. We might think of it as a kind of historical re-enactment but of the future rather than the past.

It stages a possible - or alternative - future, by composing a plausible statement that combines the language of neo-liberalism with that of France's long-standing democratic traditions, without making reference to the claims of Aristide and his supporters.

In doing so, it invites us to imagine a rationale that would allow France to do a U-turn without losing face. Anyone reading the statement would find it hard to dismiss it as giving in to 'illegal' and 'ridiculous' demands. And thus the demand - whose symbolic importance should not be underestimated - is kept alive.

Sweetest of all perhaps, it has forced the Ministry to deny that it is planning to do anything so noble and to declare that it is considering legal action against those who dare to imagine such a thing.

Post-Slavery in the Francophone Caribbean

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 11:00:05 +0100

A one day seminar at the University of Liverpool, UK - 25 June 2010. Organized by the Centre for the Study of International Slavery and the School of Cultures, Languages and Areas Studies.

Venue: Room 401, Cypress Building, University of Liverpool

The seminar explores some of the myriad legacies of slavery and abolitionism in the Francophone Caribbean from the nineteenth century to today. The event is organized as part of the activities of the Centre for the Study of International Slavery (CSIS, a partnership between the University of Liverpool and National Museums Liverpool). The seminars on Re-thinking post-slavery are supported through an ESRC Research Seminar Grant.

Programme

10h00
Introduction

10h15
Doris Garraway (Northwestern), After the Revolution: problems of writing in King Henry Christophe�s Haiti

Kate Hodgson (WISE, University of Hull and EURESCL Project), Imagining the post-slavery future: nineteenth-century abolitionist travel writings and the idea of the free French Caribbean

12h00
Lunch

13h00
Alasdair Pettinger (Independent scholar), 'These New Plantations by the Sea': the Caribbean hotel as site of exploitation and scene of writing

Louise Hardwick (Birmingham), Post-Slavery Guadeloupe: echoes of the past in N�g maron, Lettre ouverte � la jeunesse and the strikes of 2009

14h30
Coffee

15h00
Matthew Smith (UWI, Mona), Colonized Eyes: early Jamaican travel writing and Haiti

16h00
Screening

17h00
End of workshop

There is no charge for attendance, but please register attendance with Dr Lyndy Stewart by 18 June 2010. Support is available for travel expenses for postgraduate students registered full-time at UK institutions of Higher Education. Please contact Charles Forsdick by the same date should you wish to apply.

Haiti and the Politics of the Universal

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:21:01 +0000

The programme for this two-day conference at Aberdeen University (Fri 12 to Sat 13 March 2010) has now been released.

Papers include:

Nick Nesbitt, Traversing Haiti, Beyond the Universal Phantasm
Charles Forsdick, 'Our Past, Our Presents,and Our Possible Futures': Situating Toussaint Louverture
Alberto Moreiras, Historicality and Historiography: Haiti and the Limits of World History
Deborah Jenson, Placing Haiti on the Geo-psychoanalytic Map: Hypnose, Pathologies of the Middle Passage, and the Creolization of the Unconscious
Kim Ives, How the Earthquake Has Affected Haiti's National Democratic Revolution and International Geopolitics
David Scott, The Theory of Haiti: The Black Jacobins and the Ethos of Universal History
Andrew Leak, Haiti's 'Nouveau Contract Social' of 2005: A Simulacrum of Citizenship
Chris Bongie, (Not) Razing the Walls: The Post-Politics of 'World Literature'
John Kranauskias, Haiti's Marvelous Revolution: Reflections on Alejo Carpentier's The Kingdom of this World
Valerie Kaussen, Ghosts of Universal History
Peter Hallward, Self-Emancipation and the Politics of Violence in Haiti

Full details in the Conference Programme. The event is free of charge. Enquiries to Nick Nesbitt.

Twenty Days of Aftershocks

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:28:28 +0000

A selection of testimony and opinion pieces - reflecting a range of views - which have appeared online over the last three weeks.

Useful sources include the excellent Repeating Islands blog, email bulletins from the Haiti Support Group, and Bob Corbett's Haiti List.

Edwidge Danticat, A Little While, New Yorker, 1 Feb 2010.

Laura Wagner, Haiti: A survivor's story, Salon, 1 Feb 2010.

Peter Slevin, As food distribution improves, Haitians want U.S to 'take over', Washington Post, 1 Feb 2010.

Nick Allen, Haiti earthquake: voodoo high priest claims aid monopolised by Christians, Daily Telegraph, 1 Feb 2010.

Gary Younge, The west owes Haiti a bailout. And it would be a hand-back, not a handout, Guardian, 31 January 2010.

John Maxwell, Protecting Haiti's Interest, Jamaica Observer, 31 January 2010.

Peter Hallward, The Land that Wouldn't Lie, Haitianalysis.com, 29 Jan 2010.

John Pilger, The Kidnapping of Haiti, New Statesman, 28 Jan 2010.

Melanie Newton, World's Future in Haiti, (Barbados) Nation News, 27 Jan 2010.

Eduardo Galeano, A hist�ria do Haiti � a hist�ria do racismo, Adital, 25 Jan 2010.

Ker Than, Haiti Earthquake & Voodoo: Myths, Ritual, and Robertson (Interview with Wade Davis), National Geographic, 25 Jan 2010.

Tom Phillips, Haiti earthquake: religion fills the void left by aid agencies, Guardian, 24 Jan 2010.

Rodney Saint-�loi, La tendresse et l'�l�gance nous sauveront du s�isme, Cyberpresse.ca, 23 January 2010.

Sites sur Ha�ti : t�moignages d�auteurs � consulter, Etonnants Voyageurs, 22 Jan 2010.

Peter Hallward, Securing Disaster in Haiti, Haitianalysis.com, 22 Jan, 2010.

Dany Laferri�re, Tout bouge autour de moi, Novel Observateur, 21 Jan 2010.

Amy Wilentz, The Haiti Haters, The Nation, 21 Jan 2010.

Richard Morse, Haiti: My Experience on the Ground, Huffington Post, 21 Jan 2010.

Juan Carlos Chavez, In wealthy enclave of P�tionville, another picture, Miami Herald, 21 Jan 2010.

Andy Kershaw, Stop Treating These People Like Savages, Independent, 21 Jan 2010.

Tracy Wilkinson, Haiti's Elite Hold Nation's Future in their Hands, Los Angeles Times, 21 Jan 2010.

�velyne Trouillot, Aftershocks, New York Times, 21 Jan 2010.

Colin Dayan, 'Civilizing' Haiti, Boston Review, 20 Jan 2010.

Dianne Diakit�, The Myth of �Voodoo�: A Caribbean American Response to Representations of Haiti, Religion Dispatches, 20 Jan 2010.

Sir Hilary Beckles, The Hate and the Quake, Barbados Advocate, 19 Jan 2010.

Robert Booth, Cruise ships still find a Haitian berth, Guardian, 17 Jan 2010.

John Maxwell, No, Mister! You Cannot Share My Pain!, Jamaica Observer, 17 Jan 2010.

Ha�ti : le t�moignage bouleversant de l'�crivain Dany Laferri�re (interview), Le Monde, 16 Jan 2010.

Ruth Gledhill, Voodoo faith 'could hinder Haiti's recovery from quake', The Times, 15 Jan 2010.

David Brooks, The Underlying Tragedy, New York Times,14 Jan 2010. And responses from Matt Taibbi (18 Jan) and Tom F. Driver and Carl Lindskoog (19 Jan).

Edwidge Danticat Voices Haiti, Always, Women's Voices for Change, 14 Jan 2010.

Tyler Cowen, Why is Haiti so Poor?, Marginal Revolution, 13 Jan 2010.

Alain Mabanckou, Haiti ou l'�nigme d'un s�isme, Black Bazar, 13 Jan 2010.

T�moignage de Rodney Saint-�loi (interview), Potomitan.info, undated.

The V Word Revisited

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:08:14 +0000

There are so many trapped in the rubble of rational thought which tragically collapsed this week in parts of Europe and North America. Can someone help Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach?

I can hear him calling out. What is he saying? 'The fatalism inspired by the voodoo religion would militate against recovery'.

Unlike, presumably, the fatalism inspired by the removal of a democratically-elected president. Twice.

Nothing he is quoted as saying seems to admit that 'fatalism' may have secular as well as spiritual sources. And is it really so inconceivable that people combine vodou � or any other religious - beliefs with activities like making a living, bringing up children, going to school, getting involved in community projects, or pulling people out of wrecked buildings and caring for them? Can't we at least agree that it just might be possible?

I hear an echo. What's that? 'There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile.' David Brooks on The Underlying Tragedy in the New York Times. Couldn't he have said the same thing about the global financial crisis? In any case, it sounds like David Brooks is spreading that message well enough himself.

And then there are Tyler Cowen's scatter-gun hypotheses that try to answer the rather loaded question Why is Haiti so poor?. They include this intriguing suggestion:

Hegel was correct that the "voodoo religion," with its intransitive power relations among the gods, was prone to producing political intransitivity as well. (Isn't that a startling insight for a guy who didn't travel the broader world much?)

Cowen is actually not the only one for whom Hegel has recently become an authority on Haiti (and I will return to this in a future post), but he is unusual in claiming that this is because of the philosopher's alleged views on voodoo.

That word again. It's been around for a while, though it's not as old as Hegel, at least not in this spelling. In The V Word I tried to show how voodoo emerged victorious in English in the late 19th Century over French or Creole versions like vaudoux or voudou. And in doing so it rapidly mutated as a metaphor that took it far from the island of its birth to refer to practically anything that was inexplicable or malicious or both.

At the same time the religion attracted the interest of more sympathetic scholars (inside and outside Haiti) and by the 1980s and 90s, something of the reality of vodou - to adopt the spelling in the language spoken by most of its followers - had seeped into the Western mainstream, and its difference from the cartoon voodoo was recognized by anyone who gave serious consideration to the matter.

I suggested that the two forms had diverged to the extent that we could afford to relax. Almost no-one used voodoo to define Haiti anymore. The word had drifted away from its Caribbean moorings to harmlessly scare (or lure) a world blissfully ignorant of where it came from. And we could begin to expect that discussions of the religion - given official recognition by Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2003 - would be more likely to dignify it with the name vodou,and treat it accordingly.

But I may have been proved wrong. Last week the ghost returned, as those who sought facile explanations or excuses for the desperate scenes unfolding in the media seemed to find a large captive audience willing to accept them.

How much it will be allowed to haunt the efforts of emergency relief and reconstruction remains to be seen. At least that captive audience is now beginning to answer back.

Ayiti se t� glise

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:50:12 +0000

Sunday morning beside the statue to Alexandre P�tion, Champ de Mars, Port-au-Prince, January 2004.

In a moving piece in the Miami Herald, Edwidge Danticat recalls the Krey�l proverb, Ayiti se t� glise, Haiti is slippery ground:

'Haiti has never been more slippery ground than it is right now. Bodies littering the streets. Entire communities buried in rubble. Homes pancaked to dust.

For those of us who know and love Haiti, now our hearts are also slippery ground. We are hopeful one moment then filled with despair the next. '

Descourtilz (1809)

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:32:30 +0000

Michel-�tienne Descourtilz (1775-1836) was a French doctor and botanist who was sent to Saint-Domingue by the government and founded the colonial Lyc�e there. During the slave rebellion he served as a doctor with Dessalines' army, returning to Europe in 1803.

Most of the relevant section of Chapter XIV of his Voyages d'un naturaliste is reproduced (in two separate extracts) in Pierre Pluchon, Vaudou sorciers empoisonneurs: De Saint-Domingue � Ha�ti (Paris: �ditions Karthala, 1987), pp100-104. However, Pluchon ignores some of the paragraph breaks, and modernizes some spelling and punctuation.

from Voyages d'un naturaliste

Chapitre Quatorzi�me

Id�e des Vaudoux . D�finition du mot. Leurs op�rations ridicules et emphatiques. Maladies qu�ils donn�rent � un habitant de la Petite-Rivi�re, plaine de l�Artibonite, et � des n�gres dont ils �toient jaloux. Sortil�ges pr�tendus. Pr�diction faite � Toussaint-Louverture, chef noir � Saint-Domingue. Tours fac�tieux que les vaudoux se plaisent � faire dans les calendas.

Ayant beaucoup entendu parler d�une secte idol�tre appel�e vaudoux � Saint-Domingue, et dont la r�union avoir lieu sur notre habitation, je fis venir une n�gresse affid�e qui, apr�s m�avoir d�taill� des faits surnaturels, me rendit le t�moin oculaire des fr�n�tiques c�r�- [181] monies de ces esp�ces de convulsionnaires. �Les vaudoux, me dit la v�ridique Finette , sont de nations diff�rentes; ils tombent en crise par suite d�une sympathie inconcevable. R�unis sur le terrain qui doit �tre le th��tre de leurs grimaces convulsives, ils sourient en se rencontrant, se heurtent avec rudesse, et les voil� tous deux en crise; les pieds en l�air, hurlant comme des b�tes f�roces, et �cumant comme elles.

�Je passois un jour, poursuivit-elle, aupr�s de deux, de ces esp�ces de convulsionnaires, et soit que leurs pros�lytes aient eu l�intention d�accr�diter leur syst�me, soit que par ces preuves irr�cusables, ils aient voulu profiter de mon jeune age pour m�initier dans leurs myst�res, on m�introduisit dans le cercle, et il fut ordonn� � l�un d�eux, par le chef de la horde, de prendre dans ses mains du charbon allum� qui lui fut pr�sent�, et sembla ne point le br�ler; � l�autre de se laisser enlever des lani�res de chair avec des ongles de fer, ce qui fut ponctuellement ex�cut�, sans que je remarquasse le moindre signe de sensibilit�.

�Domp�te (c�est le nom du chef tout-puissant de la horde fanatique) a, disent-ils, le [182] pouvoir de d�couvrir de ses yeux, et malgr� tout obstacle mat�riel, tout ce que se passe, n�importe � quelle distance; propri�t� fictive bien faite pour en imposer aux cr�dules, et tyranniser les incertains dont le d�faut de confiance est puni par le poison qui leur est familier, et, dans les mains du Domp�te, d�un usage journalier et impuni.

�Les acolytes de cette secte ont aussi entre eux des moyens magiques d�exercer leur vengeance. Un homme a-t-il essuy� les rigueurs d�une amante, ou l�infid�lit� d�une ma�tresse habitu�e? un piquant de raie jet� dans l�urine de la coupable, le venge de son outrage, en frappant soudain l�infidelle d�une maladie de langeur, que le vaudoux fait cesser � volont� par une pr�paration diff�rente.

�C�est par un semblable motif de jalousie, qu�une n�gresse nomm�e Jeanne Claire, d�une habitation de la plaine l�Artibonite, ayant excit� l�envie de la femme d�un vaudoux, fit mettre en op�ration son mari qui par un sortil�ge rendit cette rivale (ou matelote) muette et difforme aux yeux fascin�s de son amant qui la repudia, et ne la vit depuis qu�avec horreur, malgr� les t�moignages d�attachement de cette femme qui, pour op�rer une r�conciliation si d�sir�e, lui offrit tout ce qu�elle poss�doit. [183] L�amant d�abord courrouc�, se radoucit pourtant � la proposition de ces offres g�n�reuses. Jeanne Claire se disposoit � lui remettre la cassette contenant ses bijoux et ses effets les plus pr�cieux: quelle fut sa surprise lorsqu�au lieu de la trouver � sa place, elle n�y rencontra plus qu�un amas de terre et d�ossemens humains! O d�solation! mais l�effet du philtre n��toit point �ternel, l�amant creusa et fouilla le tertre d�positaire de l�op�ration magique, et ce fut � l�instant o� la cassette reparut, que la femme doublement enchant�e recouvra et sa voix et son tr�sor.

�Une des preuves encore que les sortil�ges n�ont qu�une dur�e limit�e, c�est, continua l�historienne, la maladie singuli�re qu��prouva, par ces effets magiques, M. D�riboux, habitant de la Petite-Rivi�re des Gona�ves. Il eut un diff�rend avec un vaudoux, et sans menaces de la part de son ennemi il fut atteint d�s le lendemain d�un vomissement dans lequel il rendoit de gros morceaux de chair crue. Ce c�est qu�apr�s six mois de souffrances que le mal�fice cessa.

�Un autre vaudoux, par suite de la jalousie d�un confr�re, op�ra ce ph�nom�ne: son rival, homme robuste et bien fait, devint hideux et couvert de l�pres qu�il conserva jusqu�� ce qu�il [184] eut renonc� � la femme qui lui causoit cette infirmit�. Sur la menace du vaudoux, le l�preux quitta le quartier, et recouvra bient�t une parfaite sant�.

�Un fait non moins extraordinaire m�rite d��tre cit�. La femme d�un vaudoux venoit de perdre son mari, qui en mourant lui avoit laiss� le secret de d�rober son argent � la recherche des voleurs, en leur fascinant les yeux. Joyeuse de poss�der ce secret merveilleux, elle faisoit �talage de sa fortune, et l��levoit de beaucoup au dessus de sa valeur, ayant en vue par ce stratag�me d�augmenter le nombre de ses adorateurs. Adonis, n�gre cuisinier de M. Desfontaines, habitant des Gona�ves, rus� et envieux de mordre � la grappe, r�solut de chercher � lui plaire, esp�rant, apr�s un tems d�assiduit�s et de caresses, devenir le semi-possesseur du riche butin annonc�.

�Dans ses fr�quentes visities, il cherchoit � flatter la friandise de Claire, en lui apportant des mets d�licats, soustraits, � la table de son ma�tre. Un jour que par l�abondance des g�teaux, autres provisions, et surtout une bouteille de marasquin, il avoit tent� de la rendre d�raisonnable au point d�obtenir son secret, il fut d��u de son esp�rance, et apprit seulement d�elle, que le tonneau qui se trouvoit dans le [185] coin de la case, derri�re son hamac, renfermoit le tr�sor en question, mais qu�il �toit d�fendu � tout autre qu�elle de p�n�trer jusque-l�; et, pour preuve de son privil�ge exclusif, elle engagea Adonis � tout tenter pour enlever cet argent du baril o� il �toit. Celui-ci souriant, voulut en vain y plonger le bras � deux reprises, �tant repouss� chaque fois par une force invisible; cependant, ne perdant pas courage, il fit une troisi�me tentative, mais quelle fut sa surprise lorsqu�en introduisant son bras, il crut sentire une couleuvre qui, par la d�torsion de ses replis tortueux, sembloit vouloir s��lancer sur lui! Adonis plus prudent que courageux, renon�a soudain � l�exp�rience, mais conserva le d�sir d�approfondir l�intensit� de ce myst�re. Pour satisfaire sa curiosit�, il alla donc trouver un vaudoux son ami, et moyennant une bouteille de tafia, il obtint de lui le moyen de rompre ou plut�t de d�truire le charme de ce prestige d�illusion. Il re�ut du vaudoux un peu de terre de cimeti�re, qu�il lui fut ordonn� d�aller d�poser derri�re le lit de Claire � son ins�u, destin�e, lui dit-il, � l�endormir, et avec elle son secret. Toute cause surnaturelle �tant d�truite, Adonis se pr�senta chez sa ma�tresse qui s�endormit bient�t dans ses bras, apr�s qu�il eut pr�alablement achev� son op�ration; d�o� il r�sulta succ�s [186] complet, au moyen duquel il fit la loi � sa ma�tresse, et ne consentit � lui remettre � son tour son tr�sor que s�ils s�appartenoient l�un � l�autre. Celle-ci y consentit sans peine, aimant Adonis plus que tout autre de ses courtisans.

�On sait, me dit l�historienne, que Toussaint-Louverture, � l�arriv�e de l�exp�dition fran�aise command�e par le g�neral Leclerc, se fit dire sa bonne aventure par un de ces vaudoux fam� dans l�art devinatoire, et qu�il lui fut annonc� au fort de la Cr�te-�-Pierrot, qu�il seroit trahi et livr� aux Fran�ais par son premier chef, celui en qui il avoit plus de confiance, le f�roce Dessalines. L��v�nement r�alisa la pr�diction du vaudoux�.

Les vaudoux, par un esprit de contrari�t� qui leur est personnel, aiment � troubler les plaisirs qui ne sont pas les leurs; aussi les voit-on � la d�couverte des calendas (danses nocturnes) s�y faire des signaux, et, pr�voyant leurs succ�s, rire entr�eux d�avance de l�embarras de leurs dupes. Un d�eux plus confiant que les autres, me prenant par le bras, me dit tout bas l�intention o� il �toit, ainsi que ses camarades, de faire donner le calenda � tous les diables. Il n�eut point achev� ces paroles, que tous les danseurs se plaignirent de borbo- [187] rismes, qu�un bruit cr�pitant se fit entendre, et que la confusion se fit remarquer sur tous les visages �tonn�s; aussit�t de se fixer et de rire aux �clats, puis de se d�piter, comme contraints d�abandonner le poste o� la gaiet� les avoit plac�s. Vous voyez, me dit alors le vaudoux, combien tous nos danseurs sont interdits, et combien de vents chacun rend sans pouvoir en emp�cher; eh bien! nous sommes les auteurs de cette espi�glerie qui consiste � r�pandre dans le milieu du bal une poudre compos�e de sucre imbu de la sueur d�un cheval harass�. Voil� continua-t-il, tout notre secret, mais n�en parlez � personne; car nous aurion s�rement lieu de nous repentire d�avoir troubl� ce divertissement.

Source: M E Descourtilz, Voyages d'un Naturaliste (Paris 1809), Vol III, pp180-87.

Drouin de Bercy (1814)

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:51:58 +0000

With the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814, some elements of the political elite in France considered reconquering Haiti and restoring slavery there. Drouin de Bercy's De Saint-Domingue (1814) is an argument in favour of this project.

The main section of this book of interest to scholars of vaudou is the final three-page Note, which is reproduced in full below. But to help contextualize it, this is preceded with some extracts, including the section of the main body of the text which refers to vaudou (and refers the reader to the final Note for more details).

The full text of the note is reproduced in Pierre Pluchon, Vaudou sorciers empoisonneurs: De Saint-Domingue � Ha�ti (Paris: �ditions Karthala, 1987), pp110-13. However, Pluchon ignores some of the paragraph breaks, and modernizes some spelling and punctuation.

from De Saint-Domingue

The R�sum� G�n�ral that concludes this short book (pp129-74) consists of a list of numbered points, prefaced by the following remark:

Pour ramener St.-Domingue � son premier �tat de splendeur, et lui donner une consistance que cette �le n�avait pas avant la r�volution, je crois qu�il conviendrait.

1. De faire de S.-Domingue le chef-lieu g�n�ral des Antilles, d�y �tablir des chantiers de construction, des voileries, des corderies, des ars�naux [�. etc] (p129).

And it may be worth quoting the 25th point in full (pp168-72), as it is here that the reference to vaudou is found:

25. Toutes les fois qu�il a �t� question du ch�timent que la m�tropole devait infliger aux rebelles de Saint-Domingue, les opinions se sont partag�es en raison du ressentiment, de l�int�r�t et de la cupidit� des individus. Ceux qui avaient � pleurer la mort d�un parent, d�une �pouse ou d�une ma�tresse ch�rie d�siraient venger leur mort sur tout ce qui �tait homme; ceux qui avaient re�u des [169] services de ces m�mes individus, ou qui avaient des propri�t�s, proposaient de faire un choix pour le nombre des victimes; et ceux enfin qui sp�culaient sur le trafic de ces mis�rables, soutenaient que la colonie ne serait jamais tranquille, si on ne les d�truisait pas tous jusqu�au dernier.

Les crimes atroces et r�fl�chis de ces monstres inhumains n�cessitent certainement un exemple, pour �ter d�sormais � leurs confr�res d�Afrique l�envie de se porter � des exc�s aussi r�voltans, que ni la servitude ni les mauvais traitemens qu�ils peuvent avoir �prouv�s dans certains cas, ne sauraient justifier. Comme ils consid�rent maintenant cette colonie comme une propri�t� que le sort de la guerre a mis en leur pouvoir, le Gouvernement ne saurait prendre trop de pr�cautions pour s�en emparer et pour s�y maintenir, parce qu�il ne peut plus d�sormais se fier � leurs promesses ni � leur soumission.

Tous les chefs, jusqu�au grade de caporel, doivent dispara�tre de St.-Domingue.

Ceux des rebelles arm�s qui se soumettront sans coup f�rir � l�arriv�e ou au passage de l'arm�e fran�aise, et qui aideront � r�duire les autres, doivent avoir la vie sauve et �tre consid�r�s en outre comme troup� disponible aux ordres du Gouvernement, qui les emploiera comme bon lui semblera, et m�me hors de la colonie s�il le juge n�cessaire; cela doit se faire avec beaucoup de pr�- [170] caution, pour ne pas les effaroucher, et pour �carter de leur esprit jusqu�� l�id�e de la noyade. Les r�volt�s qui seront pris les armes � la main seront fusill�s si l�on ne peut pas les �changer contre les prisonniers ou les blancs qu�ils auront en leur pouvoir.

Ceux qui, apr�s une r�sistance quelconque, seront forc�s de mettre bas les armes et de se rendre, seront embarqu�s pour la France, soit pour y organiser des corps, soit pour les employer aux travaux que le Gouvernement jugera convenables; les cultivateurs les plus d�lur�s, connus sous le nom de Docteur, Candio, Caprelata, don Pedro et Vaudoux, doivent �tre compris dans cette mesure. [Footnote: Voyez la Note � la fin de l�ouvrage.]

Toutes les n�gresses des villes et des campagnes qui �taient m�nag�res, revendeuses, et accoutum�es � se faire servir par leurs semblables, n��tant plus propres � la culture et ne pouvant sans danger rester parmi les cultivateurs, ainsi que les vieillards des deux sexes, depuis cinquante ans, qui sont � craindre par leurs conseils et par les poisons qu�ils donnent aux jeunes n�gres, doivent �tre � la disposition du Gouvernement pour les envoyer o� bon lui semblera.

Les enfans des deux sexes, depuis l��ge de sept ans, doivent �tre consid�r�s comme innocens des [171] crimes de leurs p�res, et cons�quemment avoir droit � la protection du Gouvernement. Parmi les cultivateurs des deux sexes, le Gouvernement fera fort bien d�en prendre un certain nombre pour les employer � dess�cher les marais, � curer les ports, � r�parer les grandes routes, � travailler aux mines de cuivre, de fer, et dans les arsenaux de l��tat.

La caste mul�tre, comme �tant la plus dangereuse, la plus remuante, la cause et l��me de toute les insurrections des n�gres, demande � �tre trait�e, s�il se peut, avec plus de s�v�rit� que les noirs; c�est � la sagesse du Gouvernement � d�cider sur la mesure g�n�rale qu�il doit prendre en cette occasion.

Quand l��le sera totalement conquise et purg�e de tout ce qui pourrait troubler � l�avenir sa tranquillit� int�rieure, le gouvernement [sic, lower case], un an apr�s la conqu�te et l�organisation de ce pays, pourra envoyer pour son compte dix vieilles fr�gates arm�es en fl�te, faire la traite en Afrique aussi longtems qu�il jugera � propos d�introduire des noirs � Saint-Domingue, pour les vendre aux habitans ruin�s. Le montant de cette vente sera hypoth�qu� sur la propri�t�, et le recouvrement du paiement s�en fera annuellement sur la r�colte, jusqu�� parfait paiement, l�int�r�t compris.

Par ce moyen le Gouvernement remontera sa colonie en peu d�ann�es, et il acquerra un nouveau [172] droit � la reconnaissance des habitans; puisqu�il pourra leur donner les noirs � meilleur march� que les sp�culateurs commerciaux.

The Note to which we are directed in the footnote above is appended to the main body of the volume,beginning on a separate page, after the conclusion of the numbered list, which ends with:

36e. Que la justice y soit gratis, simple et prompte (p174).

Note

Le n�gre Candio ou Docteur est ainsi appel�, parce qu�il s�habille avec plus de soin que les autres; il est entreprenant, libertin, et se fait entretenir par les n�gresses; c�est un feseur d�embarras, qui, par ses motions, par son bavardage et par sa conduite indiscr�te, occasionne souvent du trouble sur les habitations, ou dans les danses de n�gres, appel�es Calinda.

Le Caprelata est un mauvais sujet qui court d�habitations en habitations, et ne travaille jamais; il contrefait le sorcier, et vend aux Noirs des amulettes et des f�tiches, avec lesquelles il leur assure qu�ils peuvent tout faire et qu�ils seront � l�abri de la d�tection, des ch�timents, et m�me des coups de fusil; il porte sur lui et sur sa t�te, une vingtaine de petites queues garnies de plume et de pattes d�oiseaux, des rasades, des graines et des conquillages.

Le Don P�dro est un n�gre qui court les habitations pendant la nuit, pour voir ses femmes. Il ne se contente pas de voler les vivres, les volailles et les moutons, il d�payse encore les chevaux et quelquefois les petits n�grillons; il est paresseux, raisonneur et menteur effront�. Il a une couple de queues sur la t�te, et une cadenette de chaque c�t� de la figure; il porte ordinairement un gros baton, ou un gro fouet, appel� Arceau. [176] Les postillons, les charretiers et les gardeurs d�animaux, sont en g�n�ral des Don P�dro.

Le Vaudou est le plus dangereux de tous les n�gres; il ne travaille que lorsqu�il ne peut pas faire autrement; il est voleur, menteur et hypocrite; il donne de mauvais conseils aux Noirs, et leur distribue des poisons subtils avec lesquels ils d�truisent imperceptiblement les bestiaux, les volailles, les blancs et le n�gres qui leur d�plaisent. Les gardiens de barri�re, de jardin, de vivres, de pi�ces de cannes, et un grand nombre de vieux n�gres sont des Vaudoux; ils ont toujours dans leurs cases diff�rens poisons contenus dans des Cocos, ou des Calebasses.

Le Don P�dro et la Vaudou sont une association d�autant plus terrible qu�elle a pour but la ruine et la destruction des blancs, et de persuader aux n�gres qu�ils ne seront jamais heureux, s�ils n�y sont pas associ�s. Pour �tre Don P�dro, il faut �tre bon filou, effront�, ent�t�, endurci aux coups, et ne jamais r�v�ler de ce qui s�est pass� dans leurs rendez-vous.

Quand la confrairie croit n�avoir rien � craindre de la faiblesse, de la l�chet�, ni de l�indiscretion d�un n�gre qui d�sire devenir Vaudou, elle en instruit le roi de cet ordre. Le r�cipiendaire subit alors un mois d��preuves. S�il prouve par son adresse � voler, par sa patience, par sa fermet�, et par sa r�signation � souffrir les coups, que rien ne peut lui arracher son secret, on l�introduit les yeux band�s dans la salle d�cisive. Aussit�t qu�il est � genoux, on lui �te son bandeau; il voit tout autour de lui des n�gres arm�s et chamar�s d�une mani�re effrayante, et dans le milieu de la chambre, un grande nappe parsem�e de taches de sang, de plumes et de griffes d�oiseaux. [177]

Un bruit affreux annonce l�apparition du roi Vaudou, qui sort de dessous la nappe, tenant un rison ardent d�une main et un poignard de l�autre; il demande d�un air f�roce au r�cipiendaire ce qu�il veut. �Je d�sire, dit-il, baiser la couleuvre sacr�, et recevoir de la Reine Vaudou ses ordres et ses poisons.� Le Roi, pour l��prouver, lui enfonce la pointe de son poignard dans le bras, et sur le gras de la cuisse, ensuite il y applique son tison ardent. Si le n�gre se plaint ou fait la grimace, il est assassin� sur-le-champs; s�il ne fronce pas du sourcil, les noirs arm�s le conduisent alors dans une chambre vaste au bout de laquelle il y a un rideau, et au milieu de la salle un grand Bamboula, our tambour, de quatre pieds de haut, orn� rubans, de feuillages et de f�tiches.

Le r�cipiendaire la traverse sur ses genoux et sur ses coudes, entre deux rangs de n�gres et de n�gresses. En arrivant aupr�s du rideau, il fait offre des volailles et des vivres qu�il a vol�s, le rideau se l�ve imm�diatement, il aper�oit sur un tr�ne le Roi Vaudou pr�s � le percer d�une fl�che, et � c�t� de lui, la Reine qui retient l�arme meurtri�re. Sit�t que son offrande est faite, on lui passe la couleuvre tout autour du corps, il la baise, et re�oit ensuite les ordres et les poisons de la Reine, pour d�truire dans deux or trous mois ses ennemis et leurs animaux.

Sept n�gres nuds, ayant des feuilles autour des reins, des plumes sur la t�te et des rasades autour des poignets, le prennent et le conduisent aupr�s du tambour sacr�; ils l�arment d�un b�ton semblable au leur, lui font boire un breuvage enivrant, m�l� de sang, de poudre � canon et de tafia, apr�s quoi ils chantent et r�p�tent en choeur les paroles suivantes, qu�ils commencent et terminent par un coup de b�ton sur la Bamboula. [178] �A ia bombaia bomb�, lamma samana quana, � van vanta, vana docki�, qui signifient, nous jurons de d�truire les blancs et tout ce qu�ils poss�dent, mourrons plut�t que d�y renoncer. Apr�s le serment, les hommes et les femmes se mettent � danser tout nus, et � boire du tafia. La salle n�offre plus ensuite qu�une orgie ind�cente, dans laquelle les deux sexes se trouvent enlac�s dans les bras les uns des autres.

Source: Drouin de Bercy, De Saint-Domingue, de ses guerres, de ses r�volutions, de ses ressources et des moyens � prendre pour y r�tablir la paix et l'industrie (Paris: 1814).

Eh! eh! Bomba, hen! hen!

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:42:43 +0000

In a recent blog post, the legal scholar Jonathan Turley, attempting to make sense of Pat Robertson's, by now notorious, remarks on the divine purpose of the Haiti earthquake, has this to say.¹

Robertson seems to be referring to Dutty Boukman who helped led the uprising in August 1791.² He was a houngan, or Haitian priest, who held a traditional ceremony in which a pig (symbolizing the power of nature) was sacrificed and an oath administered to the fighters to be fearless in battle. However, accounts of his words notably omit Robertson�s alleged pact:

Eh! Eh! Bomba! Heu! Heu!
Canga, bafio t�!
Canga, moun� de l�!
Canga, do ki la!
Canga, do ki la!
Canga, li!

We swear to destroy the whites
and all they possess.
Let us die rather than fail
to keep this vow.

For this information he credits the entry on the Boukman Rebellion on the L'Ouverture Project website. Attentive readers of this entry may note that it goes to some trouble to stress the difficulty in establishing the facts about this rebellion, particularly the ceremony which was supposed to have taken place on the night of the 22 August at Bois Caiman.

Some historians, notably Leon-Francois Hoffmann,³ have gone so far as to suggest that the ceremony is a myth, somewhat inconveniently for UNESCO which in 1998 chose 23 August as the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and of its Abolition. But if Hoffmann is wrong, and the ceremony did take place, there is no evidence that the chant featured in its proceedings.⁴

The only contemporary reference to this chant is to be found in the monumental study of the French colony of Saint-Domingue assembled by the colonial lawyer, M L E Moreau-de-Saint-M�ry in the years immediately preceding the Revolution, though not published until 1797. Moreau-de-Saint-M�ry quotes the chant in the course of an extended description of the religious practices of the slaves, but while he is quite precise about how some of the words are to be spoken or sung, he makes no attempt to translate them.⁵ And indeed, this chant proved a mystery for several subsequent generations of writers on what he called vaudoux, none of whom had any idea what it meant.

The chant was cited dozens of times through the 19th and early 20th Centuries - by foreign visitors and observers keen to measure the achievements of the 'Black Republic' in order to justify their opinions on the viability of Emancipation and the value of peasant cultures. They found the curious syllables capable of supporting a range of positions, both sympathetic and hostile, although none of them questioned the assumption that identified the chant with the backward, the atavistic, the primitive.

So where does this translation come from? It is first offered as a translation of the chant by C L R James in The Black Jacobins (1938), his classic study of the Haitian Revolution.⁶ And how did James arrive at it? He doesn't say, but it seems likely he took it from a French version in one of his sources, probably a work by Pierre de Vaissi�re on colonial Saint-Domingue published in 1909.⁷ But there are two chants in de Vaissi�re, and the translation he provides relates not to 'Eh! eh! Bomba' but another chant first recorded in a virulent tract calling for the French reconquest of Haiti in 1814. The author of this tract, Drouin de Bercy, warned of the menace that awaited any conquering force, citing the lines of a chorus sung at a ceremony as follows:

�A ia bombaia bomb�, lamma samana quana, � van vanta, vana docki�, qui signifient, nous jurons de d�truire les blancs et tout ce qu�ils poss�dent, mourrons plut�t que d�y renoncer. ⁸

Given the context in which it appears, one may be forgiven for doubting its reliability. Indeed, given the way that both chants only ever appear through the process of one writer quoting another, it wouldn't be surprising if the chants turned out to be pure invention.

But in a surprising twist, two scholars in the 1940s, working independently and unknown to each other, discovered that the words of the 'Eh! eh! Bomba' chant were quite recognizable as being of Congolese origin. The Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz and the Belgian missionary Jean Cuvelier came to the conclusion that the chant was an exorcism or curse for which they offered, Spanish and French versions, respectively, which I give in English here:

Eh! Eh! Bomba! Eh! Eh!
Cast out the blacks!
Cast out the whites
Cast out the spirits!
Cast them out.⁹

Eh, serpent Mbumba
Stop the blacks
Stop the whites
Stop the ndoki
Stop them ¹⁰

And these versions appear when Aim� C�saire makes use of the chant in his own study of the Revolution, Toussaint Louverture: La R�volution Fran�aise et le Probl�me Colonial (1960).¹¹ While we might expect this to have rendered James' effort obsolete, it is actually his translation which has endured.

The reasons for this are complex, I think. It is partly because C�saire's book has yet to appear in English, but also because its approximation to the 'liberty or death' slogan that circulated in the Atlantic World from the 1770s more neatly fits the purposes to which both C�saire and James want to put the chant. Namely: to dissociate the chant from backward primitivism and reassociate it with a modern struggle for universal human rights.

In a footnote added to a later edition, C�saire adds yet another translation from a third scholar who disputed the accuracy of Ortiz and Cuvelier, claiming this would 'put an end ... to the controversy'.¹² But of course it did no such thing and in the 1990s at least three different alternatives were proposed by historians specializing in the revolutionary period.¹³

It is evident from studying the debate that there were those who felt that the apparent even-handed reference to 'whites' and 'blacks' in the original translations did not sit well with the proto-revolutionary character expected to be shown by black slaves about to overthrow their white masters. And so their translations tended to suggest either that bafio te or bafioti actually referred only to certain 'blacks' (the traitors who consorted with the enemy perhaps) or to suggest that canga had several senses and was being used differently when applied to whites and to blacks. But those who did not resort to such convoluted refinements were maybe, in their own way, simply confirming their view that religious ceremonies have a strictly other-worldly purpose and should be considered discontinuous with the daily grind and strife in the cane fields.

Their disagreement should remind us how hard it is to pin down the nuances of particular terms, even when we know the language in question. For the words of the chant in themselves simply don't offer enough of a context to favour one interpretation over another. Indeed, to even attempt to do so may be misplaced, given that religious incantations often derive their power from the fact that they are not understood by those who utter them, but rather serve - as drum-beats and repeated movements and gestures do - to bind people together in a particular heightened state and common purpose.

The translations in effect reinforce the authors' prior understanding of the religious culture of the slaves and free blacks in the 1790s and the its role in enabling or holding back the rebellion that eventually brought independence in 1804. Just as the bare syllables did for those who debated the wisdom of abolition and independence during the 19th Century.

'Eh! Eh Bomba' doesn't prove anything. How can it? To say it represents an sinister 'pact with the devil' or a revolutionary call for action is to indulge in glib fantasies. What Moreau de Saint-M�ry (or his informants) observed in the plantations is lost to us now, even if we can detect some similarities with modern vodou beliefs and rituals, and can chart the progress of the rebellion that followed in ever more sophisticated ways. It is silly to extrapolate the significance of 1804 and the subsequent history of Haiti from such slender traces. And we should certainly avoid the temptation to use the chant as a way of interpreting the present crisis.

Notes

For a more detailed and extended version of this essay, see Alasdair Pettinger, '"Eh! Eh! Bomba, hen! Hen!" Making Sense of a Vodou Chant'' in Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics of Caribbean Religion and Healing, edited by Maarit Forde and Diana Paton (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012).

1. Pat Robertson's views would seem to be commonly shared by Evangelical Protestant missions as this compilation of quotations that identify Haiti and 'voodoo' with Satan would suggest.

2. Turley's hunch would seem to be confirmed by comments by a spokesman for Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network quoted near the beginning of this piece on the ABC news site.

3. L�on-Fran�ois Hoffmann, 'Histoire, mythe et id�ologie:la c�r�monie du Bois-Ca�man' (1990) reprinted inHa�ti: lettres et l'�tre (Toronto: Editions du GREF, 1992), 267-301.

4. David Geggus, 'Haitian Voodoo in the Eighteenth Century: Language, Culture, Resistance', Jahrbuch f�r Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas 28 (1991), pp21-51.

5. M L E Moreau de Saint-M�ry, Description topographique, physique, civile, politique et historique de la partie Fran�aise de l'isle Saint-Domingue [1797], ed. Blanche Maurel and Etienne Taillemitte (Paris:Soci�t� de l'Histoire des Colonies Fran�aises, 1958), Vol 1, p67.

6. C L R James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, revised edition (London: Allison and Busby, 1980), pp18, 85.

7. Pierre de Vaissi�re, Saint-Domingue: La soci�t� et la vie cr�oles sous l'ancien r�gime (Paris: Perrin, 1909), p179.

8. Drouin de Bercy, De Saint-Domingue (Paris: Chez Hocquet,1814), p176.

9. Fernando Ortiz, 'Preludios �tnicos de la m�sica Afro-Cubana', Revista Bimestre Cubana 59 (1947), p100.

10. Jean Cuvelier, L'ancien royaume du Congo (Bruges: Descl�e de Brouwer, 1946), p290.

11. Aim� C�saire, Toussaint Louverture: La r�volution Fran�aise et le probl�me colonial (Paris: Le club fran�ais du livre,1960), p160.

12. Aim� C�saire, Toussaint Louverture: La r�volution Fran�aise et le probl�me colonial, revised edition (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1981), pp191-93.

13. Geggus, 'Haitian Voodoo', op cit; Carolyn Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint-Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990), pp57, 265-6, 290n58; John K Thornton, '"I am the Subject of the King of Kongo": African Political Ideology and the Haitian Revolution', Journal of World History, Vol 4 No 2 (1993), pp210-11. Other translations include those offered by Ned Sublette in the course of a round-table discussion on Haitian music in the New Yorker, 13 July 2009, and by Ezili Dant� in her Counter-Colonial Narrative on Vodun - which also provides a link to a video of Sak Pas� by the Welfare Poets, in which the chant appears.

Douglass in Leeds

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:14:31 +0000

Many now recognize the importance of Frederick Douglass' visit to the British Isles in 1845-47, a lecture tour that took him the length and breadth of the country and which secured his international reputation as an anti-slavery campaigner.

His second visit has attracted much less attention. In November 1859, Douglass arrived in Liverpool to begin a speaking tour, arranged long before John Brown's fateful attempt to capture the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry the previous month. In the wake of Brown's arrest it was probably the safest place for him to be, as Douglass was rumoured to have been one of his co-conspirators. Brown himself was executed in December.

His speeches discussed the significance of the raid and, mindful of the deepening sectional rift in the United States, promoted an anti-slavery interpretation of the Constitution.

As it happened, Douglass' tour was largely confined to Scotland and the North of England. In Yorkshire he stayed with his old friend and collaborator, Julia Griffiths (newly married). James Walker, secretary of the Leeds Young Men's Anti-Slavery Society observed: 'His powerful and eloquent appeals deepen our detestation of slavery, and have imparted to us a stronger impulse for, and led us more actively into, anti-slavery work than ever.'

Leeds Metropolitan University have organized a week of events (Mon 30 Nov to Fri 4 Dec 2009) marking the 150th anniversary of Douglass' visit to the city. On the programme are several talks, an anti-slavery walk, a play and a re-enactment of the speech Douglass gave in Leeds Music Hall on 22 December 1859. More details on this flyer.

News of the death of his youngest daughter Annie, aged ten, back home in Rochester, New York, forced Douglass to postpone engagements in Ireland and the south of England. He returned in May 1860, relieved to find that the moment of danger had passed, but pressing political concerns preventing him fulfilling his promise to resume his tour in the near future. In fact he did not visit Europe again until 1886, this time in the company of his second wife, Helen Pitts.

Haiti and the Politics of the Universal

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:12:53 +0000

Haiti and the Politics of the Universal University of Aberdeen, March 12-13, 2010.

The Centre for Modern Thought at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland) is pleased to announce a conference on the topic of 'Haiti and the Politics of the Universal'.

Since 1804, Haiti has named the founding, repressed, 'legitimate' violence of Western Modernity in its totality: both our spectral fantasies of slavery, revolutionary violence, and the 'failed state,' as well as the site of an eternally disavowed egalitarianism without compromise.

After two centuries of neglect and disavowal, the Haitian Revolution has suddenly become a fundamental reference point for global emancipatory politics, a touchstone for critical philosophers such as Alain Badiou, Slavoj �i�ek, Susan Buck-Morss, Peter Hallward, and Hardt and Negri. This conference will address this contemporary theoretical turn in Haitian Studies, discussing Haiti's place in Atlantic Modernity and its central role in political history and theory since 1791. Topics will range from the world-historical significance of the Haitian Revolution to the place of Haiti in the global political order since 2004. The conference will bring together a mix of academic and activist speakers to discuss the broad historical, philosophical, and political implications of Haiti since 1791.

Confirmed speakers include: Peter Hallward, Susan Buck-Morss, Kim Ives, Deborah Jenson, Patrick Elie, Bruno Bosteels, Chris Bongie, Alberto Moreiras, and Nick Nesbitt.

For more information, please contact Nick Nesbitt.

Postscript (4 March): The programme for this event is now available: see more more recent post.

Caribbean Enlightenment

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:54:17 +0000

Caribbean Enlightenment An Interdisciplinary Caribbean Studies Conference, University of Glasgow, 8-10 April 2010.

Keynote speakers: J Michael Dash (Professor of French, New York University); Paget Henry (Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Brown University); Nick Nesbitt (Centre for Modern Thought, University of Aberdeen).

Call for Papers

In a speech widely regarded as instigating the series of events that would lead to the overthrow of the Lescot government in 1946, Andr� Breton's proclamation of Haiti's 'inalienable enthusiasm for liberty and its affirmation of dignity above all obstacles' articulated the enduring revolutionary conviction in the Enlightenment-inspired principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. This artistic, cultural and political expression of a universal right to freedom and self-determination reflects the diverse and complex ways in which Enlightenment ideals have found expression in the Caribbean. From the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804 to The Black Jacobins, surrealism, n�gritude, and the contemporary writings of such theorists as Antonion Ben�tez-Rojo, �douard Glissant, and Wilson Harris, the interrogation of universality has both contributed to the ongoing dissemination and of creolization of Enlightenment discourse and has subjected it to a thorough critique. This conference aims to explore the various ways in which the site of the Caribbean, with its writers, artists, revolutionaries, and diverse peoples, has adapted and questioned the legacies of the Enlightenment. Acknowledging the Caribbean's crucial role in the Atlantic world, the Enlightenment's history of empire building and slave rebellions, colonial domination and postcolonial nation-building, the valorization of reason and its role in the division of knowledge, will be interrogated against the dissemination of a discourse promoting universal human rights, democracy and equality.

The conference seeks to bring together interdisciplinary perspectives on Enlightenment themes, both historical and contemporary, in order to trace the spread of a universalist discourse across the Caribbean. This conference invites papers that explore figurations of the universal within the Caribbean context, noting the region's national and linguistic divides in order to expose the ways in which such ideals have been adapted to express the particular experience of the Caribbean peoples. Finally, we pose the question: 'does the commitment to universalism amount to a totalizing discourse, or can universality be revisioned?'

We invite papers and panel suggestions that deal with any aspect of Caribbean Enlightenment, but which may include:

Reason and rule of law
Revolutionas and uprisings
Shortcomings of the Enlightenment: slavery and racism
Development of 'improvement' in technologies, medicine and language
Universal human rights, democracy, Marxism, self-determination
Economics of Caribbean Enlightenment
The impact of Surrealism
N�gritude and the universal
Appraisals of The Black Jacobins
Contemporary Caribbean literature/philosophy and universality 'revisioned'
Gendered, gay, racial, and class perspectives on universality
Religion and the Caribbean
Caribbean thought and 'post-continental' philosophy

Please send panel proposals and/or paper abstracts (300 words) with a brief biographical statement (150 words) to Lorna Burns and Michael Morris at caribbeanenlightenment@googlemail.com by 16 December 2009.

From Duvalier to Preval

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:30:05 +0000

From Duvalier to Preval: Haiti Today and Yesterday International Conference at the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London, 21 and 22 June, 2010.

Call for Papers and Expression of Interest

In 1979 Dr David Nicholls published a widely acclaimed book From Dessalines to Duvalier and followed it shortly after with another on Haiti in Caribbean Context. The aim of this two-day conference is to explore themes developed in these books and relate them to understanding and developing Haiti today.

The first day will examine the contemporary and historical evolution of politics in Haiti and how it relates to prospects for economic and social development today. Invited speakers will address these themes from both an academic and development practitioner viewpoint.

The second day will examine the present and past position of Haiti in the Caribbean and how it relates to the region and to the wider world. Again invited speakers will address these themes from both an academic and a practitioner viewpoint.

Proposals for papers on the themes of both days and/or expressions of interest in attending should be sent by 31 December 2009 to Paul Sutton or Kate Quinn. Proposals for papers should have a title and a short summary of the themes to be discussed.

The conference is being supported by the David Nicholls Memorial Trust and some financial support for those presenting papers at the conference may be made available.

Raising Cain

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:02:24 +0000

Welcome to the new bulldozia: projects site, finally rebuilt on new foundations after more than a year's work behind the scenes.

The site won't look very different at first, but new features and sections are just waiting in the wings.

Coming soon - before the end of 2009, I hope - will be:

an active blog (of which this is actually the first entry)
a new section on voodoo with some hard-to-find primary texts from the 19th- and early 20th-century sources
some additional user-features including the ability to add comments and the creation of an rss feed.