The First and Last King of Haiti
The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
FINALIST FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE • The essential biography of the controversial rebel, traitor, and only king of Haiti. Henry Christophe is one of the most richly complex figures in the history of the Americas, and was, in his time, popular and famous the world over: in The First and Last King of Haiti, a brilliant, award-winning Yale scholar unravels the still controversial enigma that he was.
Slave, revolutionary, traitor, king, and suicide, Henry Christophe was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. Born in 1767 to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to gain their freedom from France. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe ended up fighting with Napoleon’s forces against the very enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later, reuniting with those he had betrayed, he offered to lead them and made himself their king. But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when Christophe—after nine years of his rule as King Henry I—shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet.
Why did Christophe turn his back on Toussaint Louverture and the very revolution with which his name is so indelibly associated? How did it come to pass that Christophe found himself accused of participating in the plot to assassinate Haiti’s first ruler, Dessalines? What caused Haiti to eventually split into two countries, one ruled by Christophe in the north, who made himself king, the other led by President Pétion in the south?
The First and Last King of Haiti is a riveting story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Daut (Awakening the Ashes) offers a powerful biography of Henry Christophe (1767-1820), who fought for, defected from, and ultimately ruled over Haiti. She first sketches out Christophe's sensational life story—born in Grenada, he went from a radical in search of a revolution (fighting briefly in the American one) to a commander of Haiti's revolutionary forces who crowned himself king—then pokes holes in the myth. Often presented as a cautionary example of revolutionaries' penchant for turning into dictators, Christophe instead emerges in Daut's telling as a complex figure in a world gripped by radical transformation. The dramatic hook of her narrative is Christophe's 1802 defection, when he was briefly wooed by Napoleon's promise that Haiti would be spared from reenslavement if it rejoined the empire. Because of Christophe's lapse ("a single bad decision, ricocheting like scattershot," Daut calls it), France was able to pursue a "war of extermination," committing atrocities on a scale "it might be hard for the modern reader to contemplate." The violence, however, reunified the revolutionaries, hardening their resolve. Moreover, according to Daut, as much as Christophe's kinghood was a betrayal of the revolution's principles, it was also a safeguard of independence in an era of revanchist monarchy; by facing down the restored Bourbon monarch king-to-king, Christophe proved that Haitians were not "playthings." The result is an expertly told and richly detailed reexamination of the revolutionary period.
