REVOLUTION & EMPIRE: HAITI & FRANCE, 178

Few periods in history have stirred imaginations and been debated as much as the so-called “Age of Revolution” at the turn of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Long seen through a self-righteous North-Atlantic lens, this era of (democratic) revolutions has today been decentered both spatially and conceptually to encompass other revolutionary upheavals around the globe and their twin other: empire. This course takes stock of these developments to explore how revolution and empire developed in tandem in France and Haiti, with ramifications across the Caribbean, Europe and beyond from 1789 to 1820. Topics covered include: the end of an “old” regime and birth of several new ones; the largest and most successful slave revolt in history; revolutionary politics and social transformation; the terror; Napoleon, Toussaint Louverture, and charismatic leadership; the first “total war” and new forms of empire-building; the legacies, memory, and forgetting of these events. Throughout, the course considers revolutionary upheaval and imperialism as intertwined processes driven both by determinate logics and by unintended consequences.

This course is lecture-based although students are expected to engage in short document-based discussions in class. All classes and readings will be English, and no prior knowledge of the period is required.